The Fabulous Wilderness Series by David Thompson!

[Crow Beads]

I distinctly recall that the flintlocks Nate refers to are his two .55 caliber belt pistols. The author also mentions that his Hawken rifle had "another type of ignition". No mention was made about what that type was at least up to book #20 where I am at.

Yes, you have to spread the books out among your other reading or it gets too intense - a bit like Edgar Rice Burroughs or Louis L'Amour.

 

[GANGGREEN]

Crow Beads, you may be right about the pistols and I had considered that but he definitely mentioned that the Hawken that his uncle Zeke bought for him in St. Louis was a .60 percussion.

 

[GANGGREEN]

Has anybody had any luck ordering them online from anyone without getting hammered with shipping and handling charges? I purchased the first 10 books from Amazon and got each of them for a little bit of nothing but I've had to pay $3.99 per book for shipping. It seems rather self-defeating to pay $.01 or even $.99 for a book but have to pay $4 shipping. I did get two of them from the same vendor and was able to save the double shipping charge but it seems like all of them come from different vendors and you end up paying each time. I'd probably consider purchasing numbers 11-20 as well if I could combine shipping charges and get them from the same outfit.

Oh, by the way, not to be nitpicky but I also found something in book 3 that I think (but don't know for sure) that may have been a historical mistake. They talk about being at the rendezvous at Bear Lake in Utah and Shakespeare goes fishing and comes back with a string of perch and bass. Never having lived or travelled in that country, I don't know for sure but wouldn't it be far more likely that he'd have come back with trout or whitefish? Are there perch and bass in those lakes? Would there have been perch and bass there in the early 19th century?

I've also noticed a handful of editing mistakes and/or spelling issues but nothing to get concerned about, I'm just a bit anal about such things.

 

[mooman76]

I don't know about Bear lake but I did fish northern UT and caught Perch and Bass. I couldn't say as far as a time line if that was right or not.

 

[GANGGREEN]

Thanks Mooman. I didn't want to suggest that it wasn't possible but when I read it, I thought, "hmmm, wonder if that would have happened?".

 

[Crow Beads]

Crow Beads, you may be right about the pistols and I had considered that but he definitely mentioned that the Hawken that his uncle Zeke bought for him in St. Louis was a .60 percussion.

Oops. I guess I missed that.

With regard to fishing. I have fished the Colorado Rockies for thirty years now. You will find yellow perch, various black bass and sunfish species in the lakes at the base of the Front Range (East slope of the Rockies). When you get into the foothills the progression from lower to highest elevations is rainbow, brown, brook to cutthroat trout. You will even find a few arctic grayling in the North Central part of the state. I've never caught anything but trout and grayling above 6500'. In Nate's time there would only have been native cutthroats and some whitefish in the mountains. The rest were introduced.

 

[fleener]

I use abe books to buy used books. I got most of mine for less than 4 bucks with shipping.

Now I got the first 8 or so of the books. I am on #5. Not sure if I will get to far past the books I have.

Fleener

 

[GANGGREEN]

Thanks fleener, I'll look into it. I think I'm probably averaging $6 a book with shipping, which still isn't bad but when there are 67 in the series (it's doubtful that I'll end up reading them all), it adds up.

 

[Eyesgood]

I just have to step into this very old thread. My wife's father passed away 2 years ago. He was an avid reader and always talked about how much he enjoyed this western series he was reading. We never paid much attention to the name of the series, but according to her mother he read every one of the books. After his death, her mother asked if we wanted his books and we said yes. There were several small sets of western-themed books. And then there was this 60+ paperback set called the Wilderness series. Wondering why he loved them so much, my wife and I decided we would start reading them together. Only two volumes were missing from the set, which we promptly picked up from Ebay. For the past 6 months or so, we sit on our sectional at night before bed and I read about Nate King and his adventures. Sometimes my wife reads. We have every intention of reading every single one of these books together to the end. In fact, we started on #19 this evening (Iron Warrior) and reading the Author's note seemed to indicate Nate King was a real-life person. That got me searching for the truth of it, which led me to the link on this thread, full circle back to this forum I signed up on just a while ago. Funny how things are like that.

Anyway, I would highly recommend the series to anyone interested in a trapper's life.

 

[Darto]

wikipedia

"He has written over three hundred books".

"books under his own name (David L. Robbins) and many pen names, among them: David Thompson, Jake McMasters, Jon Sharpe, Don Pendleton, Franklin W. Dixon, Ralph Compton, Dean L. McElwain, J.D. Cameron and John Killdeer.

Science fiction, non fiction, horror, westerns, the Hardy Boys, wilderness, suspense.

"At one time or another Robbins has lived in Pennsylvania, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Montana, Colorado and the Pacific Northwest. He spent a year and a half in Europe, traveling through France, Italy, Greece and Germany. He lived for more than a year in Turkey "

In other words, he's been there done that !