YOU CAN'T GET 'EM FROM HOME

De Bonis demonstrates his passion for big game meat hunting in a series of memories dating back to his Canadian childhood.

The author took his first hunting trip in the wilds of British Columbia with his father and his brother-in-law in 1979, when he was just 7, and they came home with a deer; it was the start of De Bonis’ “lifelong passion for hunting,” and he joyfully recalls many other trips in this brief book with chapters frequently named after game (“My First Moose, 1989”; “Blacktails, 1991”). Throughout, he strikes the enthusiastic tone of an adventurer recounting tales over a campfire, and his frequent use of exclamation marks and superlatives make his passion for the subject—and for his own success on hunting expeditions—very clear. However, his narration often glosses over technical explanations of practical and legal aspects of modern Canadian hunting; instead, he sometimes uses undefined jargon (“I quickly cranked my Leupold scope up to nine power”) that non-hunters may struggle to understand. The memoir is at its most captivating during scenes of intense uncertainty, as when the author tells of fighting to survive a float plane crash, and when he writes of his preoccupations with shooting a certain elusive buck or a California bighorn sheep. However, these moments, when the author strikes a good balance between vulnerability and enthusiasm, are too sparsely distributed among various chronicles of tracking and shooting big game, which eventually feel repetitive. A plethora of full-color photographs featuring the author and his loved ones with felled moose, deer, sheep, and bears add to the memoir’s diaristic feel, but they may be difficult for non-hunters to view. However, those with hunting experience will recognize how the author’s personal connections to the activity—its significance to his family, his sense of self, and his sense of accomplishment—undergird his accounts.

An earnest but repetitious hunting chronicle.