MEMOIRS OF A HUNTER: EXPERIENCES IN FINLAND AND RUSSIA 1904 - 1930. By Friedrich Remmler. Translated by Ingmar Remmler. Edited by Martin Hollinshead.

(2009) 2012 reprint. 8vo (160 x 242mm). Pp153 + 1p ad. B/w illustrations by Vadim Gorbatov. Blue boards, spine titled in gilt.

This is a fascinating - and perhaps unique - account of a life divided between middle class St. Petersburg, the Russian aristocracy & the vast multinational peasantry. Friedrich Remmler was born to a German family and grew up in the Grand Duchy of Finland, hunting & shooting at every opportunity in what is now Finland, Karelia and Russia. He pursues wolves with borzois as a guest of the Neratovs, runs down lynx, bears & more wolves with famous Finnish huntsmen, hunts seals on ice floes with commercial sealers where he is swept off in an ice storm, surviving only by luck. He visited Russia's great eagle market at Orenburg, and makes innumerable observations on the society around him. After WWI Remmler ran a business in Finland, collecting wild animals live for zoos and collections around the world and pioneering the safe trapping of elk (moose). Eventually, he and his family emigrated to rural Ontario where he wrote this memoir. The parts describing hawking with eagles were used as the basis for "The Last Wolf Hawker: The Eagle Falconry of Friedrich Remmler" (our stock number 16835). The rest of Remmler's memoir is presented here, translated by his son Ingmar and edited by Martin Hollinshead. The wonderful illustrations by Vadim Gorbatov compliment the text perfectly. A gripping account of places and an era of which we know little, and surely destined to become a classic.