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A Hunter's Road: A Journey With Gun and Dog Across the American Uplands
In an epic season of sport, Jim Fergus and his trusty yellow lab, Sweetzer, trek the mountains, plains, prairies, forests, marshes, deltas, and deserts of America, both alone and with a host of memorable companions.
Compared by critics to John Steinbecks, Travels with Charley, and Ivan Turgenev's Hunter's Sketches, A Hunter's Road is a travel adventure tale in which bird hunting is less an end that a vehicle straight to the heart of the country.
Compared by critics to John Steinbecks, Travels with Charley, and Ivan Turgenev's Hunter's Sketches, A Hunter's Road is a travel adventure tale in which bird hunting is less an end that a vehicle straight to the heart of the country.
- GenresNonfictionTravelMemoir
296 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
18 people are currently reading
245 people want to read
About the author
Jim Fergus
36 books1,115 followersJim Fergus was born in Chicago on March 23, 1950. He attended high school in Massachusetts and graduated as an English major from Colorado College in 1971. He has traveled extensively and lived over the years in Colorado, Florida, the French West Indies, Idaho, France, and Arizona. For ten years he worked as a teaching tennis professional in Colorado and Florida, and in 1980 moved to the tiny town of Rand, Colorado (pop. 13), to begin his career as a full-time freelance writer. He was a contributing editor of Rocky Mountain Magazine, as well as a correspondent of Outside magazine. His articles, essays, interviews and profiles have appeared in a wide variety of national magazines and newspapers, including Newsweek, Newsday, The Denver Post, the Dallas-Times Herald, Harrowsmith Country Life, The Paris Review, MD Magazine, Savvy, Texas Monthly, Esquire, Fly Fisherman, Outdoor Life, Sports Afield, and Field & Stream. His first book, a travel/sporting memoir titled, A Hunter's Road, was published by Henry Holt in 1992. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Jonathan Kirsch called A Hunter's Road, "An absorbing, provocative, and even enchanting book."
Fergus' first novel, One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd was published by St. Martin's Press in 1998. The novel won the 1999 Fiction of the Year Award from the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association, and has become a favorite selection of reading groups across the country. It has since sold over 250,000 copies in the United States. An international bestseller, One Thousand White Women (Milles Femmes Blanches) was also on the French bestseller list for fifty-seven weeks and has sold well over 400,000 copies in that country.
In 1999, Jim Fergus published a collection of outdoor articles and essays, titled The Sporting Road. And in the spring of 2005, his second novel, The Wild Girl: The Notebooks of Ned Giles was published by Hyperion Press. An historical fiction set in the 1930's in Chicago, Arizona, and the Sierra Madre of Mexico, The Wild Girl has also been embraced by reading groups all across the United States. Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump called it, "an exhilarating and suspenseful tale that makes the heart soar."
In 2011, Fergus published a family historical fiction in France entitled, MARIE-BLANCHE. The novel spans the entire 20th century, and tells the devastating tale of the complicated and ultimately fatal relationship between the author’s French mother and grandmother. The American edition of MARIE-BLANCHE will be published in the United States in 2014.
In the spring of 2013, Fergus published another novel in France, CHRYSIS: Portrait d’Amour, a love story set in 1920′s Paris and based on the life of a actual woman painter, Chrysis Jungbluth. Reviewing CHRYSIS in French ELLE magazine, Olivia de Lamberterie,wrote: “This novel is an arrow through the heart.”
Chrysis has just been published in America with the title THE MEMORY OF LOVE.
Jim Fergus divides his time between southern Arizona, northern Colorado, and France.
http://jimfergus.com/bio/
Fergus' first novel, One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd was published by St. Martin's Press in 1998. The novel won the 1999 Fiction of the Year Award from the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association, and has become a favorite selection of reading groups across the country. It has since sold over 250,000 copies in the United States. An international bestseller, One Thousand White Women (Milles Femmes Blanches) was also on the French bestseller list for fifty-seven weeks and has sold well over 400,000 copies in that country.
In 1999, Jim Fergus published a collection of outdoor articles and essays, titled The Sporting Road. And in the spring of 2005, his second novel, The Wild Girl: The Notebooks of Ned Giles was published by Hyperion Press. An historical fiction set in the 1930's in Chicago, Arizona, and the Sierra Madre of Mexico, The Wild Girl has also been embraced by reading groups all across the United States. Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump called it, "an exhilarating and suspenseful tale that makes the heart soar."
In 2011, Fergus published a family historical fiction in France entitled, MARIE-BLANCHE. The novel spans the entire 20th century, and tells the devastating tale of the complicated and ultimately fatal relationship between the author’s French mother and grandmother. The American edition of MARIE-BLANCHE will be published in the United States in 2014.
In the spring of 2013, Fergus published another novel in France, CHRYSIS: Portrait d’Amour, a love story set in 1920′s Paris and based on the life of a actual woman painter, Chrysis Jungbluth. Reviewing CHRYSIS in French ELLE magazine, Olivia de Lamberterie,wrote: “This novel is an arrow through the heart.”
Chrysis has just been published in America with the title THE MEMORY OF LOVE.
Jim Fergus divides his time between southern Arizona, northern Colorado, and France.
http://jimfergus.com/bio/
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 3, 2012
This book really got me hooked on hunting. I still have a dream of traveling across the country with my dog hunting various bird species, but alas, real life has interfered and that will have to wait until I'm retired. Fergus' book is a great read and for any lover of the outdoors is a must.
hard to put down.
hard to put down.
July 21, 2008
I got my best game marinade from this book. The book is good too!
z-dnf
July 29, 2022Dnf à 100 pages
Ce n’est pas un « flop » à proprement parler : le livre est très bien écrit, on suit les pérégrinations de Jim Fergus avec grand délice au travers de ses descriptions des paysages de la nature américaine, les personnes dont il parle (et lui-même) sont très attachants !
Alors quoi ?
Alors je m’attendais à des récits de voyage, de balades, d’échappées dans la campagne américaine, mais en fait ce sont exclusivement des récits de chasse et de pêche. Et autant l’écriture m’a facilement emportée, autant je n’arrive plus à passer outre l’omniprésence de la chasse et de la pêche.
Ce n’est pas un « flop » à proprement parler : le livre est très bien écrit, on suit les pérégrinations de Jim Fergus avec grand délice au travers de ses descriptions des paysages de la nature américaine, les personnes dont il parle (et lui-même) sont très attachants !
Alors quoi ?
Alors je m’attendais à des récits de voyage, de balades, d’échappées dans la campagne américaine, mais en fait ce sont exclusivement des récits de chasse et de pêche. Et autant l’écriture m’a facilement emportée, autant je n’arrive plus à passer outre l’omniprésence de la chasse et de la pêche.
November 27, 2022
Excellent read
This book is so well written, I found myself many times while reading stopping and day dreaming about what I was reading.
This book is so well written, I found myself many times while reading stopping and day dreaming about what I was reading.
October 4, 2025
Beautifully written book. I’m not a hunter, I have gone dove hunting once and very recently, yet this book managed to make me nostalgic for a time before I was alive and I’ve never known. An introduction in to the reverent and declining world of bird hunting. Full of practical conservation and hunting theory as well as the writers philosophical musing on birds, dogs, and life. A guaranteed read again in a few years.
July 11, 2016
I managed to get through the whole book even though I barely eat meat because I'm disgusted by dead flesh. This book was offered to me by someone who don't understand English very well and she must have thought it was just about the wanderings of a nature-lover around the US. Which it kind of is actually. There are some utterly gruesome anecdotes and the constant killing (even if the narrator often misses) are a bit too much to bear. But once you get passed those, the story is quite interesting, sometimes moving, sometimes funny. Thank God the narrator is not one of those butchers who kill for the sheer pleasure of it but I still can't understand the urge to kill something you've just described as beautiful.
October 16, 2011
I love travel stories, and the addition of excellent environmental commentary and hunting stories makes this a great read. It has its weak points, a couple areas where it drags, but it more than makes up for it and earns a 4-star review from me.
October 31, 2016
I'm no hunter, but I enjoyed Fergus's book about and epic cross-country hunting trip. He has a knack for describing people and his bittersweet chapter "Looking For Mr. Grouse" works on more than one level.
July 1, 2009
I am not usually fond of "hunter stories" but I really enjoyed this book. Jim Fergus is a great storyteller.
August 23, 2012
Lu en Français. C'est beau et presque envoutant tout en restant souvent très drôle.
January 11, 2014
Even if you do not hunt birds with a dog, the adventures of Sweetzer are worth the price of admission. Jim's stories of the landscape and people are just as good.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews