The Lost Deer Camp

I have an outdoor loving daughter who can read, but would never choose to read for enjoyment. Once she read and loved “The Lost Deer Camp” she was hooked and actually enjoyed reading for the first time! Thank goodness for these books! As an elementary teacher myself, I was just so happy that she was finally reading, and truly enjoying, to read! Thanks Lane Walker!

As I gleefully purchased the entire hunting set to bring a welcome outdoor oriented option to my kids night time reading, I jumped right in to their first book of choice, The Lost Deer Camp. From the adventure packed descriptions as the set and reviews highlighted, I cracked it open without reading the synopsis on the back, however, after the initially exciting first few pages, was subjected to nearly thirty more describing in detail the child’s experience going through a parents divorce and the negative impact on the protagonist’s life including acting out for attention, spiraling into despair, and outright disrespect to those around him. After talking up the arrival of the books today with my kids and seeing their excitement build, I must admit this introduction to the series has been a great disappointment. I’m sure the author wanted to convey a sense of realism to life’s circumstances, but with the venue and subject in the outdoors, many other ways these same lessons could be taught. The rebellion period of the initial chapters outline many acts of disrespect toward authority figures, including his parents and Principal. Seemingly justifying the actions and agonizingly reaultimg into a game of one upmanship with the other troublemaker, resulting in him being kicked out of middle school, great down home story guy! So much better could this involved true to life outdoor experiences; maybe something like a poor shot resulting in a wounded animal, the regret and inner turmoil this brings to an outdoorsman(woman) and the drive to improvement and development to avoid reoccurrence... As I’m hoping the series gets better; I can’t help but to imagine the next will involve the inclusion of playing with matches, the excitement of unsupervised gun handling, and running with knives (these said in jest).

I gave this book to my grandson for Christmas along with 3 others of the Hometown Hunters books and he loved them all! He says they are the greatest books to read. He will take the book to bed and read every night for a little while. He is very much into hunting and fishing! He loves the great outdoors!! His mother just bought the rest of the hunting books for him as he is almost done with the ones I bought. He wants the fishing books that just came out!! I will have to buy those for him!! Thank you for writing such nice books for the kids!! Patty Boston

The story is a bit mature for our 8-year-old so we skip ahead to the middle of the book when it gets into the hunting. Our son doesn't need to know about divorce. But all of these books are great stories and are well written. I'd say more of a storyline for a teenager.