Very GOOD Reads!!!

[Outdoor Writer]

Since there's no General discussion section here, I wasn't sure where to put this, sooo...here it is.

 

If no one here has ever read any of the C.J. Box FICTIONAL mystery novels, you might give them a try. Box is a very capable, Wyoming-based writer with a nice style for easy reading, and for the most part, I'm found very few factual errors in them in regards to the hunting/outdoors aspects.

 

His books, listed below, are all based on Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett, who usually gets involved in solving some sort of murder in each novel. There are lots of well-developed characters within each plot, too, and many of them carry over from one book to the next and even beyond. So if you decide to read any of them, I suggest you read them in order. The list starts with his first and goes from there. You can also read sample chapters on the C.J. Box web site.

 

Open Season

Savage Run

Winterkill

Trophy Hunt

Out of Range

Blue Heaven

Free Fire

 

I'm now about 1/2 way thru Free Fire, which takes place in and around Yellowstone NP. I read all the rest over the last year, and they were all good. -TONY

[Outdoor Writer]

Excerpt from Chapter One of WINTER KILL:

 

One

 

TWELVE SLEEP COUNTY, WYOMING

 

A STORM WAS COMING TO THE BIGHORN MOUNTAINS. It was late December, four days before Christmas, the last week of the late elk hunting season. Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett was in his green four-wheel drive pickup, parked just below the tree line in the Southern Wolf Range. The terrain he was patrolling was an enormous wooded bowl, and Joe was located just below the eastern rim. The sea of dark pines in the bowl was interspersed with ancient clear-cuts, mountain meadows, and set off by knuckle-like granite ridges that defined each small drainage. Beyond the rim to the west was Battle Mountain, separated from the Wolf Range by Crazy Woman Creek that flowed, eventually, into the Twelve Sleep River.

 

It was two hours away from nightfall, but the sky was leaden, dark, and threatening snow. The temperature had dropped during the afternoon as a bank of clouds moved over the sky and shut out the sun. It was now twenty-nine degrees with a slightly moist, icy breeze. The first severe winter storm warning of the season had been issued for Northern Wyoming and Southern Montana for that night and the following day, with another big Canadian front forming behind it. Beneath the high ceiling, clouds approached in tight formation, looking heavy and loaded and ominous.

 

Joe felt akin to a soldier at a remote outpost, listening to the distant rumble and clank of enemy artillery pieces being moved into place prior to an opening barrage.

 

For most of the afternoon, he had been watching a herd of twenty elk move cautiously from black timber into a windswept meadow tograze. He had watched the elk, then watched the sky, then turned back to the elk again.

 

Next to Joe on the seat was a sheaf of papers his wife Marybeth had gathered for him that had been brought home from school by his daughters. Now that all three girls were in school – eleven-year-old Sheridan in Fifth Grade, six-year-old Lucy in Kindergarten, and their nine-year-old foster daughter April in Third Grade – the small stateowned house seemed awash in paper. He smiled as he looked through the stack. Lucy garnered consistent smiley faces stamped by her teacher for her cartoon drawings. April wasn’t doing quite so well in rudimentary multiplication. She had trouble with 5’s, 8’s, and 3’s. But the teacher had sent notes home recently praising April’s improvement.

 

Sheridan’s writing assignment had been to describe what her father did for a living.

 

MY DAD THE GAME WARDEN

By Sheridan Pickett Mrs. Barron’s Class, 5th.

 

My Dad is the game warden for all of the mountains as far around as you can see. He works hard during hunting season and gets home late at night and leaves early in the morning. His job is to make sure hunters are responsible and that they obey the law. It can be a scary job, but he’s good at it. We have lived in Saddlestring for 3 and one-half years, and this is all he has done. Sometimes, he saves animals from danger. My Mom is home but works at a stable and at the library…

 

JOE KNEW HE was not alone on the mountain. Earlier, he had seen a late-model bronze-colored GMC pickup vehicle below him in the bowl. Swinging his window-mounted Redfield spotting scope toward it, he caught a quick look at the back window of the pickup - - driver only, no passenger, gun rack with scoped rifle, Wyoming plates with the buckaroo on them -- and an empty bed, indicating that the hunter had not yet gotten his elk. He tried to read the license plate number before the truck entered the trees, but he couldn’t. Instead, he jotted down the description of the vehicle in his console notebook. It was the only vehicle he had seen all day in the area.

 

Twenty-five minutes later, the last of the elk sniffed the wind and moved into the clearing, joining the rest of the herd. The elk seemed to know about the storm warning, and wanted to use the last hours of daylight to load up in the grassy meadow before it was covered with snow. Joe thought that if the lone hunter in the bronze pickup could see the meadow that there would be a wide choice of targets. It would be interesting to see how the scenario would unfold, if it unfolded at all. There was just as much of a chance that the hunter would simply drive by, deep in the trees, road-hunting like 90 percent of all hunters, and never know that that an entire herd of elk had exposed themselves above him in a clearing. Joe sat in his pickup in silence and waited.

 

--- WITH A SHARP CRACK, the calm was suddenly shattered. The shots sounded like rocks thrown against sheet metal, and the first four came in rapid succession. From the sound of the shots, Joe registered at least three hits, but because it often took more than a single bullet to bring down a big bull elk, he couldn’t be sure how many animals had been hit. Maxine, his yellow Labrador, sprung up from where she had been sleeping on the pickup seat as if an electrical charge had coursed through her.

 

Below, the herd had come alive at once, and was now running across the meadow. Joe could see that three brown dots remained behind in the tall grass and sagebrush.

 

One hunter, three elk down. Two more than legal.

 

Joe felt a rush of anger, and of anxiety. Game violations were not that uncommon during hunting season and he had ticketed scores of hunters over the years for taking too many animals, not tagging carcasses, improper licenses, hunting in a closed area, and other infractions. In many cases, the violators turned themselves in because they were honorable men who had lived and hunted in the area for years. Often, he found violations as he did random checks of hunting camps. Sometimes, other hunters reported the crime. In the 1,500 square miles of Joe Pickett’s district, even after three years, it was an unusual situation for him to actually be present as a violation occurred.

 

Snatching the radio transmitter from its cradle, Joe called in his position over a roar of static. Distance and terrain prohibited a clear signal. The dispatcher repeated his words back to him, Joe confirmed them, and he described the bronze pickup and advised that he was going to approach it immediately. The answer was a high-pitched howl of static he was unable to squelch. At least, he thought, they knew where he was. That, unfortunately, hadn’t always been the case.

 

"Here we go, Maxine." Joe said tersely. He started the motor, snapped the toggle switch to engage the four-wheel drive, and plunged down the mountain into the dark woods. Despite the freezing air, he opened the windows so he could hear if there were more shots. His breath came in puffs of condensation that whipped out of the window.

 

Another shot cracked, followed by three more. The hunter had obviously reloaded, because no legal hunting rifle had over a five shot capacity, and was firing again. The lead bull elk in the herd tumbled, as did a cow and her calf. Rather than rush into the trees, the rest of the herd inexplicably turned shy of the far wall of trees in a looping liquid turn and raced downhill in the meadow, offering themselves broadside to the shooter.

[Guest 300ultramag.]

im getting onec of these books for august!