THE WILD HUNTERS

Conservationists will applaud the aim of this book, but to the average reader it seems a rather slapdash performance in a plea for the preservation of the larger predators of North America:- the wolf, the bear, the large cats (specifically the puma or mountain lion). Ferocious and at times dangerous, these animals play a useful part in human economy keeping non-predators, who may become pests, under control. The author, himself a big game hunter, puts forth valid arguments for their preservation. Naturalists may quarrel with some of his assumptions; other readers may reject his habit of endowing wild animals with human thoughts. The accounts of the lives of the different animals are detailed and illuminating, but the book seems badly organized, pleas for conservation mixed in with tales of their unprovoked attacks on children and even men, and accounts of how they are hunted and killed. The coyote, a predator whose near-extinction in parts of the West has led to an overwhelming increase in the rabbit population, would have been a good example, but is ignored. There is some nature-faking and some inaccuracies, but as a whole it is readable and interesting, for those who like to read about wild creatures.