author
Harry Thom Payne
b. 1844
A California outdoors writer and newspaper editor, he is best remembered for a lively early-20th-century guide to the game birds and fishes of the Pacific Coast. His work blends practical field knowledge with the voice of a journalist writing for everyday sportsmen.
1 Audiobook
Game Birds and Game Fishes of the Pacific Coast
by Harry Thom Payne
About the author
Born in 1844, Harry Thom Payne was an American writer associated with California journalism and outdoor writing. He is credited with Game Birds and Game Fishes of the Pacific Coast, published in Los Angeles in 1913, a detailed guide aimed at readers interested in hunting, fishing, and the wildlife of the western United States.
Available records also describe him as a Los Angeles newspaper man, and later as editor of Field Sports, a sporting magazine published in San Francisco. That background helps explain the tone of his best-known book: informative and observant, but written to be useful and readable rather than overly technical.
Payne died in 1932. Though not widely known today, his writing remains a small window into the sporting culture and natural history interests of the Pacific Coast in the early 1900s.