Books by R.K. Sawyer

A Hundred Years of Texas Waterfowl Hunting:
The Decoys, Guides, Clubs, and Places – 1870s to 1970s
The days are gone when seemingly limitless numbers of canvasbacks, mallards, and Canada geese filled the skies above the Texas coast. Gone too are the days when, in a single morning, hunters often harvested ducks, shorebirds, and other waterfowl by the hundreds. The hundred-year period from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century brought momentous changes in attitudes and game laws: changes initially prompted by sportsmen who witnessed the disappearance of both the birds and their spectacular habitat. These changes forever affected the state’s storied hunting culture.
8.5 x 11. •. 418 pages. Hardback $49.99 • Paperback $39.99
The Decoys, Guides, Clubs, and Places – 1870s to 1970s
The days are gone when seemingly limitless numbers of canvasbacks, mallards, and Canada geese filled the skies above the Texas coast. Gone too are the days when, in a single morning, hunters often harvested ducks, shorebirds, and other waterfowl by the hundreds. The hundred-year period from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century brought momentous changes in attitudes and game laws: changes initially prompted by sportsmen who witnessed the disappearance of both the birds and their spectacular habitat. These changes forever affected the state’s storied hunting culture.
8.5 x 11. •. 418 pages. Hardback $49.99 • Paperback $39.99

Texas Market Hunting
Stories of Waterfowl, Game Laws, and Outlaws
From its earliest days of human habitation, the Texas coast was home to seemingly endless clouds of ducks, geese, swans, and shorebirds. By the 1880s Texas huntsmen, or market hunters, as they came to be called, began providing meat and plumage for the restaurant tables and millinery salons of a rapidly growing nation. A network of suppliers, packers, distribution centers, and shipping hubs efficiently handled their immense harvest. At the peak of Texas market hunting in the late 1890s, Rockport merchants shipped an average of 600 ducks a day in a five-month shooting season, and in the last year of legal market hunting, an estimated 60,000 ducks and geese were shipped from Corpus Christi alone.
8.5 x 11. •. 200 pages. Hardback $36.99 • Paperback $26.99
Stories of Waterfowl, Game Laws, and Outlaws
From its earliest days of human habitation, the Texas coast was home to seemingly endless clouds of ducks, geese, swans, and shorebirds. By the 1880s Texas huntsmen, or market hunters, as they came to be called, began providing meat and plumage for the restaurant tables and millinery salons of a rapidly growing nation. A network of suppliers, packers, distribution centers, and shipping hubs efficiently handled their immense harvest. At the peak of Texas market hunting in the late 1890s, Rockport merchants shipped an average of 600 ducks a day in a five-month shooting season, and in the last year of legal market hunting, an estimated 60,000 ducks and geese were shipped from Corpus Christi alone.
8.5 x 11. •. 200 pages. Hardback $36.99 • Paperback $26.99

Author Bio
R.K. Sawyer has been a waterfowl hunter since 1964, the seeds of his lifelong passion sown on Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay. He currently resides in Sugar Land, Texas, with his wife Wendy and Matagorda Mattie, a black Labrador Retriever. A retired petroleum geologist, Rob has since been working with waterfowl habitat projects and freelance writing. He is the author of four historical hunting books: A Hundred Years of Texas Waterfowl Hunting (2012), Texas Market Hunting (2013), Images of the Hunt (2020), and The Tarpon Club of Texas(2022) and numerous magazine articles.
R.K. Sawyer has been a waterfowl hunter since 1964, the seeds of his lifelong passion sown on Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay. He currently resides in Sugar Land, Texas, with his wife Wendy and Matagorda Mattie, a black Labrador Retriever. A retired petroleum geologist, Rob has since been working with waterfowl habitat projects and freelance writing. He is the author of four historical hunting books: A Hundred Years of Texas Waterfowl Hunting (2012), Texas Market Hunting (2013), Images of the Hunt (2020), and The Tarpon Club of Texas(2022) and numerous magazine articles.