00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. Your guide to the White Tail Woods presented by first Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light Go Farther, stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon, Welcome to the.
00:00:20
Speaker 2: Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on the show, I’m sharing my top ten wildlife recommended books that I’m recommending you read or listen to this upcoming year. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. I want to read you something a quote that I came across recently. It states Internet brain is making us all profoundly dumber. Digital slop is destroying our attention spans. Study after study shows declines and focus critical thinking and literacy. One of the most counterculture things you can do right now is read a book. Books are the best bargain there is. There is no better place to get a rich distillation of insights and wisdom from great leaders to entrepreneurs, to athletes to creatives. The people we tend to deem wise and discerning all read. That’s a quote from a past Wired to Hunt guest, Brad Stalberg. He’s also an author and an expert on all things performance and mastery and excellence. And when I ran across this from him, it definitely resonated with me, and it brought to mind the fact that we have not talked about reading on this podcast in several years. Tony and I did an episode discussing book recommendations about two years ago. But this quote, this line reminded me that there’s a whole lot more ground there to cover that we have not yet. And I actually personally just finished writing a book. In that book, my second book is going to be coming out in early twenty twenty seven, but I just finished the writing process, and that book was all about wildlife in America. And of course, in putting together that book, I spent a lot of time reading other books about these topics. So many of these are top of mind for me, which got me thinking that, hey, you know what, the folks within the mediator world, hunters and anglers and folks who care about wildlife and wild places, they’re likely also the kinds of people who don’t always want digital slot, who sometimes would like to dig in a little bit deeper into these topics that fascinate us so much. So that’s why today I’m sharing ten wildlife related book recommendations with you. I’m going to walk through ten different books, discuss what they’re about, why I enjoyed them, why I recommend them to you, and then my ask is that you pick one or two of these and try them yourselves. Of course, I’m a big fan of physical, hard copy books, but these days, I know that life is busy, and the amazing thing is that there are a whole lot of books. I bet every single one of these books I’m going to talk to you about you can listen to as well as an audiobook. So of course I’d like you to listen to this podcast, but you can also throw on one of these audio books and go deep into one of these topics, learn a lot, immerse yourself in the world of these issues, or these adventures or these animals, and I think you can learn something more. You can have an experience that’s enjoyable and educational and maybe inspirational. That’s just different, dramatically different than anything you’re in fined on social media or the internet at locke or YouTube or wherever most people spend their time these days. So this is my this is my ask to go a little bit old school, pick up a book or give one a listen, and I promise you’re going to be reminded that there’s something almost magical about a deep immersion in a topic like this that only books can do. So before we get to that, though very briefly, a quick update related to this podcast, I am launching a new show here soon. In a handful of weeks, I will be launching a new podcast. More details about that will come out here in the coming weeks. But with that new podcast that I’m be coming out with, I am going to be cutting back on how many Wired Hunt episodes that I host, so there are some changes coming to this show. I will still be hosting Wired to Hunt episodes every other week. Tony will continue doing his Foundation episodes every single week. Joining us on those off weeks will be Jake Hoefer, who last year you saw on this feed hosting our Retfresh episodes and then doing the Back forty mini series. This year, he’s going to continue doing the ret Fresh series in the fall, he’s going to bring back the Back forty at least once a month. We’re going to be doing Back forty episodes that might possibly increase in the future, and on the off weeks he will be doing regular interview shows like we have historically done on Wired Hunt. So you’re going to see the three of us, Me, Tony and Jake all throughout this year, all bring you top of the line whitetail related information through most of that period. This new show that I’ll be launching is going to be a home for my non whitetail stuff. So a conversation like we’re having today where we’re speaking a little bit more broadly about wildlife in the future that might live on this new show today, you’re going to get it here. Stay tuned for those future details in the weeks and months to come. So all that said, let’s talk books. Let’s talk my top ten wildlife related books. As I mentioned, if you want hunting or phishing books, me and Tony did a podcast about that two years ago. That episode is episode seven seventy seven, Twelve books every hunter and anglis should read. So you can go back and listen to that if you’re more interested in specifically hunt and fish topic books. But today we’re gonna go a little bit farther out and talk wildlife of all types. There are some deer recommendations, but then a whole bunch more and We’re going to start with an audiobook actually, so I’m not gonna have a physical book to show you. The first book i’m gonna recommend is a series of books, and this is a homer I’m gonna be in a homer here. I’m gonna promote something that my colleagues are making. But man, it is great. I’m gonna show you here on the app I’m going to recommend to you Mediator’s American History, which you can download on Audible or wherever you get your audiobooks, whatever your app of choice is. Spotify also has them. There are three parts to this so far. There is at the beginning the Long Hunters. So the first book of this three part series explores the Long Hunter era of our wildlife history in America, when folks like Daniel Boone took to the field exploring the frontier at that time, which was kind of the Midwest Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, that region, and we’re discovering what wild places and wild animals were there and then beginning a hunting economy around those animals. And so this entire series of books, this media or American History explores wildlife but then also explores how Americans engaged with wildlife from this kind of market hunting perspective, and there’s incredible stories of adventure, there’s incredible stories of what wildlife populations used to be like in America. Inspiring in that way. You’re also going to learn about what these you know, people went through living out there alongside those animals. And then in all three cases, you’re also going to learn about the tragic history in most cases in which we overexploited these wildlife. And I think a really important part of the history of wildlife in our country and hunting in our country is this consistent pattern in which we discovered wildlife in abundance and then changed that, destroyed that, over exploited that abundance. And so Book one is about the long hunters. That’s like the seventeen hundreds where we experienced that with deer and black bears and different different stories on those lines. The second part of this series, Book two is about the mountain men. This is the early eighteen hundreds of eighteen oh four ish inuntill eighteen forty, give or take, and that’s when you had this second wave of folks heading farther west. Now we’re getting to the Rocky Mountain West and the beaver trapping era and that entire economy and then eventual over exploitation. And then the third part, which just recently came out, which has showed you on my phone, is the hide hunter’s era. So this is the story of the American buffalo and the hide hunters that came out and eventually nearly wiped out this incredible wildlife species. So this three part series is both fascinating and interesting, but also damning in a certain way in which hopefully all of us today that engage with wildlife maybe is hunters or anglers or even recreators. I think these books will be a very important reminder to all of us that wildlife is incredible and there are ways to enjoy that wildlife. Sometimes that means actually taking some of that wildlife. But there is a very very fine line, a very careful line we need to walk to make sure we don’t go too far with that, because our predecessors did and we very nearly lost these animals because of it. So an important history to base ourselves in, especially if we partake in the modern day version of hunting or fishing. That all brings me to my second book, recommendation, which is another history. This is Wild New World by Dan Flores, The Epic Story of Animals and People in America. Dan is one of my favorite wildlife writers. This book and a second of his called The American Serengeti, are just a tremendous, fascinating deep dive into the history of our wild animal populations and in the history of the natural history of those animals here, but then also what happened when we entered the picture. So in this book, it starts a long, long time ago with the first peoples coming down into the North American continent and what wild animals were here at that time, and then it goes through this like nearly ten thousand year period in which of American populations lived alongside these vast populations of animals and relatively coexisted. And then it gets into what happens once, you know, European colonists moved across the country and we slowly, you know, did the things that I just mentioned in the American and the media’s American History series where we uh, you know, trapped beavers nearly to extinction, and then we hunted the buffalo nearly to extinction, and we persecuted so many other animal species. So this story is full of you know, of again kind of similar things, inspiring stories of the past, this incredible abundance of wildlife, but then also these really challenging periods where we where we lost the sense of balance and long term view that is necessary to keep these animals around. So read this if you want to understand how amazing it used to be, also how bad it used to be. And then finally, also towards the end of the book, you also learn about many of the ways that we stopped before as too late on how we helped recover these species. So that is also really inspiring and encouraging and I think shows us again how you know, any of us who care about wildlife can be a part of the next generation of stewards that stand up for these things and make sure we continue to have wildlife around us and around our families and friends for many, many generations to come. So highly recommend this one or American Serengetti by Dan as well that one’s focused on the Great Plains, this is more broadly the entire country of America, and maybe even the content it talks a little bit about Canada. I think as well. If I remember, the next book on my list is going to be a whitetail deer focused book. This is Whitetail Nation, and this is one that’s kind of under the radar. Not a whole lot of people know about this book. It came out maybe fifteen twenty years ago. And this is a story of one man’s journey to better understand white tail deer across the country and better understand the culture of hunting that he was a part of to a degree but had never gone deep into. And so this is both a fascinating and fun hunting story as the author travels the country hunting in New York and Texas and Montana and some other places, you know, trying to finally understand the culture of diehard deer hunters and many different versions of deer hunting and maybe someday get his big buck. But then also you know the impact and the meaning of this animal two Americans in general. So a fun book, an illuminating book about whitetail deer. It’s not one that allow of deer hunters know about or have read, but it’s one I would definitely recommend. A second book that I’m just going to mention related to deer is one that I have not yet read, so I can’t recommend it, but I’m very intrigued by it, and so I’m going to throw it out there as a thing to keep on your radar to maybe check out. I’ll get back to you guys with a review on this. But this is a relatively recent came out last year book written by a non hunter called The Age of Deer, Trouble and Kinship with Our Wild Neighbors. So this, similar to the other one, is a deep dive into deer across America and the cultural connections we have deer and the ecological connections we have to deer and hunting deer and managing deer and all of the great things that that brings to the table, but then also some challenges that brings to the table. As I understand it, this book explores all of that in a fair minded, level minded way. But again, the author is not a hunter herself, although as I understand it, some of her community friends and family are, and so I think that is a perspective that she shares, so might be one to check out. I’ll get back to you for sure, but I want to throw that out there because I have it, I’m interested in it and want to throw it into the pool of consideration. Next up we are going to move on to book number or This is a big pivot from the last topic, which was whitetail deer. Of course, we talk about white tail deer a lot here on Wired to Hunt for good reason. They’re an animal we hunt. They’re an animal we eat. They’re an animal we love. They’re an animal that almost all of us see in our backyards or our neighborhoods, or our local farm fields or park or woodland. The next book or two is going to be about an animal that most of us rarely see, maybe have never seen, but I still think that it stands within all of our psychology, maybe as looming large. And this animal I’m speaking about, of course, is the grizzly bear. The grizzly bear is at as wild an animal as we have in this nation. It’s about as iconic of a species. It’s so representative of wildness. I think we all have some kind of fascination with it to one degree or another, even though we all have some different kind of connection. Some of us are so so far removed from them. Some of us live closely to them or have had real in person run ins with him. This book, Grizzly Years, is one of the best books I have read about the animal, and it’s from a very first person, close connection type perspective. Grizzly Years is written by a man named Doug Peacock. He was a Vietnam vet who came out of his experience during that war severely traumatized, broken, and in a really, really bad place. But when he returned to the United States and was seeking out how to move forward and how to live in this new reality that he existed in, he found himself turning towards wild places. He headed out into the desert of the Southwest, and then the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, and then eventually some of the national parks of the Upper Rocky Mountains like Yellowstone and Glacier National Park, where he came face to face with grizzly bears, and in those moments, coming face to face with an animal like that that is so powerful, that is so able to look at you and confront you with the fragility of your life and kind of put you down a wrung or two on the food chain. That instantly, I think creates a sense of humility that instantly helps you kind of have a different perspective on life. And what Peacock experience then was for the first time since coming back from Vietnam, you know, feeling like he was in a life or death type situation where things seemed real and concrete in a way that the rest of civilized life no longer did for him. And so once he experienced that, he realized he needed more of that. He wanted to encounter these animals, learn more about these animals, live out there among these animals as much as he possibly could, and so Doug then continued to return to these wild places where grizzly bears lived in the nineteen seventies, over and over and over again, studying them, watching them from afar, living out there for extended periods, camping, and eventually he not only found peace with these animals, but he also recognized that they were struggling as a species. In the nineteen seventies, grizzly bears reached about as low of a point as they have ever been in our country. At one point, there was something like fifty thousand grizzly bears in the lower forty eight states, right, you know, probably right around that Lewis and Lark time frame or before that, and then the subsequent you know, one hundred and fifty, one hundred and seventy years, Grizzlies were persecuted and pushed out of their native habitat. They used to be all over the plains. No longer they used to be, you know, stretching from north to south, from Mexico to Canada, all the way to California, out into the you know, the Central Prairie, and settlers and ranchers and hunters and all sorts of people. Government officials shot and persecuted and poisoned and drove those populations down to the ground. To the point of the nineteen seventies, there were grizzlies almost nowhere in the country except for tiny remnant populations in Yellowstone National Park and Glacier and maybe a couple tiny isolated regions elsewhere. But they were down to maybe two hundred some bears left after reaching you know, after coming from fifty thousand, we were down to maybe two hundred ish bears. That’s where Peacock entered the story, and when he realized that these bears were in trouble and in decline. He decided he wanted to try to find ways to help, and the idea he stumbled upon from a friend was to film them to help other people see them and learn about them and understand, you know, that there were bears out here still, but they weren’t doing so well. And so Peacock ended up getting an old video camera this is a long time ago, and filming grizzly bears, and he was one of the first people to have really, you know, real up close in the wild natural history footage of grizzly bears in Yellowstone and Glacier National Park in that region, and you know, he kind of became famous for that. And so this book follows his experiences both out there in the wild, just watching them, learning from them, having these up close, crazy experiences with them, and then ultimately filming them and trying to better understand them while also trying to understand who he was and his relationship to wildness and the rest of the world. The book follows those adventures, but then also flashes back and forth between those encounters with grizzlies and then experiences in Vietnam, some traumatic or formative events during his war years in which we bounce back and forth, you know, through this kind of psychological roller coaster he personally experienced. So it’s it’s a hell of an adventure story. It’s illuminating about the reality of these bears, what they’re actually like on the ground. There’s so many stories, there’s so many myths, there’s so many ideas about grizzly bears that come from a place of fear and come from a place of disconnection to them. Doug Peacock brings a perspective that is very connected to them. I think that this is a story and a set of perspectives that’s more important than ever right now as we are entering a new phase in the grizzly bear story. Grizzlies have recovered dramatically since the nineteen seventies, since that low point of two some bears. We’re in the lower forty eight states, probably well over two thousand bears, and they’re expanding the range once again. They’re coming back to areas that they have not been in more than one hundred years, and so from a wildlife recovery perspective, this is very exciting. But from a human perspective, there’s also challenges that come with that. There’s new ways of living that have to be adjusted to when you live in grizzly bear country, but never did before. Right, The people that are out there with these bears bear a set of costs now, whether it be you know, actual dollar cost and dealing with damage from bears, or psychological costs, which was trying to deal with the different things you need to think about when living alongside these animals. So all of that has led to a lot of questions and controversy around grizzlies and now also there’s a lot of debate and discussion around if grizzly bears should be removed from the endangered species list, and if so, should they be managed by state wildlife agencies? And should hunts be allowed for grizzlies in the lower forty eight states as well? So there are many, many different takes on that topic. There are many different perspectives and reasons to think about on all sides. But that’s a conversation for another day and another podcast. But I would recommend you read Grizzly Years by Doug Peacock in Search of the American Wilderness for one of those important perspectives to consider as we go down that road. And I’m going to give you one more bear, kind of a bonus bear recommendation. This is a book written by my friend Bjorn Dila. It is a Shape in the Dark, Living and Dying with brown Bears, really really great book. A different kind of book but also similar in some ways. The Grizzly Year’s Book is really about lower forty eight grizzlies, and this book is about Alaskan brown bears, which are also grizzlies, but they live there closer to the coast. And then of course there’s also interior grizzlies that Bjorn talks about as well, And so this book is an examination of his personal experiences with bears. He lives in Juno, Alaska. He’s been a guide for bear viewing and bear filming. He’s spent a tremendous amount of time in very high bear density areas and done some wild wild things out there with him. So this is a collection of his stories with these animals, going deep into the wilderness on some wild transsects, some wild trips across southeast Alaska or interior you know, on the Bricks Range of Alaska, while also exploring some of the history of these animals across the several hundred year story we have as an American nation with these animals. So interesting history and memoir. And that’s a little bonus Grizzly bear book to add to your list if this is your kind of topic, that’s your kind of wildlife. Moving on another hard pivot, this is a book by a guy named Thorhanson, All Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid. The fraught and Fascinating Biology of Climate Change. Now some people hear climate change and immediately want to shut off the news, want to shut off the article, want to you know, not see anything about it because of all the politics around it. Right, It’s become kind of a politically coded topic. But it doesn’t have to be. It’s something that you know, many scientists and biologists and folks living out there on the wild landscape are seeing happen on the ground and they don’t have any kind of a political allegiance. They don’t have any kind of dog in that fight. And that’s where this book comes from, and that’s how kind of my perspective on the whole topic comes from as well. I’m not interested in the politics of any of it. I’m simply interested in, like what’s actually happening on the ground and how is it impacting wildlife, fish and the ability to hunt or fish or see these animals, whatever your thing is that you like to do with wildlife, what do these changes mean for that? And that’s exactly what the spoke is about. This is a very interesting non political look at not like hypothetical things like you know, there’s so many hypotheticals this model says this is going to happen, or this you know, talking head in the news says that this other thing is going to happen. This book is actually about things happening right now. How climate related changes across the world and across the last twenty years or so is actually impacting in wildlife in what ways is it actually right now changing you know, the situation in the ocean for fish, or the situation in rivers for trout, or the situation in a jungle or a forest in impacting amphibians or birds or large mammals. There’s a lot of different examples of how that’s already happening. I think a lot of people think this climate stuff is like some way off in the future thing, and there’s actually many concrete examples of stuff happening now and it’s impacting animals that we know and we can see and we can feel these changes ourselves or knowing where to look. So Thor does a really great job of exploring that without any of the political stuff that’s controversial, and he does it in a pretty darn interesting way because he goes out and sees these places and sees these animals himself. He takes you on these adventures with him. He introduces you to these different scientists and researchers and biologists out there learning about these specific animals and seeing in real life what’s happening. So a fascinating kind of look into this wild world and a different perspective on the climate change topic that, as I’ve said already, can be exhausting, can be depressing, or can just be a political annoyance that you don’t want to pay attention to it all. This is not that. This is a unique and I think refreshing take on that. So if you’ve not engaged with the topic in the past, I would actually suggest maybe this is the book you need to read more than anything else. It’s something to consider that maybe was outside of what you thought you were interested in engaging with. I think that’s a really important thing books can offer. I’m going to get on my soapbox here for a second, but it’s really easy and comforting to read stuff that you agree with or that you all your friends and family all agree with or say, oh yeah, this is a thing, And so reading that kind of stuff affirms how you feel and how you believe, and what you think the world is and how you think the world should be. I like to read those books too, but I also try to force myself to sometimes read books that are outside of my comfort zone, or maybe that explore a topic that I don’t understand or that I don’t think I agree with, or maybe that I think I have like a totally oppositional perspective on because I think books can give you this opportunity to intellectually challenge yourself in a way that helps you understand things better, whether or not you agree with the book. In the end, maybe you read this entire book and you’re like, I’m still not convivey, I think it’s all bogus, And by way of that, it’s going to force you to think about what you do believe and what you do know and what you do think and the data or the information that’s helped you come to those decisions. It’s going to force you to think about that stuff. It’s going to force you to challenge that a little bit, to look at that with clear eyes, and that will strengthen maybe your perspective or maybe it’s going to open up some questions for you and you’re gonna say, oh, huh, I never thought about that way, or you know what, I’d always just thought about it from this one view, and actually there’s this other view that, you know, if I were to be honest about it does make some sense. And so you can learn some new things, you can grow, you can come to new ways of understanding the world. It can be very useful too, And so books uniquely give you the context to really have that kind of like deep Yeah, I guess it kind of sounds woo woob or like like you’re going crazy, but like a dialogue with yourself almost I don’t know, like talking to yourself sounds like a little crazy. But a book is deep enough and media enough and immersive enough that you have something to really sink your teeth into and think about and wrestle with. A social media clip, a quick YouTube video and article you know that usually does not give you enough to really have this like back and forth thinking challenge, but a book does so. Again, so boxing here for books. But if this at first glanced at, I don’t know, not in that climate thing, you might want to take a look at this and just see if they can force you to wrestle with things a little bit. Maybe maybe you’ll stick with what you think right now. Maybe not, but I think the process itself could be valuable. Next up, Monster of God by David Qualmen, the man Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind. This one is one of two David Qualmon books that I really really recommend. I’m gonna mention this one as my top one. But his other one, the Song of the Dodo, I’ll discuss too, and that one almost might be I don’t know, I don’t know which one’s better, but the Monster of God this is an exploration of our relationship with man eating predators. So charismatic, fascinating, big toothed, sometimes scary animals. And David Kwalman is one of my favorite authors. He is a science journalist and writer who does it better than just about anybody else. He’s a Montana guy who has written about these topics for decades now, and this book, Monsters of God, as I mentioned, explores those most dangerous of animals and why and how we have lived alongside them in the past, how we might do so moving forward, and why there’s value in having them here, why historically people have found value in them, why historically people have not liked them around, and then ultimately why it might be worth still making sure they can stick around for generations to come. David explores this through four different examples, and so four different kind of adventurous stories going into the wild seeking out these big, crazy, dangerous, fascinating animals and then learning from the people who are out there, studying them, working with them, managing them, engaging with them, hunting them, doing different things with them. So one of these portions goes and explores lions, and gosh, these are lions in India, I believe. One of these examples explores crocodiles in somewhere in Africa, I guess it was. I can’t remember exactly where, but these are saltwater crocodiles, manating crocodiles, and those examples there. Another example is bears in Romania, brown bears in Romania. Then the fourth example are Siberian tigers in Russia. I guess it would have been or somewhere in that far East region. And all four you get this fascinating history lesson, a fascinating set of insights into you know, what’s happening currently on the ground. This was written a while back. It was published in nineteen nineteen or early two thousand, two thousand and three. All right, so this book was written two thousand and three, so we’re about twenty years out. But still it’s one of the better books for wrestling with our place alongside these big animals, and so many of the controversies around wildlife today involve animals like this, grizzly bears, mountain lions, wolves. Every one of these animals can make walking through the woods a little bit more worrisome. All of those animals can sometimes you know, kill livestock or a pet dog. All of them make you know, living out there alongside them a little more challenging. They might knock down game populations. They might make you know, things a little bit more economically difficult for people that live alongside of them. So there’s real challenges with having these animals out there on the landscape, but there are also real benefits to it as well. Holding both of those facts at the same time in your mind is a hard thing to do, but being able to do that, I think is really important for hunters. For anyone who cares about wild animals. You whether your favorite deer, your favorite animals a deer or an elk or bear, or a wolf or a rainbow trout. If you care about animals, it’s important to think about how we can live with them. And I think big predators are a particularly useful set of animals to think about this question, because if we can figure out how to live alongside grizzlies or wolves or saltwater crocodiles, if you can and figure that out, then it’s a whole lot easier to figure out how to make room and live alongside spotted toads or sage grouse or white tailed deer. So I really enjoy wrestling with these kinds of books like Monster of God, where that conversation forces you to think about the toughest of circumstances and then you can you know, you can take that and apply it to so many other things as well. So David does that you’re going to think a lot, You’re going to learn a lot about these specific animals. But then I also think you will also pick up things from this book that will better help you understand, you know, many different wildlife relationships that we have here. Whether you live in Michigan or Montana. Whether the critter that gives you headaches are groundhogs burrowing under your barn, or wolves in northern Minnesota burn up your deer hunting property, or grizzly bears scaring you when you’re camping in the back country of Wyoming, whatever it is, this book has got something that I think we can all take from and highly suggest it for that reason. David’s got another book that I really really enjoyed as well. It’s called The Song of the Dodo, and that book explores the really fascinating topic of island biogeography. We’ve talked about this a couple times, but basically, to simplify it as much as the possibly can, what happens on islands when it comes to how long wildlife species can exist on islands and whether they thrive or go into decline is something that has been studied, and a whole bunch of things have been understood based on studying island populations of wildlife. And what people have realized in recent years is that we are creating island habitats, even on the mainland of America and across the world, when we surround wildlife habitat with human development. So maybe you have a backyard it’s got a lot of native vegetation and a bunch of birds and bugs and small mammals and stuff. But then if it’s surround founded by cement and businesses and other neighborhood parking lots and things like that, you might have a little island habitat there. And so the study of islands and wildlife on islands, that data and those trends, those patterns are replicating all over the world. Now where the Yellowstone ecosystem has become an island, so what does that mean for the animals that live there? Maybe the Everglades ecosystem in southern Florida that’s becoming an island as human development surrounds that, what does that mean for the wildlife that live there. This is happening, of course in Central Park and New York. This is happening in dozens and dozens hundreds of other examples all of our nation. Your deer hunting property might be an island metaphorical island of habitat. So what does that mean for your ability to bring back turkeys or deer, to have thriving small game populations or upland birds. Understanding what happens when habitat becomes island, when it becomes disconnected from the rest of the natural ecosystem, comes fragmented, when new roads are built, when new developments are put in, when all that stuff happens, there’s a whole series of patterns that happen with wildlife, and that book, The Song of the Dodo, is all about that. It’s about how evolution you know, is impacted by those things, and it’s about how you know extinctions occur or extirpations occur by way of that. It’s fascinating. It’s a deep, deep dive. So it’s not a book for someone who wants to have some easy reading. But if that set of ideas, like those big wildlife ideas of that intrigues you, the Song of the Dodo is one of the absolute best, but you got to commit to it. It’s a big read, it’s a thick book. It requires you be willing to do some thinking and some following along. But also David does it about as well as anybody could. So A Song of the Dodo another one worth considering. On a related note, if all that kind of sounds interesting to you, but maybe it sounds like too much to tackle, if it sounds a little bit too heavy, I have two other books that explore that topic, but in a much lighter way, in a much easier to digest way. The first of those is The Spine of the Continent, The Race to Save America’s last best Wilderness by Mary Ellen Hannibal. This book is this very interesting example of how to possibly tackle that fragmentation of habitat challenge that I just talked about. So, if the Song of the Dodo is all about understanding what happens when we fragment habitat into little islands, this book is an examination of one possible solution, and the kind of example kind of like a keystone example of one place trying to do this, And this broad example that they’re exploring is a big, big, big crazy idea that folks have in trying to create some level of connection all the way from the Yukon down to Yellowstone. This is like our last big wild corridor through North America that has some degree of pretty wild countries still in place, but it’s broken up by roads and developments and cities and all different things like that. So there’s a number of people, a bunch of different nonprofits, a lot of different groups that are all trying to figure out ways to build more corridors between those fragments. How do we connect more of those fragments. How do we have these cores of big wild places like Yellowstone or Glacier National Park or parks up in Canada, how do we then connect them with corridors, And then how do we make sure that the full suite of species that exists there still exists there and can exist there. If we can do that, there’s a lot of powerful opportunities that then present themselves for wildlife and for people who like to hunt wildlife or view wildlife, or people who depend on the land that wildlife supports. And so Mary Ellen Hannibal explores this topic. She explores a bunch of the science that you know that David does, but maybe in a little bit easier kind of lighter way, but she brings in a whole bunch of the scientists and the conservation biologists who are studying the stuff right now in America and kind of brings them to the forefront as characters in the book. Also, one of our favorite voices in the hunting world, Hell Herring, is in here. And there’s also some hunting, some elk hunting. There’s some considerations of the hunting world in here, and then a bunch of just kind of wild adventures out there in these places, speaking with some true legends in the conservation world, and then exploring the many different ways that you know, the fragmentation of habitat or the connection of habitat will either send wildlife popularly into a questionable place or into a really encouraging better place. So this is a book I read first, I don’t know, a decade or more ago, and I’m actually picking a back up and reading it again because this whole topic of fragmented habitat is is so top of mind for so many people right now. You know, we’re seeing it. Whether you live in Mississippi or Maine or New Mexico. Right I’m sure you can point to some place that used to be wild that is now being turned into housing development or a highway or a you know, solar panel development or ohudin is weight. We’re seeing these wild places disappear. We’re seeing these wild places be cut apart into smaller pieces, and roads and fences going up and walls going up that are disconnecting these places. So what does that mean? How do we do something about to make sure there’s still driving populations of mule deer or salamanders and get from one side of the road to the other, or you know, whatever it is, whatever animal it does you care about and they’re excited about. Almost every species in our nation is facing some version of this, and so I am deep into the weeds on both understanding it and then figure out what can we do. There are a lot of exciting positive developments on that front. There’s a lot of momentum around developing wildlife crossings, in funding projects to help identify where these connection corridors can be or are right now, really interesting studies around migration corridors and tracking where these deer or elk or other animals are consistently wanting to go and finding ways to protect that. There’s biparts and support for a lot of programs like that, which is exciting. So when it comes to migrations and corridors and connections, all these buzzwords, there’s some positivity there, there’s some hope. There, good stuff there, which brings me to my last book on that topic, which is called Crossings. This is by Ben Goldfarb How road ecology is shaping the future of our planet. So this takes a look at this broad topic we’ve been talking about, but from the specific angle of roads, how roads are impacting wildlife in many different ways, interesting surprising ways. There’s the obvious things like what I just talked about, like what happens when roads cut two chunks of habitat in two and all of a sudden it’s hard to get from place A to place B. So he explores that. He explores actual, you know, direct impacts like roadkill. What’s the impact of roadkill on wild animals across the country and on us? What’s the impact of roads on insect populations? That one was interesting and new to me. Some really interesting stuff there. How about birds, impacts on birds? What about fish? I don’t think a lot of us think about or realize how much roads impact fish and the connectivity and ability for fish to move up and down streams or to get to their spawning grounds. All of that is explored here. Ben is another one of those great writers. He wrote another book about beaver’s called Eager, if I remember correctly, and so there’s another wildlife suggestion for you. Eager explores the role that beavers play in many ways benefiting the ecosystems and many other animals around them. They’re these ecosystem engineers. They create new habitats that then support lots of different animals. So that’s an interesting one too. But Crossings, I think, is something that you know, whether you are into bugs or birds, or bears or big bucks, there’s going to be something in here that is going to be interesting to you. There’s some you know, both concerning news in here, but then also some really great encouraging examples of success, examples of ways that things are getting better or can get better. So that’s up your alley. Crossing’s is a really good one. Ben’s a great writer, easy to read, easy to follow. I read this during spring break last year and it was a it was a good pool read. So you’re planning a spring break trip coming up, here pretty soon. This might be just the ticket for you. There. I’m going to give you one another one here that I don’t have a physical version with with me, but I have the audiobook it’s on here. It’s called The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Colbert. This is one of the most iconic high level examinations of the state of wildlife today across the world. This is something that my book explores. My upcoming book explores this, but more narrowly in America. The Sixth Extinction examines this from a worldwide perspective. Scientists, biologists, researches of all types are seeing now that we have a rate of extinction, a decline in wildlife across the world that has not been seen in many, many, many, many, many, many many years. There’s only there been five other events in the history of the world where this mass decline in wildlife has occurred. That’s not happening again. It’s because of people, a lot of questions. It’s all related to many of the things we’ve talked about or these other books. The Sixth Extinction is is maybe one of the best introductions to that topic. So maybe I should have put this at the beginning of the list. You know, as I’m thinking about this, maybe I should have had you know, the American history in the wild world first, as I did, because that gives you some history, and then the sixth Extinction maybe should have gone next, as that’s saying, okay, now here’s where we are right now. And then all the rest of the books kind of explore pieces and parts of that story with different species or different trends or impacts to wildlife. So anyways, Elizabeth is one of the best. She’s you know, she’s been a feature writer for The New Yorker and other major publications. And she, again, as David does, goes out into the field, meets with the researchers, meets with the people on the ground who are studying you know, toads in the tropical rainforest, or lord knows what other animals. And it is really trying to shine a light on what exactly is happening with wildlife. Why are so much many different species and decline in so many different areas, all at the same time in such dramatic fashion. This is a great introduction to that topic, and it’s won all sorts of awards. It’s kind of top of the list for that broad set of of categories. Finally, one last suggestion for you here. This is a book that talks about caribou, and caribou are a really really interesting animal to me. They’re an animal that I have had the really good fortune to be able to hunt and then also to visit just to watch. They are a species that you know, they exist at a number and at a scale that’s unlike anything else we have in North America. I think so many of us think back on two things when we think about vast abundance of wildlife. We think about how it used to be in America with the buffalo, when there used to be tens of millions of these animals streaming across the Gray Plains. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve found myself in the Great Plains many times dreaming of what that must have been like to see something like that. Or we think about the huge migrations of wilderbeast or antelope or zebras or other animals like that out in the plains of Africa. How incredible that must be. I’ve never seen that, but it sure looks amazing, phenomenal, just awe inspiring. I think a lot of us forget that we have something like that still in America. Up in Alaska or in Canada, there are still vast herds of cariboo. There are these hundreds of thousands strong groups of caribou migrating back and forth across the tundra in just jaw dropping abundance. And they’re just such interesting animals. These these animals can migrate thousands of miles, they can live in the harshest of conditions and survive year after year after year, and they can somehow collectively remember where to go in the winter and where to go in the summer, and where the best food is and where the safest places to have their calves are. And they can do this amidst you know, incredibly difficult weather conditions, and while being hunted by wolves or grizzlies, while dealing with swarms of insects of ungodly numbers. They’re just an impressive, unbelievable animal. And it’s so wild that we still have that, even in this modern day, when it seems like so much of our wild world has been domesticated. You know, in some kind of way, most of us experience wildlife and small parcels of land in the country or in your backyard, in the neighborhood, or in a park in town. But we still have like big, wild, crazy stuff like two hundred and fifty thousand strong herds of caribou or whatever it might be. In this book, A Thousand Trails Home Living with Caribou by Seth Cantner is a terrific examination of what it’s like to still live alongside that wild and asked an unincredible wild herd of caribou what that’s like to be with those animals firsthand. Seth was raised in the in the Deep Bush of Alaska by a family that was living off the land, a sustenance lifestyle. He grew up, you know, surrounded by and living right amidst the caribou migration of the Western Arctic caribou herd. And so he tells a story of what that’s like to live that life, to live off the land. For caribou not to be just something that is way out there and exciting to know is out there, or something that maybe someday I’ll get to go up there once in my life and hunt, but instead what it’s like to live with them, to depend on them for you know, major parts of what they needed to live out there, and then how other people utilize caribou, how the native people’s there depended on them, how they’ve incorporated caribo into their lifestyle and their culture and their traditions and their faith and many other things like that. And then finally, what’s going on now? How are things changing for cariboo, how’s the landscape changing there, What is the future of caribou going to hold? What will the future hold for the people that live with caribou bold Those questions are what are tackled in A Thousand Trails Home. And it is a beautiful books. There’s beautiful photography in here, you know. So it’s got pictures if you like pictures. It’s got great stories if you like that. It’s got great information if you just want to learn about these animals. And I think it paints a very clear picture of where things are headed with caribou that I think would be important and useful for all of us to understand, whether you live in Alaska where caribou exists, or if you live thousands of miles away and simply dream of someday seeing caribou. I think it’s a species worth wrapping her head around. Because there is some major change underway for them, and if our generation doesn’t find some way to get a grip on that and change the current trajectory, our generation might be one of the last to have that chance. I’ll leave it at that, but I do think this is an important book, and if you are intrigued by this and would like to learn more, another caribou related book I would also recommend. It is called Being Caribou by Carston Hewer, and that book’s like ten or twenty or twenty ish years old, I think. But that book follows a husband and wife duo who decides to try to follow the porcupine caribou herds migration, which is thousands of miles from winter range to summer across the Brooks Range Mountains across the coastal plain. This is up in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and then some neighboring land in Canada. So just an epic adventure story while also learning all about what these Cariboo live through, what that’s like, where they go, what they do, why they do it very very interesting. So I think A Thousand Trails Home will help you better understand what’s happening today and what it’s like to live with them, and then being caribou will give you an interesting glimpse at what it’s like to try to follow them and what that world looks like. So there are ten plus recommendations for you for wildlife related books. We’ve got everything from white tails to caribou to grizzly bears, to from the history of wildlife to the future of wildlife. From you know, adventure stories with wildlife to deep dives into the science of wildlife. Try to give you a little bit of everything, but all all definitely highly recommended reads. Like I mentioned at the top, you can get the hard copy like these are, but also you can get them on your phone. If you like ebooks, go for it. You can do that. One thing I do like about ebooks when I’m gonna really try to research something and I want to be able to go back and look at, you know, facts and quotes and stuff, I do use my little kindle here and I have the note taking function where I can save little excerpts. I like to do that, come back to those things or save quotes. But yeah, hop in the car with an audiobook of one of these, give that a listen, and I think you’re gonna I think you’ll enjoy it. I think you’ll learn something. I think all of these books will give you maybe a little bit more to chew on than your typical podcast that you listen to. So I hope this is helpful. I hope I give you some ideas that you’re excited about. And I certainly appreciate you tuning in here to listen to me just run my mouth about books for an hour. As most of you know, that’s kind of right up my alley. And love my books and love exploring all things wildlife. So I’m hoping there’s a few of wee out there like that too. If you are interested in my book, which is coming out, you know, like nine or ten months from now, you can follow me on Instagram. It’s my handle now is at Mark Kenyan Official. I’ll definitely have updates there, and then also on my personal website, I’ll be posting updates to the newsletter there, and that’s Mark Kenyon dot net. So stay tuned. That’s an exploration of the state of fish and wildlife in America and where we’re headed, and an interesting look at the unique perspective that hunters and anglers bring to that and how we can make sure we keep these creatures around for the long run. So that is it for me today. I appreciate you joining, thanks, thanks for being a part of this community. And until next time when the next episode, as I mentioned that will be with Jake as your host that week talking white Tales. Until then, I appreciate you and stay wired to Hunt.
Read the full article here