Description
Softcover, 116 pages.
A Cape Buffalo ahead, a lioness beside him, and Norma's hand steady on his shoulder.
For more than fifty years, Dave Campbell hunted the mountains of Alaska, the bush of Africa, and a dozen hard places between. Every animal he took came home as meat for someone's table, never a trophy for the wall. Along the way he lost a wife, a son, a daughter, and the finest bird dog a man could ask for. For anyone who has loved a wild place, carried a rifle for the right reasons, or grieved someone they hunted beside, these pages will read like your own memory. Here is the hunt as it is truly lived. Simply Enjoying Wildlife is one man's clear-eyed account of clean kills, hard country, and the people worth remembering. Read it, then hand it to someone you love.
About the Author:
I was born on March 9,1946. in Havre, Montana. I grew up in Great Falls and later in Missoula, Montana, and for short stretches I lived in Butte, Montana; Seattle, Washington; and Quincy, Washington. After an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army, I attended college in Spokane, Washington, and earned an associate degree in aviation sciences.
Because of a romance with a beautiful young lady named Sandy, and to pay for her schooling at the University of Montana, I left high school in my senior year and worked two full-time jobs. During her junior year of college, Sandy said,"Take a hike, Dave* — the single best thing anyone ever did for me. She had met a Lutheran vicar and decided to marry him. Her choice freed me, several years later, to meet and marry a woman of unconditional, unquestioned, and unequaled love. Norma gave me the very best years of my life, along with three children. Before she died in March 2011, we first lost our daughter Gina when she was a little squirt, and then our son Eric, two days before Christmas in 1997. Our other daughter Michelle lives a short distance from me with her family.
Because of Norma, I made fifteen trips to Africa and hunted in Scotland, Argentina, Mexico, Canada. Australia, and a good many states across the USA, from Florida to Hawaii and Montana to Texas. She came along on many of these trips, which made the experience all the more enjoyable. Norma was, without question, an amazing woman. She could and did outshoot me with a shotgun. She graduated from the University of Alaska with a Bachelor of Science in education. She held an NRA shotgun coaching title, and she was the first female AHAUS coach in the USA. She also wrote a manual on coaching goaltenders. Most importantly, she kept my sanity intact for thirty-one and a half years while I worked as an air traffic control specialist and later as a principal airworthiness inspector with the FAA.
Norma was my safety belt, my lover, my wife, and, most of all, my best friend. I miss her every day. This "book" exists because of her.