Trophy Bucks In Any Weather
Book is interesting , educational and informative. A great read for a beginner or skilled deer hunter.
Must have addition to the hunting library!
I got this book as a gift and am very happy with it. I learned from it how to interpret what I was experiencing in the woods when I was after the deer.
I like how the book is visually striking and the images helped make me get into the book. The author speaks with authority and I can sense that he really wants to help hunters be more successful, whether they are after someone's idea of a trophy or a meat deer.
Weather for the Novice Hunter
Based on the title, the review here, and that the fact that the author was supposed to be a meteorologist, I got this book hoping it would explain wind behavior over terrain and vegetation patterns. I read through it and wondered if I had the same book as advertised. The author started off by qualifying that he is not a trophy hunter. The text reflects that. The title should have been Meat Deer in any Weather or Weather for the Novice Hunter. So why is it called Trophy Bucks in any Weather? To sell books to suckers like me, I guess. If I had been able review this book in a book store first I would not have bought it. The information is only tangentially related to hunting difficult deer. The much anticipated chapter on wind covered thermals, wind flow around large terrain features, like mountain ranges, sea\lake wind effects and trajectories in the wind. Thermals and trajectories are covered ad nauseam everywhere and the rest are too generic to be of much use. Wind flowing through and around woods is barely mentioned despite that is where the majority of whitetails are hunted. The author is mostly an open plains hunter and his examples and experience are drawn from that.
Despite the 272 pages, it is a short read. The text is large and the pages are laden with color photos which, while pretty, are often redundant and of little use beyond filler. There are few explanatory weather diagrams. The author also goes to pains to describe how he dumbed down his explanations. That is too bad for the reader.
As I said, I used the review as part of my buying decision. I returned to it after reading the book to see where I went wrong. Only then did I notice the reviewer appears to be the author by name. I know that is my fault for not reading closely but the author should have identified himself in his opening line. Instead, he wrote it in the third person and in his mind thinks this book warrants a second and third. He praises his well written text and he is right if you like bad puns and other wince worthy lines.
This book can be used by a novice to start with. The rest of us can move on.
Takes hunting into uncharted territory
Hunters have no shortage of "how to" books to choose from, but this one goes way beyond what's out there. Every outdoorsman knows that weather and nature are intertwined, yet it's almost impossible to find books that specifically address the hows and whys of that relationship. Trophy Bucks in any weather is the first of its kind - a book that shows how specific weather situations influence the behavior of deer written by a broadcast meteorologist who is an avid big-game hunter himself. Hunters have known barometric pressure affects deer behavior. The author tells you how and why. Hunters have known fronts affect deer behavior, but the author goes a step beyond by explaining what kind of front impacts deer in what ways. The book also contains information about reading the signs of nature to predict coming weather, how hunters can and should protect both themselves and their gear in certain conditions, and then puts the reader in the middle of actual hunting scenarios involving various weather conditions and "quizzes" the reader on how he or she would handle them. This book is very well written and contains some pretty amazing pictures and graphics. I suspect the information it contains can be applied to other game species, but would like to see a follow up for game-bird hunters and maybe one for fishermen. This is a great book to give any big-game hunter as a gift and a "must have" for any outdoors enthusiast interested in both weather and animals.
(4 reviews)
