Craig Boddington, and his guide, Cano St. Antonin, with a fine red stag taken on the Huemul Peninsula.

Argentina conjures a variety of images for those who’ve never been there. There’re the gauchos, the Pampas, and tango. For the angler there are the monster-sized trout and salmon in rivers that seem untouched because of the stretch of land that fills the borders of the country as well as its meager population that centers around Buenos Aires. For the hunter, there are the photos and images of ducks and big-game that have graced magazines, and as of late, those through the onslaught of 24-hour outdoors satellite programming.

It wasn’t always like this. Yes, there were the trout, back in the 1970s when South American was truly only a blip on the salmonid fanatic’s radar; but when I first saw the images of red deer antlers grace the pages of hunting magazines in the late 70s and early 80s, they were nowhere near the size and impressiveness they are now.

Much of this has to do with how well they’ve managed the herds that were previously left to roam without any real predation-like bluegills in a pond, they quickly overpopulated and their rack size dwindled in response to the lack of food and nutrients.

Because of the new land and wildlife management practices implemented in Argentina during the last 20 years, Argentina is really giving New Zealand’s Utopian red stag hunting a run for the money. Culling the scrawny genetics, and managing for quality instead of quantity, has created a balance between feed and minerals: showing how good management practices benefit not just game animals but non-game peripherals, adding to the grand beauty of the land  and hospitality for which Argentina has always been known.

What better way to cook meat than in a traditional parrillada?

Big Game Argentina records the results of this improved bounty for the outdoors enthusiast wanting to travel Argentina and is the latest offering from Gen. Craig Boddington USMC (ret.). An outdoor writer, book author, show host I’ve admired and respected for years, a man who offered me words to live by back in 1994 as an newbie outdoor writer for The Times of San Mateo County, Boddington’s credentials speak for themselves with over 30 years in what is one of the harder and becoming more and more the hardest writing profession to create longevity.

In his book and DVD collection about hunting in Argentina, Big Game Argentina, Boddington and the photographer, Guillermo Zorraquin, deliver a plethora of what’s available in striking detail (what we in the business call “NGC”, National Geographic Color). From the province of Patagonia, north to Chaco and Santiago Del Estero, west to La Pampa and finally east to the province of Buenos Aires, Boddington and the publishers John John Reynal  and Juan Pablo Reynal took on an enviable, yet sobering project that took two years to complete.

In the offering, they delivered what I consider the most informative and beautifully illustrated book in years on Argentina and hunting red stag, white-lipped javelina (peccary), ducks, doves, water buffalo, puma, blackbuck, capybara, brocket deer, and feral sheep, goats and hogs.

Boddington's fine example of a white-lipped peccary

In a world in which text is not enough, and as a result traditional printed magazines are going the way of the dinosaurs, and multimedia is king (explaining why Cork’s Outdoors gets 11,000 hits a day) Big Game Argentina is nicely matched with a DVD that fills in the dialogue and action that can’t really be captured in text, and yet video doesn’t try to replace the informative quality of text delivered by Boddington’s honed skills as a writer.

A quick mention of the charcoal artwork by Esteban Diaz Mathé must be made: the work is superb and really adds to the quality of those images not captured in photographs, making the book anyone would be proud to have sitting on their coffee table for friends to enjoy.

Often, many of those traveling think that hunting Argentina only involves staying at estancias and hunting open Pampas. Big Game Argentina lays that stereotype to rest with text and photos covering with dramatic flare the many options of hunting Argentina: like French Alps-like mountains and New Zealand’s Fjordland-like lake and sea area to the south on horseback, or the low brush options further north, reminiscent of eastern Colorado, and the flat brush of Texas, to name a few.

A sampling of the dramatic views the hunting lands of Argentina offer

As for capturing the adventure and drama a place like Argentina on the DVD, one of the most striking scenes is one in which Boddington, while on stand, waiting for dogs to drive out a collared peccary, sees a brocket deer break from the brushline. Swinging on the brocket with a shotgun, he dramatically takes a nice deer that reminds me of the dik-dik of Africa. In another scene he makes an amazing shot on a capybara, also on a full run. Kudos to the videographer for his skill catching all the action over Boddington’s shoulder.

In contrast to the native species, and aside from the more famous red deer, there are the fallow deer, feral hogs and water buffalo. Raised in Southeast Asia, I was always amazed that the animal I always saw as a child pulling a plow across a rice field had become such a prized game animal in places such as a Australia and Argentina. While the ones from Australia have a much larger sweep and are originally from the wild strain. The ones in South America descend from the farmed water buffalo that were originally brought to what would become Italy by the Ancient Romans, for their milk and the best mozzarella resulting from that water buffalo milk.

Through centuries of genetic selection, much in the same way Herefords are these days chosen over the original Spanish Texas Longhorn as cattle type, the farmed water buffalo has a much smaller horn, with a much less ominous wide curve of its originally wild cousin in Southeast Asia and Australia, which ironically makes it look more African cape buffalo and trophy in its own right in the feral and very wild form covered in Big Game Argentina.

If you’re planning on hunting or even just traveling or Argentina, or prefer the armchair traveler’s voyage to South America, I’d highly recommend adding the book and DVD pairing of Big Game Argentina by Craig Boddington to your collection.

Books are available through www.craigboddington.com

Book and DVD are available through www.patagoniapublishing.com

For your daily commute on your MP3 player – Download and Enjoy Craig Boddington’s interview on Cork’s Outdoors Radio:

 Topics: Hunting Argentina, helpful advice for neophyte outdoor writers, hunting Africa and Boddington’s two shows broadcast on The Sportman’s Channel and Outdoor Channel, and finally what’s new with Boddington’s writing and adventures in the coming weeks and months.

Ziggy comfy in ice with his Avery 5mm Boater's Dog Parka

So much snow flew across southern Oregon’s Highway 66 at o-two-thirty-dark, as I made my way to Lower Klamath Refuge, that I thought I was going to run off the road for sure. We arrived and then it hit me how cold it was as the warmth of the vehicle left me. I was worried.

I wasn’t hunting with my cold weather hardened duck dog, a 100-pound Chesapeake Bay retriever, I got in Alaska as a three-quarter pound puppy. His being missing really hitting me with sadness as I could just start to see the snowed peak of Mount Shasta in the distance. Seochael (short for Matahan Seochael, Peaceful Bear in Scottish) had passed more than ten years ago.

There's something magical about duckhunting in view of snowcapped Mt. Shasta!

By my side was my new bird-hunting companion. Like Seochael before, Ziggy was my utility dog: he not only pointed pheasants and chukar, he would for the first time be taken into the field to retrieve ducks from water. There was only one thing…Ziggy’s a Brittany (we don’t call them Spaniels anymore) more suited to warmer, drier pheasant fields.

Hypothermia kills! Many hunters take their dogs hunting, even in places with conditions not that harsh and don’t even realize that their dog is suffering from hypothermia. Others pull the ego trip, stating, “My dog’s a duck dog, he don’t need any of those newfangled neoprene dog vests…my grand-pappy never had one for his old dog, so why break with tradition!”

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for traditions. Hunting being one of my most cherished. But veterinary medicine has come a long way, and what we thought were conditions that dogs were bred for, were in the long run cutting down the longevity and quality of life for a dog, not the least of which is arthritis that comes on early because of extended time in ice cold water. Everything you can do to keep your dog too long in a cold can delay that onset of old dog ailments.

The normal body of a dog is higher than humans: 100.5 to 102.5 degrees Fahrenheit. If your dog’s body temperature goes below that it’s a bad sign. If it hits 96 degrees your dogs in real trouble! Other symptoms include depression, lethargy, weakness, shivering, muscle stiffness, low heart and respiratory rates, stupor, difficult breathing, and fixed and dilated pupils. Worst of all, as it’s near too late, is coma.

For a dog that had only learned to swim two trips ago, dealing with ice and snow would be no small feat for Ziggy. As it was, it would be until our next trip out to Grizzly Island the week after Thanksgiving, that we’d get into ducks. This Saturday after Thanksgiving that I was hunting Lower Klamath, on the other hand, was a total bust.

What was important was that the conditions were so cold that the area I was hunting required me breaking one to two inches of ice to place dekes, and that the water refroze within only an hour. During all this, my thin-skinned Brittany pointer, did fine: Ziggy doesn’t even like to get wet during a bath. Now he’s a duck-hunting fanatic!

What was it that made something like this possible?

A good neoprene dog vest! It was so important to the venture that I couldn’t wait until I was back at the office in San Francisco to pick up the 5mm and 3mm dog vests that Avery Outdoors had sent me to review. I ended up running over to Medford, Oregon’s Sportsman’s Warehouse the day before the trip to Lower Klamath Refuge: not even two years old, I didn’t want my new hunting buddy dying from hypothermia.

As you can see from Ziggy’s icicled whiskers, it was cold. We don’t get that kind of freeze in the San Francicsco Bay or Sacramento Valley that I normally hunt for waterfowl. As we waited at the ice’s edge for the ducks that never flew (holding in the closed zone to recover from the previous days’ storms-to say we missed it would be an understatement), I would every once in a while slide my hand between the vest and Ziggy’s back. It was like a furnace under that neoprene-and having Ziggy in an Avery Boater’s Dog Parka with its handle harness was an added asset when I had to get him out of the water and onto the ice!

Sure he shivered, but often it was only because he was anticipating birds. By the time we left this ice-cold blue bird day, Ziggy was fine and toasty in his 5mm vest. And it wasn’t only that he was protected from the dry air cold, but he was also defended from the cold of having followed me in the water as I set my mallard and widgeon decoys.

A week later, at Grizzly Island Refuge, conditions were strikingly different. This time Ziggy was chest deep in water with me–and he retrieved his first two ducks, a male and female widgeon! Though we were into December, it felt as though were hunting the much warmer early season, and I felt no guilt in my very warm and comfy 5mm LaCrosse waders, as Ziggy was well protected in his 3mm Avery dog vest.

What’s more, unlike a dog vest I tried on my Chessie, so many years ago, these vests easily fit a number of body types with minimal adjustments. With regards to Brittanies, Ziggy is of the tall and lanky, unlike the shorter and stockier variety, which could easily be snug with the straight chest to waistline of a Lab. And still, the vest fit perfectly. Each vest has a zipper and length of Velcro that goes the length of fastening to enable custom adjustment of 1.5 to 2 inches from chest to waist. Also, you can also trim with a pair of scissors.

As we’re deep into cold weather, do your duck dog a favor and get him or her a neoprene dog vest. And if you’ve got a pointer or Spaniel that you thought might not be a great all-round bird dog, get a neoprene dog vest for your dry field hunting partner and enjoy the extension of a season that stretches into ducks and geese!

In the photo below I’m warm and cozy in a LaCrosse Brush-Tuff™ 1200G MO Break-Up® Waders that arrived just in time.

You can order your dog a vest directly from Avery Outdoors’s Sporting Dog Website.

Ziggy in Avery's 3mm Standard Dog Vest in Shadow Grass camo