Thursday, October 17, 2013

Larry Benoit RIP

Legendary whitetail hunter Larry Benoit, of Duxbury VT, is dead at 89. he exemplified the Yankee blue- collar woodsman- hunter, and despite it being a how- to, his How to Bag the Biggest Buck of Your Life, a delightful read as well as a practical manual, would have made my book of books if not for the strict 100 book limit, and willbe in any future addition (yes, ADdition)...

He even got an obit in the NYT, respectful if weirdly tone- deaf about rural America:

"Today, trophy buck hunting has elements of competitive sport, some of them high-tech. Some hunters use video cameras to learn the traveling and behavior patterns of deer, and, after a kill, many have antlers officially measured; “trophy racks,” they are called." Yes, that they are quaintly called...

 Benoit's own style was forthright and colloquial; there is a feeling of him sitting down and talking effortlessly with his collaborator Peter Miller:

".... if you aren’t in shape to dog a mountain buck and follow him for 15 miles, then walk out of the woods and be ready to do it the next day, and maybe the day after, and maybe for a week, then just be an armchair buck hunter. Don’t go out in the woods and kill yourself.”

 If you must learn deer hunting from a book you could do a lot worse than to read and meditate on this one.  HT "Lucas Machias".

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like what Peter Miller, who did the book with him, said about him on

http://www.stowetoday.com/stowe_reporter/news/article_2791616e-3742-11e3-8db7-001a4bcf887a.html

“Good old Larry. Crusty, quick-tempered, fast with the sass but, of all things, a great deer hunter — no, legendary, he was, and a great tracker,” Miller said in an email. “He used common sense, hunted slow and patient. He could cut the woods apart with his eyes until he saw a patch of the buck he was tracking. He only shot the big bucks, often with a wad of Skoal in his mouth. He and his sons, particularly Lanny, were gifted as they should be, for Larry trained them.”

Lucas

Dog Training Maryland said...

Hi Steve,

Didn't know any other way to share this so I am posting here

neat story on using pigeons in the NYT today

http://www.nytimes.com/video/arts/design/100000002499781/flying-close-to-the-law.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131018