Forty-Four Years, the Life of a Hunter

In Western Maryland the inhabitants have been lucky, one of their first ancestor settlers poured the life he carved there and his unique and sometimes gritty soul out onto paper, using a turkey quill he fashioned himself. Thanks to modern facilities we are now all lucky enough to be able to read this treasure and absorb the sense of magic and fear that some of the earliest settlers felt in the New World.

Originally put onto a limited run in 1859, Forty-Four Years of the Life of a Hunter documents the life of a woodsman, hunter and family man in virgin American territory, stalking game in the wild woods, and detailing the flora and fauna only so recently disturbed. This reprint of the classic text is partially a history of a specific and extinct style of life but also an emotional and heroic story full of adventure. Meshach Browning's hunts spanned the wild territories of Appalachia, West Maryland and Virginia, always guided by the pursuit of skittish and swift white tailed deer.

Surviving desperate times and death defying competitions with wolves, formidable bucks, bears and even reputedly panthers, Meschach Browning became the proud patriarch of a large and industrious family in a growing settlement. Without the immeasurable benefit of his memoirs we might never have known the stories he may once have told his grandchildren. The reader is at liberty to picture the old hunter watching embers burn down of an evening and imparting his wisdom, but thankfully due to his handmade quill and dogged determination you need not rely only on imagination and can know what he saw and how he felt through his own words.