RIPP:

I do not mean to disparage Boddington's knowledge or experience. As you say and as I alluded to/admitted in my post, Boddington's EXPERIENCE is vast, and his knowledge of tourist hunting and hunting in general has got to be more extensive than any gunwriter ever to put pen to paper since WW2.

I have no argument with his knowledge or ability to put the material into legible prose. And like a Baedeker book for the travelling tourist, anybody intending to go on a hunt involving a critter he's hunted would do well to read anything he has to say about it first.

It is his writing style that totally leaves me blank. For entertainment and enjoyment, give me Elmer or Charlie Askins or Bill Jordan or even Jack O'Connor {saying something since he wasn't too creative either and has in common with Boddington an English major...} or Skelton or Lott or even Aagaard, who had an enjoyable wit and ability IMO to add personality to his writing.

You have me thinking though. For me, maybe it IS more. Another aspect of hunting writers that has changed a little over the years is the emphasis today on guided hunting versus self-planned and executed hunting. I have never been too interested in guided hunts. I admit it. It might be heresy to state it, but honestly, I'd far rather take a spike bull elk I hunted on my own than a 6x6 somebody held my hand and walked me into. That is a personal thing entirely, because I suspect most fellows would disagree with me or even laugh at the statement. We shoot for meat and enjoyment and comradery and the use of our own ground or ground we intimately know or explore ourselves. Nothing compares to that IMO.

IMO, Boddington is the world's best writer on the hunting industry and as such he does a splendid job. But to me he is not the best writer about all hunting. Others, like old Francis Sell take the cake for me.

To me, Boddington reads like what I might expect to appear in print were somebody to hand a pen to the Cigar Store Indian.