cover image Death in a Lonely Land

Death in a Lonely Land

Peter Hathaway Capstick. St. Martin's Press, $24.95 (284pp) ISBN 978-0-312-03810-6

From his articles published in sporting magazines during the past two decades, Capstick gathers material for a collection that packs technical pieces on guns and ammunition plus lively stories about fishing and big-game hunting. In the most controversial essay here, he defends wholesale slaughter of marauding baboons in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). He takes us pigsticking in Argentina; hunting the red buffalo, the most dangerous of all game animals, in Amazonia; snook fishing in the Gulf of Mexico; and salmon-fishing in Iceland. All is delivered with a light touch. Capstick advocates the use of a BB gun on a regular basis to sharpen eye-hand coordination; he offers recipes for biltong (jerky). The book is proof that the Great White Hunter is alive and well. (Feb.)