Collecting Outdoor Books: A Beginner’s Guide

This article originally appeared in the Northwoods Sporting Journal in 2012.

If you’re a regular reader, you probably know that I enjoy reading and collecting old hunting and fishing books. You may also be interested in starting a collection of your own, or expanding an existing one. I’d like to offer a few tips and tricks that I have learned while starting my personal collection.

Define your goals

When starting an outdoor book collection, it’s important to think about the goal you’re trying to achieve and how you plan to get there. What’s your motivation for collecting? Is it a hobby? An investment? What type of collection are you interested in? Do you want only the oldest and rarest books, in the finest condition? Or are you more interested in the quantity of books in your collection? How much money are you willing to spend? Defining these goals will help you make clear and consistently wise decisions about the collection. For instance, I have a very limited budget and want to get my hands on as many books as I can. I’m more interested in the content of the writing than actual book condition. I’ll typically spend $10-30 per book. Different people have different goals, and individual goals can change over time. Be sure to define your goals before diving in headfirst.

Find your collecting niche

To be a successful collector, it helps to think about what type of books you’re interested in and narrow things down. I’ve struggled a bit with this since I like just about all outdoor literature, but I do have particular areas that I’ve focused my collection in on. There are literally tens of thousands of books to choose from, so if you don’t find a focus area, things can get overwhelming really fast.

Focus areas for outdoor book collectors can range among a variety of topics. Perhaps you have a specific author you enjoy reading. You can start by collecting all of their books. My favorites are Edmund Ware Smith and Arthur Macdougall, Jr. I’ve been trying to collect everything those two have written. Some folks will take that a step further and collect all editions a particular book or a group of books written by an author.

Another great focus area for collectors is books written about a particular region. The Maine Woods is a very popular focus area, since so many writers have made this region their focus for such a long time. Within this niche you might collect books by authors like Smith, Macdougall Jr., Lew Dietz, John Gould, Helen Hamlin, Louise Dickinson Rich, Gerald E. Lewis and others.

Some collectors target specific publishers of outdoor books. By far the most collected outdoor sporting publisher is the famous Derrydale Press. Others look for books from specific time periods.
One of the more obvious outdoor book collecting niches is the type of outdoor sporting activity being written about. Many collectors are only interested in books about shotgunning for upland game with bird dogs. Others like waterfowl, deer, fly fishing or backcountry adventures. An interesting activity that’s really collectible is one that isn’t even done here anymore: fox hunting on horseback. That brings up another collecting niche: individual species of fish and game. And yet another niche would be collecting books that themselves are collections of stories that range among the above topics and more.

By now you get the idea: there are plenty of niches to collect books from. You can pick yours, or just start collecting and eventually you’ll work your way into one. Finding a niche can make collecting more fun and help you set goals for your collection that are realistic and attainable.

Learn what’s out there

Most people don’t have a clue how many outdoor sporting books have been published over the years. Trust me, the numbers are staggering, and once you begin to think you know everything that’s available in your niche, you find something you’d never heard of before. So how do we get a better handle on what’s available to be read and collected?

You can start with a trip to your local used bookstore. Most have an outdoor or hunting and fishing section, and some of these stores even specialize in old outdoor books. Then, talk to other collectors, or friends who have outdoor books of their own lying around. You can pick up bits of information from almost anyone. Begin to gather that information, because it will be critical to starting or growing your collection.

If you are even a bit technologically savvy, there are incredible resources online to help you learn what outdoor books are available. A great place to start is a simple internet search of the author or topic you’re interested in. Another resource is my website (www.outdoorsportinglibrary.com) – shameless self promotion, I know! I’ve put together a very small but growing list of outdoor writers and their books. You can browse among the different writers and topics and see if something jumps out at you.

If you’re interested in a particular author, a great resource is WorldCat (www.worldcat.org). This site houses the book catalogs from over 10,000 libraries worldwide. Search for an author on the site and you should find a list including every book they have ever written. Google Books (www.books.google.com) is an incomplete but growing resource that includes outdoor books. Internet Archive (www.archive.org) is a great place to look for older books.

Once you’ve defined your goals, focused in on a niche, and done some research, the next step is to actually get your hands on some books!

After you’ve decided to embark on outdoor book collecting, it can often be difficult to know where to start finding books. Simply put, there are three ways to get your hands on books. You can find free books, borrow books, or purchase them.

Finding Free Books

For the sake of conversation, let’s assume that you don’t have an overly generous friend willing to give you a bunch of great outdoor books from their collection. If you do, maybe I need to be taking pointers from you. But realistically, there actually is a way to get free books: the public domain.

According to copyright law, all books published prior to 1923 are in the public domain, meaning that they can legally be copied and reproduced since they no longer have copyright protection. Institutions, private individuals and companies like Google have taken advantage of this opportunity and have scanned massive amounts of books into electronic files. For instance, Google has gone into some of the largest libraries in the country and used proprietary technology to scan just about every book in the library’s collection. They have made these public domain books available for free online. Search for these at www.books.google.com or www.archive.org . Sure, this doesn’t help folks looking for actual hard copies of the books, but if you’re short on cash and just want to read the book, it’s a great way to gain access to pre-1923 material.

Borrowing Books

Most of the books you’re looking for were probably published after 1923, and may be extremely rare. This means they will likely be expensive to purchase if you can find them at all. Plus, you might be like me and read far more books than you can afford to purchase for your collection. Or you may want to read a book before spending any money on it. If a book exists, chances are that one of the thousands of libraries in the country has it.

Today, you don’t just have to rely on your local library to carry the book you’re looking for. The Interlibrary Loan system has revolutionized book borrowing to the extent that your local library can request a book for you from anywhere in the country. You may have to wait a while to get the book, but the service is typically free. I have found this to be an extremely useful resource when looking for rare books that I otherwise would never get to see. Check your local library or go to www.worldcat.org to search for books.

Purchasing Books

It’s tough to grow your book collection without actually purchasing books, so ultimately you’ll have to pony up some money and buy a few gems. I’ve been buying outdoor books for a few years now, mostly online, and have learned a lot about finding the best deals.

The most obvious place to start looking for outdoor books is your local used bookstore. These mom and pop shops are becoming increasingly tough to find, though, and may not have what you’re looking for. Another traditional but fading resource is the mail order book store. I’ve received a couple of catalogs from one such company in recent years. The catalog is basically an up to date list of what books the company has in stock at the time. Some individuals like Jim Casada also sell some of their collection through simple book lists. Garage sales and book sales at local libraries are another way to find outdoor books for your collection, but looking for specific books here can be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Most buying and selling of outdoor books today takes place online, through auctions or direct sales. The major auction company, Ebay, sells just about everything imaginable, including outdoor sporting books. Searching for specific books for sale on Ebay can be a lot of work. Auctions typically only stay up on the site for a week, meaning that to be diligent you’d have to go to Ebay and search for the books you want each week. Nobody wants to do that, since it can really make this collecting thing feel like work. Luckily, Ebay has something called ‘saved searches’. You save a search for a specific keyword, and Ebay will email you every time an item that matches your keyword comes up for sale. I have saved searches for each author I collect. When I get a ‘saved search’ email from Ebay, I take a few seconds to look an item over. If it looks good and the price is right I’ll bid on it. If not, I wait for the next ‘saved search’ email to come in.

The three major retailers of used books online are Half.com, Amazon, and Abebooks. For the most part, these sites do not stock the books themselves. They serve as the go-between for individual buyers and sellers. Any time you’re looking for a specific outdoor book, you’ll want to check all three of these sites for book availability, and for the best price. Sometimes a seller will be asking over $100 on one site for the same book you can find for less than $20 on another. It pays to shop around. You’ll also want to check these retailers when bidding on an Ebay auction, to make sure you’re not overbidding for an item you can purchase cheaper elsewhere. These three sites are excellent sources to purchase outdoor sporting books from.

Collecting outdoor sporting books can be a lot of fun. My collection is still small, but continues to grow over the years. I hope some of these tips prove useful to you in pursuing your collection and getting your hands on more books that represent our great sporting heritage. Feel free to contact me at jrodwood@gmail.com if you have any questions, or would like to share information about your sporting book collection.