Thrilling Adventures: Guiding, Trapping, Big Game Hunting

Catalog Note: *Thrilling Adventures: Soloung Trapping, Big Game Hunting* V. E. Lynch's 1928 memoir compiles firsthand accounts of thirty-five years trapping, hunting, and guiding in American wilderness regions from the Rio Grande to Maine. The foreword recounts Lynch's transition from illiterate trapper to magazine contributor after publishing "On the Trail of the Fox" in *National Sportsman*, earning appointment as Trapping Editor and subsequent publication of a trapping manual. The narrative begins with Lynch's early days in Missouri's Ozark Mountains, describing his first hunting experiences at age fourteen and fifteen. Notable sequences include a turkey hunt at Newton's Ranch where he pursues a flock of seventy-five birds using calls, and his first deer kill—a spike buck shot while hidden in brush. The account details frontier hunting methods using muzzle-loading rifles and captures encounters with hunting hounds and wildlife. Subsequent chapters cover trapping expeditions on Big Piney River, moonshine still discoveries, bear hunting in Maine, and bobcat trapping along various trap lines, supported throughout by photographs of the author with trophies and sporting clients.