Confessions of an Eco Redneck

"Chapple's short, humorous essays echo Hunter S. Thompson and Hemingway's 'Big Two-Hearted River,' with a skewed touch that's all Chapple's...thoroughly entertaining and surprisingly wise."-Booklist. Confessions of an Eco-Redneck collects the best of outdoor writer Steve Chapple's short pieces. This is outdoor adventure writing at its best, in a league with Tim Cahill, Randy White, or PJ O'Rourke, and the essays range from fishing: for tigerfish on the Zambezi, tarpon in the Keys, trout on the Yellowstone to hunting: the "Bambi Syndrome" (Hollywood's bias against the sport), "Dinner Bell Grizzlies," and stalking televisions in Montana to the larger questions: "Now or Never for American Rivers," and the great unasked question about the Lewis & Clark expedition: "How were the bugs??" Underneath Steve Chapple's laugh-out loud wit there's a serious plea to environmentalists to remember that sportsmen (the eco-rednecks of the title) are among the most passionate and effective advocates for conservation of the environment that we've got.

In this long-awaited collection of the best of his shorter nature, sporting, and travel writing, Chapple raises us his voice as a proud member of an underrated, though less-than-endangered species of sporting environmentalists: the eco-redneck (a term he coined). If you are an angler, a hunter, or just a gatherer of good tales, whether you roam the Great Plains or the urban jungles, Confessions of an Eco-Redneck will speak to you. As long as you have a sense of humor, that is, since most everything is fair game for Chapple's sharp-shooting wit. A man of action and a keen observer, Chapple gets his feet wet and his hands dirty—and shows us a great time along the way.