Thrill of the hunt

Press, 8 April 1978, Page 15

Thrill of the hunt

Seasons of a Hunter. By Philip Holden. Hodder and Stoughton. 134 pp. $8.95. (Reviewed by Nancy Cawley)

Spend the night in the same backcountry hut as a party of shooters, and you will soon discover how much they enjoy recalling past trips — the type of gun they used, the terrain, the time of day. wind, weather, stalking tactics, and behaviour of game. Every factor is analysed and compared. And it is not just a counting of long-gone triumphs. There seems to be almost as much satisfaction in remembering the ones that got away. In his sixth book on the subject. Philip Holden has put his hunting memories on paper to provide a series of very readable “varns,” bui the stories are not for 'he squeamish. In 12 years of hunting in Australia and New Zealand, as a professional and an amateur. Holden has drawn a bead on everything from wild horses to angora goats. Bui the interesting twist to Holden’s career of killing is that there came a time when even his photographs of his mates and their gory trophies sickened him. Nowadays, he does his shooting with a camera. Many of the chases described come second-hand from the Australian

outback identities that Holden and bis wife met on a caravan trip to the Northern Territory, (“The Top End ’ as the locals call it), in 1973 Stefan Sebesten, who runs river safaris on

the Adelaide River, west of Darwin, was a professional spot-light hunter of the mighty salt-water crocodile until 1970. when the reptile was declared a protected species. (The biggest crocodile he shot measured 24ft — only 4ft short of the record.) Another Top End . character was Slim who shot wild donkeys for a living ’One big station, he said, had had so many donkeys on it that a concentrated burst of killing netted 10.000.” For those who rejbite that the mountain lands of New /.“aland aie now relatively free from large numbers of game compounding the natural erosion, Holden's lament for “the last of the flood old days,' up to 1968, when same was plentiful and easy to come’py, sounds strange The stones are a hotch-potch, dodging around in time and locality with each new chapter, but none-the-less interesting for all that. Even the most ardent ammal-lover will own that Holden's simple, enthusiastic prose conveys very well the elemental thrill of the hunt.