Boone and Crockett Club Releases Three “New” Classic Tales of Adventure

Join early Boone and Crockett members as they go in search of mysterious dragons in the Far East (Dragon Lizards of Komodo), explore uncharted regions of the Sonoran Desert (Camp-Fires on Desert and Lava), and hunt for moose, sheep and caribou in Newfoundland and the Yukon (Recent Hunting Trips in North America). 

These newly released books, along with five others, comprise B&C Classics series, which have been meticulously converted from the originals, resulting in high-quality, digitally remastered eBooks and paperback editions. Many are complete with vintage photos and drawings not found in other editions. This attention to detail helps transport readers back to a time when hunting trips didn’t happen over a weekend, but were adventures that spanned weeks, months, or even years.

Dragon Lizards 

Imagine the year is 1926. Your spouse sits down to dinner and calmly asks if you’d like to go hunting for dragons in the war-torn Far East. Do you go? If you’re married to explorer Douglas Burden, you start packing immediately. Burden’s book, Dragon Lizards of Komodo, is a true tale of adventure in which he chronicles his expedition’s attempt to bring back Komodo dragons for the American Museum of Natural History.

Burden and his team traveled to the remote islands off the northwest coast of Australia in search of the mythical beasts. Armed with the latest technology of the day—motion picture cameras—they documented their efforts to hunt and capture the dragons. The outlandish (but true) tales of Burden’s adventures helped inspire Merian C. Cooper—a fellow Boone and Crockett member—to produce the one and only, King Kong. 

Dragons Lizards of Komodo is 200 pages of true adventure, complete with dozens of black and white photos depicting the people and cultures of China, Bali, New Guinea and Borneo. There are, of course, plenty of dragons as well. 

Of Deserts and Volcanoes 

Shifty camp dogs, terra incognita, and hundreds of basaltic cinder cones await readers as they travel with the twentieth century’s original outdoor Renaissance man William T. Hornaday in his book, Camp-Fires on Desert and Lava. 

In 1907, a blank spot on a map of the Sonoran desert played host to a group of explorers who set out to document a seemingly desolate region north of the Gulf of California in present-day Mexico and southwest of Tucson. Boone and Crockett member and fervent conservationist William T. Hornaday invites the reader to come along and entices them at every turn of the page. “Would you be pleased to go where every-thing is strange and weird and different?” he writes. “Would you like to go hunting in the most wonderful desert region of all America, visit an odd Mexican oasis, and play pathfinder to grim and blasted Pinacate?” How can you possibly resist? 

No book about exploration, or even camping, would be complete without man’s best friend. Hornaday devotes an entire (and hilarious) chapter to the camp dogs: Bob, Rex and Rowdy. Dog owners will undoubtedly relate. In addition, there is, of course, sheep and pronghorn hunting, along with a healthy dose of adventure while exploring volcanic craters in this diverse landscape. The book features dozens of black and white photographs illustrating the journey, while the eBook version includes eight hand-colored photos that bring camping in the desert to life.

The Greatest Big Game Hunter 

There was one man Theodore Roosevelt called the “greatest of the world’s big game hunters.” His life was so outrageously adventurous that writers in the late nineteenth century would base their best-selling fiction novels on his non-fiction tales of death-defying adventure and intrigue. This real-life Allan Quatermain was none-other than the early Boone and Crockett member Frederick C. Selous (pronounced See-loo). Lucky for us, he lived long enough to write about his hunts, including early expeditions in North America. 

First published in 1907, Recent Hunting Trips in North America transports readers with Selous to hunt moose in Central Canada, caribou in Newfoundland, as well as hunts for moose and sheep alongside Charles Sheldon “in the almost virgin hunting grounds of the Yukon Territory of Northwestern Canada.” Selous returned there to hunt solo in 1906. In one hunt, he trods landscapes surveyed by the Canadian Geological Survey only a few years prior. 

If you’re a hunter who doesn’t quite get out in the woods as often as you’d like, take comfort in knowing that Selous feels your pain— well, kind of. “My thoughts still often wander back to a past of stirring and glorious memories,” he writes. “Nor is it surprising that I sometimes grow restless and dissatisfied with life in this highly civilized country, and long with an irresistible longing to taste the joys of a hunter’s life once more.” 

For us modern-day hunters, though, that’s about as close to relatable as we’re going to get with Selous’ life. His other writing centers on his journeys spent hunting Africa, including A Hunter’s Wanderings in Africa. 

Any one of these timeless classics will help you or the hunter in your life get through those long months between hunting seasons. To see the entire B&C Classics series and for ordering information, visit the B&C Store at www.boone-crockett.org/store.