Longtime Traveler writer Howard Helgenberg came in the office one day and asked why we didn’t carry any deer hunting books. We challenged him to fill the lack, and he rose to the challenge. We now proudly present Deer Hunting in the Missouri Ozarks…another book from one of our print edition writers.

Deer Hunting in the Missouri Ozarks
Howard Helgenberg
ISBN 978-0-9829802-8-6 140 p. $21.95
No Waste Publishing. Fenton MO 2011
Special Traveler price: $20.95 (including Mo. tax and shipping – $26.11)
Available for online or conventional ordering.

Deer Hunting in the Missouri Ozarks isn’t a typical deer hunting manual. It’s something different.

Howard Helgenberg says he has been deer hunting for over 35 years. That means he’s an expert on the real essence of deer hunting; the pursuit, the chase and the wait, the success of a clean kill as well as those moments when even an experienced hunter stand entranced, and somehow forgets to shoot.

The book is a collection of fifteen years of mostly Traveler-published deer related stories. As befits such a work, deer camp stories abound. A couple times he meanders back to a topic, such as GPS technology, deer stands, and staying warm outside in November. A very few spell-checker typos persist. Still, the book is well worth reading.

He has a “take it as it comes” outlook on the outdoors. He takes you along on the trips, not as a master teacher, but as a guy who goes to the woods, does some things correctly and some things wrong and sometimes he does things just because (like a hike on the ice of the frozen Bourbeuse River) and gets some decent deer in the process.

Helgenberg has recently taken to shooting deer with a camera as much as a gun, and he gives a few tips on that, too. For him, it’s not just the trophy as much as the actual experience. Often the how-to manuals ignore that. To be reminded why hunting actually matters, buy this book.

(Ed. Note: You can also order by calling 800-874-8423 x2 for credit card payment, or via check or money order to Traveler Publishing, P. O. Box 220, Valley Park MO 63088.)