Reddit reviews Dressing & Cooking Wild Game: From Field to Table: Big Game, Small Game, Upland Birds & Waterfowl (The Complete Hunter)

Here's a few of mine that I really like. I have way more than these, but I'm not sure I'd recommend all of them, per se. Anyhow, should give you some ideas.

Security - Talks about small unit tactics with small arms and so forth.

Butchering and cooking wild game - If you hope to hunt for food, you gotta know what to do with it after shooting it.

SAS Survival Guide - Really tiny dimensions that make this easy to toss in my BOB.

Composting - If you plan to garden, you're gonna need to compost. I also have various gardening books such as container gardening, organic gardening, gardening according to the Mormons, etc. The Mormons have a lot of great homesteading-oriented books. Here's one called The Forgotten Skills of Self-Sufficiency Used by the Mormon Pioneers


Bushcraft - Never hurts to learn some knots and be able to make simple things out of natural materials.

Organization and Planning - I'm reading this one now. Touches on a lot of areas of things to think about that you gotta plan for. A good amount of stuff I hadn't really thought about before.

Should add that you should pick yourself up a copy of this book, if only because the recipes are actually really good.

>I don't think it's too passive to say, "Hey, I've told you that I'm not interested in this. You didn't mean to give this to me, right?"

Passive as in passive voice -- minus any "active" actor making choices: "oh look, somehow packages got mixed up" (as if the packages did it by themselves, sneaky little things) -- rather than some PERSON making a specific choice in terms of gifts.

Because OF COURSE they meant to give it to you. Why create the fallacy everyone knows is false -- no "face saving" will have been achieved -- a "mixup" is still an accusation/offense.

>The other person, if they have any social grace, will quickly realize that giving a baby book to a CF friend was a fast track to almost losing that friendship.

Well, I would think if they had any "social grace" they wouldn't have given such a "gift" in the first place.

>Unless this friend has a habit of being tactless and pushy, I don't see why this is grounds for immediate and final termination of the friendship, if this is the first time anything like this happens.

I didn't say they need to "terminate" the friendship.

I just don't see any point in beating around the bush with euphemistic "excuses" and shit -- avoiding the specific subject matter as if it were some "taboo" that cannot be spoken of openly.

And I don't REALLY see how telling someone "Hey idiot, you either spaced out or screwed up and gave me the wrong gift." (even if phrased in various passive "mistakes were made" platitudes) is any LESS offensive than simply discussing the issue at hand.

It can be done tactfully, yet still directly in a "confront the issue at hand".

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>I was just trying to offer a different perspective. A lot of people here get defensive very quickly -- "I was at Babies R Us to pick up something for my sister's shower, how dare that biased breeder cashier ask if I'm excited for the baaaaybeh?! Can't she tell I'm allergic to anyone under 21?!" -- It's a quick way to make enemies fast, and perpetuate the notion that we're a bunch of unpleasant people.

Yeah, but that's an entirely different scenario.

That's a situation with an unknown stranger making possibly inappropriate casual offhand & only somewhat "personal" comments based on a mistaken (but somewhat understandable) misreading of circumstantial cues. I see no more reason to take offense at something like that (in THAT location) than I would of a cashier who asks what kind of dog you have as you are buying dog food at a pet store.

But a "What to expect when you are expecting!" book gift -- well that's an appropriate gift for a baby-shower, NOT for Christmas, not for someone's birthday, nor for any other "general occasion" -- and it is especially NOT an appropriate (and baseline offensive) "gift" for people who you KNOW have made it clear they are not having (and do not ever intend* to have) children.

You may as well give a copy of Dressing & Cooking Wild Game: From Field to Table to someone you KNOW is a "vegan"; and then claiming afterward that you "didn't mean any offense" is a bit hollow. You only give that kind of a book to someone you KNOW FOR A FACT is either already a "hunter" (and "meat lover") or who has explicitly expressed some wish to learn more about it.

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*And again, you may NOT know the reasons why. One or the other one of them may have been infertile; they may have suffered several stillbirths (that have been kept quiet), or even some "SIDS" death of a child years before; they may themselves have suffered abuse or neglect as a child (and so be afraid of continuing some cycle); or half a dozen other VERY valid (but not publicly "broadcast") reasons for not having/wanting children ... in any and all of which that "gift" will end up not only being unacceptable and offensive, but may actually be considered CRUEL and causing a lot of needless grief.

It is potentially reopening very painful old "wounds" and/or rubbing salt in them. And no "rationalization" is really an acceptable excuse.