The Deer Pasture

"In a series of skillful, easy sketches, Rick Bass evokes the place in the Texas hill country where the men in his family have come every year for forty-nine years. Hunting is the thread that runs through the narrative, but the heart of this book is a young man's love for the land."
~~back cover

And love for his family. And a testimony to the process of growning up, of becoming a man, and a subtle documentary of Southern culture.

I've always been opposed to hunting. It seemed to me to be brutal and unnecessary, a pale echo of the orgy of slaughter that took place in the 1700s and 1800s. But when I was surveying up in the Sierras for the Forest Service, I'd come across hunting camps, sometimes cabins, and think how wonderful it would be to show more spend time in them, even live in them. And how glorious to spend your days in the forest, although not with the purpose of killing a deer, not with the purpose of getting a trophy for your wall. Rick Bass takes you with him into the woods, and transforms the experience into a bonding with the land, an exploration into yourself; a knowledge purchased by long hours of patience and silence, by misses and near misses and spectacular wins. Not every hunter understands the subtler reasons why he (or she) enjoys hunting, or that it's much more than a sport. But Rick Bass does, and he'll let you in on the secret if you read this book. show less