An interesting look into the career of a long-time Wildlife Biologist in Maine. The author has written a series of interesting stories about his experiences. Many of them made me actually laugh out loud! He's a very good writer. The stories (chapters) can be read one at a time when the reader finds time, or read straight through. I suggest the former, as it's fun to ruminate on each story a bit. I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in wildlife, conservation, Maine, or just the outdoors. It's a very fun read! ( )

A very enjoyable look at the career of a wildlife biologist in Maine. While he describes his early life and his career, this is not a particularly egocentric memoir. It reads more like a collection of informal essays on the relationships between the culture, history, and economics of rural Maine and the natural world. He presents a lot of information but it's not "textbookie." Here's a person who clearly liked and found purpose in his career.
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My father always subscribed to the Pennsylvania Game News, a magazine comprised of informative articles about our state's hunting laws, wildlife management programs, annual deer, bear and turkey harvest numbers, and stories contributed by Game Commission employees about their experiences---often amusing or downright hilarious--in dealing with critters, four-legged, two-legged, or winged. Some of these were no more than a paragraph (think "My Most Embarrassing Experience" from the good old Reader's Digest), others were full length pieces of journalistic quality. As a kid I looked forward to the arrival of that little magazine as much as Dad did, and often got to it first, as I picked up the mail before he got home from work. Once or twice, there was a small contribution from someone we knew--there were Game Wardens in our family-and-friends circle. Ron Joseph would have fit comfortably into that circle. Although his formal education in zoology and conservation exceeds anything those men could claim, his love and respect for the natural world, and his understanding of his own place in it, would have created a common bond. Over the course of his 30+ year career as a state or federal wildlife biologist in Maine, New Hampshire and Utah, Joseph published many reminiscences of his childhood growing up on his grandparents' farm, as well as stories arising out of his work with endangered creatures from eagles to whales. In retirement, under COVID restrictions, he decided to compile those stories and more into book form. The result is this marvelous memoir in which we meet a puny border collie pup suckled with a litter of pigs; a lumber camp full of French Canadian woodcutters each of whom might typically consume a mid-day box lunch including half a pie, three sandwiches, several bananas, and two quarts of tea or fruit juice; and a hermit named Bill who helped apprehend escaped German prisoners of war in the back woods of Maine in 1945. Not all of the stories are light-hearted or uplifting, however. Joseph's heart was broken and his conscience badly wounded when the results of a deer population count he performed as part of his duties early in his career led to the removal of protection for acres of old-growth cedar once considered a vital wintering haven for white tailed deer. Some of those trees were over 300 years old, 80 feet high, with a circumference that three grown men could barely span with their arms outstretched in a gigantic hug. His job provided him with multiple examples of the damage humans have inflicted on the environment, as rising temperatures and increased carbon dioxide levels change wildlife habitat in ways that could spell the end of the Maine moose, the Canada lynx, Maine's spruce fir forests and the wild brook trout, all within the next 75 years. And yet Joseph's optimism has not left him, as he takes encouragement from successes such as the recovery of the American Bald Eagle once near extinction, the reintroduction of wild turkeys to Maine after an almost total population collapse in the first half of the 20th century, and the herculean efforts of volunteers who risk their own lives attempting to rescue right whales entangled in fishing gear, nets and marine debris. The North Atlantic right whale is predicted to face extinction in the next 20 years, unless something can be done to minimize such entanglements and collisions with ships. Ron Joseph's memoir is not primarily an alarm bell warning of impending losses, but the message is clear...we've caused a lot of harm to the planet and its inhabitants, and unless we get smart real fast, much of it will be irreversible. ( )

"If this book provides you with even an inkling of what rural Maine life was like in the fifties and sixties not to mention my subsequent career as a Maine wildlife biologist, then I'll consider it a success." And success it is! What is really apparent is his love of life. Ron Joseph's memoir, Bald Eagles, Bear Cubs and Hermit Bill, is a collection of forty articles written over the past thirty-five years. The articles cover many aspects of work-life during those years and the author's commitment to the wildlife of Maine. Lovely to spend time with these memories. ( )

I received a free copy of this book through the LTER giveaway in exchange for my honest opinion.
This book, written by a longtime (now retired) Maine Wildlife and Fisheries employee, had many interesting chapters about his life and work in Maine, and the people and animals he met during his career. Some of the chapters were previously published in local publications (and they sure read like newspaper articles). I felt like I was "listening" to an older family member, who was telling me about his life. ( )