When men begin snooping into closets to look up their shotguns, and stand transfixed on the golf course to watch the first wedge of wild geese trade over, out come the publishers with books on the favorite subject of some 5,000,000 U. S. males-wildfowling. This year the autumn book flight includes four of the best:
1) WING SHOTS-Albert Dixon Simmons-Deny dale ($15). Born a Canadian, and a bird lover since his tenth year, Albert Simmons at 44 has perfected a technique of photographing game birds in flight, especially ducks and geese, which is better than most men's technique with a gun. He uses a telephoto lens with a sight such that he can "shoot" at arm's length, as with a fowling piece. He has the eye of a killer to focus and centre his pictures perfectly. Printed. on soft paper his exposures lose some definition, but any experienced gunner will recognize Photographer Simmons' teal, duck and goose action close-ups as the result of shrewd and patient hunting.
2) BISHOP'S BIRDS -Richard E. Bishop J. B. Lippincott ($15). Everyone who shoots wildfowl legally this year will carry in his gunning coat an etching by Artist Bishop-the three wild geese on the Federal "duck stamp," without which no State hunting license is complete. A tiny fraction of this public will drink their after-shooting toddies out of glasses expensively decorated by Bishop's enamel bird silhouets. In this book are found reproductions of 73 of Artist Bishop's best etchings.
3) WINGS, FUR & SHOT (A Grass-roots Guide to American Hunting)-Robert B. Vale-Stackpole ($4). Some people may cry out against this book because its purpose, aside from underscoring some truisms of game conversation, is to tell inexperienced hunters how, when and where to quarry. It runs the North American gamut from squirrels and doves up through bear and turkeys. It is written in short, efficient chapters, with a minimum of glowing reminiscence, a maximum of good hunting sense. Bob Vale has shot wild guinea fowl in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and told a bear to go scat on a Pennsylvania trout stream, but he also rephrases homely old rules like "At partridge, always crack fast"; "At rabbits, shoot low-and watch out for tularemia"; "At quail, wait, then shoot."