Malcolm Brooks reading in Denver

Malcolm responding to a question at the reading. [Photo: Reid Farmer]

Malcolm Brooks is a friend whose first novel, Painted Horses, has been receiving a well deserved widely celebrated reception. His book has been included on many summer reading lists, he has been featured by Barnes and Nobel in their "Discover Great New Writers" series, and the book is widely receiving glowing reviews. Malcolm's writing is being compared to the best of the best: Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy, Charles Frazier, Ivan Doig,  and Michael Ondaatje, Wallace Stegner, Thomas McGuane, Annie Proulx and others! All favorites of mine - no wonder I loved the book.  Here's an excerpt from a review in Dallas Morning News.

Painted Horses reads like a cross between Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, with a pinch of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient for good measure. It’s an earnest, romantic novel that seems destined for the silver screen. review by WILLIAM J. COBB, Dallas Morning News.

 I won't say much about the plot except to note that it's a Western novel (with a capital "W") mainly set in 1956 (my birth year) with flashbacks to WWII.  Not only that, but there is a significant character named Caldwell. Malcolm assures me that the character is named for me.

Carlos and I drove down to Denver last Wednesday for Malcolm's reading and book signing at the Tattered Cover.  Steve Bodio flew up from NM for the reading and to introduce Malcolm.   Other Denver friends showed up as well.

Malcolm reading.

Malcolm read one of the most heartbreaking and dramatic pieces from the book. After the reading, Malcolm took questions from the audience. There were some wonderful questions about his process and the origins of the novel. Malcolm's articulate and deeply personal answers captured the imaginations of all of us there.  Aside from the compelling sweeping narrative, Malcom's book reads like a vocabulary of almost lost words, words describing western landscape, horse anatomy, and technical language related to horse tack.  The breadth and depth of Malcolm's experience and research is astounding.

Gathering of the clan: Carlos, OldGunkie, Reid Farmer, Malcolm Brooks, Steve Bodio [photo: Connie Farmer]

And for all of us who think we might just write more if we had the time, Malcolm wrote the book over a period of five years while working full-time as a carpenter in Missoula.  He puts us all to shame.

I took the pig over the door as a very good sign indeed and the menu and food did not disapoint.

After the reading, on Arthur's recommendation, nine friends retired to a fine Italian restaurant Osteria Marco to continue the conversation with food and drink.  I could not resist the Ciccioli Succulent Braised Pulled Pork appetizer and had the Rabbit Roman Gnocchi, Apple-Fennel Braise, Whole Grain Mustard Sauce as a main course.  Wine drinkers among us shared a bottle of red Tuscan wine recommended by the waiter though I do not recall the name.

Our group included:  Arthur (a friend of Steve's with expertise in rare antique military weapons), Arthur's sister, Malcolm, Connie Farmer's sister, Connie Farmer (Reid's wife), Reid Farmer (archeologist and contributor to the Querencia blog), Carlos Martinez Del Rio, Steve, and myself. The food and drink was excellent and then, of course, there was endlessly fascinating and wide ranging conversion; writing and writers (good, bad, and obnoxious), falconry, guns, pigeons, more guns, food, wine, and music. A woefully incomplete list of topics I can recall that were mentioned or discussed included: Annie Dillard, the post-punk band Mission of  Burma, mushroom hunting, Johnny Cash, the eccentric Oxford naturalist Jonathan Kingdon, Remington Model 8 rifles,  Mauser Broomhandles (especially regarding the merits of the 7.63 Mauser cartridge over the 9mm Luger chambering), Annie Proulx, the 1903 Mannlicher Schoenaur rifle, technical details (that were beyond my ken) of evolutionary biology of horses, dinosaurs, birds and lizards.

Our table at Osteria Marco.

A good time was had by all.  I can not imagine anyone who better deserves the astounding success Malcolm is enjoying and the wonderful reception of his exceptional novel.   Congratulations Malcolm!   ... and if you don't have a copy - get one. 

A Sportsman's Library

Steve Bodio's newest book is out, and it's great.  It is an erudite, idiosyncratic, personal catalog of one hundred sporting titles. At 256 + xvi pages, each title gets, on average, an 2.56 page description.  And what descriptions they are, one chapter for each of the hundred books.  Each description contains information on the author, a gloss of the content of the book and and Steve's reasons for including the book among among the hundred. He knows many of the living authors and that comes through in personal anecdotes about them.
Steve manages to pull together so many cultural and literary threads it's hard to imagine how he keeps them all in his head.

I was lucky enough to have been sent a preprint back in November - but I just got my bound copy today.  Aside from the pleasure of having a properly bound copy to hold in my hand, what I had not seen, was Malcolm Brooks' blurb on the back which is truly excellent.

"Nobody who loves traditional blood sport wants it's long literary line totally obfuscated by faux-gonzo, Wang-dang Nugents and gear-hawking carny barkers of cartoonish hunting shows.   Steve Bodio brings his formidable powers as both reader and writer to the cause, gifting us with a guide to the greats as varied, as magical, and yes, as essential as the works he champions."     -- Malcolm Brooks, author of Painted Horses 

When a pre-print arrived in my inbox I printed a copy and could not put it down.  I quickly ordered a couple of the rarest titles that I did not already own, figuring prices for some of these out of print books are going to go sky high. In an unscientific survey I just checked to verify my theory and it seems to me that prices on some titles are definitely up. I claim it's because Steve's book is now out.  In a shrewd moment I thought of cornering the market on Plummer's Tales of a Rat Hunting Man, which wouldn't have been all that hard at the time - now it is impossible. One copy is now listed at $673.76.  Prices on a few of the titles in the hundred have been out of sight for a long time -- I'm thinking of Jack O'Connor's  Hunting in the Southwest which I looked for again after reading Steve's description.

Steve's book won't help the price situation, though it may actually get some classics back in print.  I notice that one of the hundred, Saxton Pope's 1923 book  Hunting with the Bow and Arrow, a longtime favorite of mine, is recently back in print. I traded my own copy, an early printing, to a fanatic bow hunter in Virginia for a hind quarter of a whitetail he killed with his bow.  That meat was the beginning of my own long relationship with game meat; killing, butchering, cooking and feasting. I cooked and shared a memorable meal with friends, one of whom popped the cork on a 1974 Chateau Latour for the occasion.  But I always regretted not having my copy of Pope's book which I bought for five dollars in a used book and magazine store in Norfolk Virginia.

In our broader culture, the trend to dumb everything down to the lowest common denominator, to reach the largest possible audience, seems inexorable.   Steve refuses to participate in that trend.  A selection of books like this reveals as much about the selector as it does about the books themselves.  Taken as a whole, it represents a lifetime of scholarship. This book, and the books he recommends, provide a view into the mind of perhaps the deepest thinker about blood sport we have today.  Thank you Steve.

Buy Steve's book now!

Spawning Browns on the North Platte

What I was after.

For a few years now I've been wanting to get up to fish for the big brown trout that run up into the North Platte from the series of reservoirs west of Casper.  The run of spawning browns is a mid-November to mid-December event that happens to fall during prime pheasant and sharptail hunting season so I never seem to make it.  This year, with the drought, reports from pheasant country are not promising so the decision to fish instead of hunt was not difficult. Jeff and I drove up to the North Platte leaving at 7:30 Sunday morning from the West Laramie Fly Store.

Tom McGuane (via Steve Bodio) wrote "Shoptalk is lyrical."  Here's the technical details for them that likes them. I was casting a 5wt 11 foot Z-axis switch rod loaded with a Scientific Anglers 280 gr Extreme Skagit head with a 10' Airflow Salmon/Steelhead fast sinking polyleader with a bit more than a foot of 15 lb. tippet attached to a streamer.   My running line is the yellow Airflow Ridge.  This is all spooled on an old Lamson LP4 which really needs to be replaced; if the reel gets wet the drag slips or even goes free spool and the spool occasionally spontaneously falls off.  The orange Skagit head is 18' long. I feel like I'd cast it a bit better when I'm not in deep if was a couple of feet longer - but I do pretty well with it. Although I am no expert, I can Spey cast a lightly weighted streamer far further with this rig than I can with a 9 foot 8 wt. rod.  For this kind of fishing I far prefer fishing the 5 weight switch rod to my 14 foot 9 weight Spey rod though that works too.

I caught one big brown, a few smaller ones and a decent rainbow. I went for a big brown and was completely satisfied to have caught one: you can't always get what you want. The take was textbook perfect - the fish took a white marabou streamer I was swinging in classic Salmon/Steelhead fishing style.   Jeff netted it for me and took a photo.  By then I was anxious to release it so it could continue the sexual business it was there for - and so I did not measure it.  I'd guess it was a 26 or 27 inch fish.  Jeff hooked up more than once but did not land one.

No snow up there yet - a shocking continuation of the current drought conditions.  People all over, even those who don't much like snow,  are wishing we'd get some.

Gun Trading

Trading is a great way to do business, no money exchanges hands and (hopefully) everyone gets what they want. The problem is finding someone who has what you want and is willing to pass it on and that same someone must want something you have and that you are willing to give up.

W. R. Sidley, 20 GA British boxlock  with 30" barrels and chambered for 2 1/2" shells. 

Recently, Stephen Bodio and I have been corresponding about guns, hunting and life in general. Our mutual friend Gerry (who introduced us to one another) knows that I've been looking to replace my 20 GA Citori Superlight with a SxS boxlock (preferably British) and he also happened to believe that Steve might be interested in thinning his battery.   Steve recently acquired a gun that makes his 20 GA British boxlock redundant in his own battery.  Bodio got this very interesting shotgun in a trade a few years ago. He wrote about it on his blog under the heading Gun Deal.

British 10 GA - Steve's ideal in a sitting turkey gun.

 Based on Gerry's suggestion, I suggested to Steve that he might have a gun that I might be interested in. Steve quickly constructed a rather interesting trade.  He was willing to trade his light weight 20 GA boxlock (with elegantly long 30" barrels and beautiful wood ) for a 10 GA Damascus barrelled gun that he sees himself using for turkeys. Of course the glitch is that I don't own a 10 GA, Damascus barrelled or otherwise, so how are we to trade?  Steve had his eye on a 10 GA that he wanted and quoted me the price.  I sent him the funds for the 10 GA (plus the cost of shipping the twenty to me) and before I knew it the Sidley boxlock was at N. L. Heineke's shop in Laramie.

The Sidley arrived in Laramie - on the leather covered counter at N.L. Heineke.

Nathan Heineke in his shop - a former bank building - looking for some 2 1/2" 20 GA shells.

Steve's twenty (now mine) is indeed a very elegant and light gun. When I first picked it up I was astounded by how light it was and good it felt in the hand.  Light guns are not necessarily favourites of experienced gunners - that's because they tend to not have enough inertia through a swing,  The 30" barrels make up for that on this gun.  In one email regarding the gun Steve wrote: 

You will rarely see any 28 as slim and elegant as this 20 -- if you are not used to good English shotguns its lines will amaze you, and the smallness of the action.  I wanted it the moment I saw it, and all romantic analogies apply!  Good Brit 20's compare in looks with US 28's and 410's and pattern better.

It really is a light gun, I believe Nate's scale read 5 lbs 2 oz.  He went over the gun carefully and declared it sound.  The gun shows more wear on the outside than it does inside with the locks in near new condition and it's had some work done on it to try to mitigate that difference.  It was reproofed in London in 2002 and, based on barrel wall thickness measurements, it is still in proof. The right choke is a "bell" or "trumpet" choke (-.005") and the left barrel is what Nate called a tight quarter choke at (.009") - others would call it Improved Cylinder.  We patterned the gun and it shoots to point of aim.  I thought the gun balanced perfectly - Nate says it could loose 2 ounces from the butt end and be better balanced.  To prove it to me he taped 2 ounces to the barrels about 14 inches north of the triggers.  I have to admit that there was a subtle but noticeable difference.  This is one of those ineffable things.  You can't specify the point on the gun (say 4" in front of the trigger guard) where it should balance, it should feel balanced when you naturally hold it in your hands.

A twenty  chambered for 2 1/2" shells is essentially the British equivalent of a modern twenty-eight. The standard load in a 2 1/2" twenty gauge shell is 7/8 oz of shot while modern 28 gauge shells carry 3/4 ounce - an eighth of an ounce less.   So a light weight 2 1/2" twenty is a lot like a twenty-eight carrying 16% more shot.  You can find 7/8 ounce loads for the twenty-eight (Fiocchi makes them) and you can find 2 1/2" 20 GA shells loaded with a hair less than an ounce of shot (Gamebore makes them).   In fact, I was able to buy a few boxes of these at Jax in Fort Collins so I do have some shells - if not grouse loads.  These heavy loads are pushing the limits. The standard loads for my gun are made by RST and they sell them by the flat (250 shells per) reasonably priced and in every possible configuration you might like.

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In the end I'd say this was a perfectly constructed trade.  Thank you Steve!  He'll get what he wants and I'm very happy with what I got - even if it may have seemed to Steve at some point that I was dragging my feet.  I took the gun out chasing Blue grouse for a few hours yesterday and although we did not flush even one bird (unlike the day before) I did get to spent a few hours in the field with the new gun and am even happier with it than I was before.  I'm hoping it will turn out to be a magic grouse wand.

Beginings: guns and shooting

My taste in rifles and shotguns was largely formed from reading Stephen Bodio's book Good Guns Again: A Celebration of Fine Sporting Arms. Surprisingly, it is currently not in print (Steve we need an updated edition) though used copies are available.   I did not grow up in a family of hunters and we never had a gun in the house when I was growing up so I learned most of what I know from books.

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My grandfather in Louisiana had a side-by-side shotgun for shooting quail, armadillos and stray cats. He also had owned a Smith and Wesson revolver for protection.  When we would visit, the guns were stashed away, still in view, but up on a high shelf. My grandfather was not a particularly friendly man but he did once let me shoot his revolver, I don't know what caliber it was. I must have been about five or six. We went out behind the house where there was a huge pecan tree stump. He propped up a Coke bottle at the base of the stump.  I was supposed to shoot at the bottle from about 10 feet away. I could barely hold the heavy revolver so he stood behind me and helped me hold it. Pulling the trigger was no easy matter and in the process of doing so I lifted and when the gun went off, surprising the hell out of me, the shot passed over the top of the stump, across the fence and into the pecan grove behind.  Some of Lucille Watson's cattle were out in shaded pasture below the trees.  My grandfather grabbed the revolver from my hand and spewed profanities and then told me what would happen to him (and me) if I'd shot one of Lucille's steers.  That was the end of my training in the use of firearms until I went off to boy scout camp.

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This business of taste in firearms is rather subtle and turns on some mighty fine points that are only learned by spending a lot of time looking at and handling a lot of old guns and rifles.  There used to be some excellent gun stores where large selections of used firearms were out on the racks for customers to handle. Among others I'm thinking of Green Top in Richmond VA and Creekside Gun Shop in Bloomfield NY. Creekside is gone now but the son of the owner is Doug Turnbull does some amazing restoration work. Today, most Cabela's stores have fine gun rooms and there is a similar gun room in the Denver Bass Pro Shop too. These places tend to function more as mini-museums with families of gawkers scurrying around trying to find the highest price tags but not paying much attention to the actual firearms they are attached to.  I don't have much patience for these mega-stores or the knock-off goods they sell but they do offer the serious student of fine firearms a chance to study them up close.  The staff can usually recognize a serious aficionado and will allow you to handle the guns you might be interested.  Don't bother to ask to handle the $100,000 items in glass cases - at least I don't.

1903 Mannlicher Schoenauer chambered for the 6.5x54 MS cartridge.

Of course, the internet is an amazing resource and a snapshot of the sites like Gun Broker, Guns International and Guns America will essentially show you everything that is available worldwide at that time. Looking at those internet sites it may seem like there is an unlimited supply of fine old firearms.  That illusion disappears once you start to look for something particular, say a 1903 Mannlicher Schoenauer in 6.5x54 with an elegant peep sight integrated into the top tang.   In the larger scheme of things, there were only a relatively small number of fine firearms ever made and each one is unique in its own way. If they didn't start that way, they become so through the passage of ownership with dings, nicks and scratches, pluming of blue and deepening of patina, and from updates and repairs and the general passing of time.