Back when I was developing binoculars and spotting scopes for Leupold, each year at about this time I’d be in Las Vegas, Nevada attending the largest North American trade show at which the company exhibited its products: the Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trades (SHOT) Show. From years of attendance at this event, as well as a host of others, I learned a great many things – foremost among them being that most every hunter or angler I ever met had every bit as deep an interest in one area of natural history or another as any other naturalist of my acquaintance.

Indeed, were it not for many of the famous hunters and anglers of years past, we would not have some of the important collections in natural history museums that we do today. The statue of Frederick Courteney Selous prominently displayed in the Natural History Museum in London stands as the most famous testimony to this fact (and lest we forget, most every bird painted by John James Audubon was one either he or one of his companions shot).

Thus, out of respect to all those gathered together in Las Vegas this week at the SHOT Show, I thought I’d highlight a few reviews of books that they might find particularly relevant to their favorite outdoor interests:

We All Live in Deerland – a review of Al Cambronne’s Deerland: America’s Hunt for Ecological Balance and the Essence of Wildness. This book is an absolute must-read for all deer hunters (as well as everyone else who lives in areas where deer are found – which is now more or less most everywhere in North America).

A Much Maligned and Misunderstood Bird – a review of Linda R. Wires’ The Double-Crested Cormorant: Plight of a Feathered Pariah. Many anglers curse cormorants as voracious despoilers of fish stocks, but is such animosity justified by the facts?

Dr. Baldassarre’s Magnum Opus – a review of Guy Baldassarre’s Ducks, Geese, and Swans of North America. Now in a new third and fully updated edition, this classic of wildlife management contains more useful information on the life histories of its subject species than any other book presently in print.

When the Wolves Returned – a review of Aimee Lyn Eaton’s Collared: Politics and Personalities in Oregon’s Wolf Country. What happens when an apex predator long extirpated from an area begins of its own volition to return to that area? The Oregon experience is unique among western states but what happened – and is continuing to happen – there could provide extraordinarily useful information for wildlife managers throughout the nation.

And, of course, a book I have most embarrassingly still not formally reviewed but which I have read with great fascination and delight – the new Marjorie Swann edited edition of Izaak Walton’s and Charles Cotton’s The Compleat Angler.