Pack and Rifle (First Edition). By Phlip Holden

Pack and Rifle by Philip Holden.

Publisher: Reed, Wellington, 1971, FIRST EDITION.

Very good hardback with jacket, name to half-title page, minor tanning, binding firm. Jacket has some shelf/edgewear with some fading to spine. 194 pages including index, illustrated with 39 b/w photos.

Philip Holden joined a small band of authors of NZ hunting books, going on to the become a prolific writer on the topic. Welsh born, growing up in Australia, he came to NZ in the early 1960s, from Out-Back farm work, attracted by a NZ Forest Service advertisement seeking applicants to train to be hunters These were the days when deer were of extreme nuisance value with numbers kept under control by "deer cullers". Philip, after two months of intensive training and instruction, gaining the fitness to handle the environenment "enjoyed" by these tough, self-reliant, crack-shot men, who often lived for months in isolation in some of the most rugged territory in both main islands, joined this group of professional hunters. "Pack and Rifle" may be one of the earliest of the revival of the hunting genre, but his record of his early experiences as a "culler" remains one of the best. In this iconic book Holden produced a work packed with hunting wisdom. bushcraft tips, safety with firearms, equipment required on the hunt, stressing the need for common-sense and responsibiliity at all times. Many changes on the hunting scene may have occurred since "Pack and Rifle " was published --- but hunting basics are the same and that is why his book is as valued today as it was then.

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