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Title: THE classic book of still-hunting--
Review: First published in the 1880s, this is the first book ever written on American field sports. It helped inspire the craze for literary stories of hunting (carried on by Charles Sheldon, TRoosevelt etc.) amd was considered by both those men the best book ever written on the still-hunt. Written in the second person, it walks the reader through the process of learning to look for, stalk, and eventually shoot at deer, while drawing moral lessons on the evils of hunting "the wrong way." Van Dyke was esp. concerned with hunting techniques prevalent in places such as the Adirondacks at the time, shooting deer while swimming in water, etc., and his encouragement of sport by and for gentlemen helped set the stage for widespread prohibition of working-class and subsistence hunting techniques. Charming, gorgeously written, and immensely entertaining, this is a great book marking one of the most important turning points in how Americans thought about hunting and what it meant.
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