THE MIGHTY MUSKELLUNGE. By David V. Reddick.

1962 1st US edition. 8vo (147 x 220mm). Pp206. B/w illustrations by Geoffrey W. Goss. Light green cloth with black muskie image on upper board, spine title printed in black / gilt.

Published (simultaneously?) in 1962 in Canada as "Ma-Kee: The Life And Death Of A Muskellunge," and in the US as "The Mighty Muskellunge". Both versions were printed and bound in England by Hazell Watson and Viney Ltd., Aylesbury and Slough. It is likely that the Canadian edition takes precedence, and that this edition was also sold in the U.K. The fictionalised story of the life of the muskie, Ma-Kee". Below the surface of the Kawartha Lakes is the strange, fierce, forbidding world of eternal conflict for survival. Here is the world of the great game fish, the muskellunge, Ma-Kee. The muskellunge is the fiercest, strongest and most voracious of our freshwater fish, a king of the water as the lion is the king of the jungle. From birth to death, Ma-Kee is surrounded by violence and danger. In infancy, she escapes by a thin fin from becoming a meal for minnows and water beatles [sic], and as her size increases, she in turn becomes a savage hunter: a hunter prized by human hunters - the 'Baron,' a vacationing angler determined to get a muskie at all costs... Ma-Kee is not only a book for the ardent fisherman, who enjoys the tug of a powerful tale; it will also find itself in the hands of anyone who cherishes the dramatic yet intimate relationship between animal and man".