Provenance: A private collection, Texas Literature: Elmer Keith’s Big Game Hunting, Elmer Keith, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, MA, 1948: p. 82, 123, 219, 283, 299. Early in his career, Bob Kuhn illustrated Elmer Keith’s Big Game Hunting, an exhaustive and comprehensive book on many of North America’s most iconic animals (a copy of this book to accompany this lot). Kuhn, who was not yet the wildlife master he is known as today, saw an opportunity within hunting. Decades later, in The Art of Bob Kuhn, he reflected on the subject: “My own involvement in hunting began when I entered the art market as a young man and found that the so-called outdoor magazines were the logical ones to approach. As I became involved professionally I found that opportunities to go into the field were a by-product of the business and I took advantage of them. When one is involved in the overall objectives of a big game hunt, it is an easy step to being a participant and for many years I was. I felt at the time that it gave my illustrations an aura of authenticity that they would not otherwise have had. In addition, to that, the hides and horns I was accumulating were in constant use as sources of information in my pictures. In recent years my shooting has been limited to a few pheasants, grouse, and ducks for the pot. I truly see no great distinction between eating a fowl whose neck has been rung by someone else and a fowl you have brought in from the field yourself. But there is really more to it than that. There’s a strange human trait of wanting to possess that which you love and many professional hunters of my acquaintance can be truly said to love the wilderness and its wildlife. There is something strongly sensual about a great curling pair of horns, perhaps once worn by a kudu or a Marco Polo sheep, and there is something in many men that makes them want to possess them. Partly this is because they are beautiful and partly it's that they are to some a symbol of manliness, as well as a reminder of a soul-healing sojourn in the wild.”