Jacob F. Rivers III has collected twenty-two classic hunting tales by twelve southern writers including Davey Crocket, Johnson J. Hooper, and Henry Clay Lewis. These stories spring not only from a genteel literary tradition but also from the tradition of the tall tale or stories of backwoods humor. Antebellum and post-Civil War tales reflect changes in the social and economic composition of the hunting class in the South. Some reveal themes of fear for the future of field sports, and others demonstrate an early conservation ethic among hunters and landowners.
Early Southern Sports and...

Archibald Rutledge's suspenseful story "The Egret's Plumes" is a cautionary tale exalting the virtues of good sportsmanship, conservation of the natural world, and the universality of parental instincts. Fleeing the relentless plume hunters of their native Florida, a pair of exquisite snowy egrets make a new home--and then a new family--in the South Carolina lowcountry swamps of Blake's Reserve. When the male egret is killed by a poacher, the female is left to defend her nest and raise their hatchlings. Will Ormond, a restless and reckless hunter and heir to the reserve's plantation, spots...

Limited Leather Numbered Edition (limited to 100 copies)
Archibald Rutledge's suspenseful story "The Egret's Plumes" is a cautionary tale exalting the virtues of good sportsmanship, conservation of the natural world, and the universality of parental instincts. Fleeing the relentless plume hunters of their native Florida, a pair of exquisite snowy egrets make a new home--and then a new family--in the South Carolina lowcountry swamps of Blake's Reserve. When the male egret is killed by a poacher, the female is left to defend her nest and raise their hatchlings. Will Ormond, a restless and...