Background
George was born on August 26, 1846 in Batavia, Ohio, United States, the son of John F. and Eliza J. (Dawson) Shields.
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George was born on August 26, 1846 in Batavia, Ohio, United States, the son of John F. and Eliza J. (Dawson) Shields.
He obtained his entire formal education, three months in public school, in Delaware County, Iowa.
Shields enlisted in the Union Army in February 1864, was wounded in action at Resaca, Georgia, in May 1864, and was discharged in July 1865. After 1865 he seems not to have returned to his home for many years.
For a short time after his discharge he was an immigration agent for the Pecos Irrigation and Improvement Company at Eddy (later Carlsbad). About this time he began writing for newspapers and periodicals. He had successfully hunted nearly every kind of game in North America south of the arctic circle, but soon after starting his career as a writer he became an ardent conservationist.
Coquina, his pseudonym, was taken from the trade name of the Florida fossil-coral building material he described in his first book, Rustlings in the Rockies (1883). Like the first book, Cruisings in the Cascades (1889), made up of articles written for periodicals, is a simple narrative in which hunting and fishing play an important part. He also wrote The Battle of the Big Hole (1889), a valuable account of Indian battle in Montana, Camping and Camp Outfits (1890), and The Blanket Indian of the Northwest (1921); he edited The Big Game of North America (1890), The American Book of the Dog (1891), and American Game Fishes (1892).
From 1897 until 1902 he was the tireless but autocratic head of the Camp-Fire Club of America, the idea of which originated with Dr. William T. Hornaday. Early in 1905 he was forced into bankruptcy by his printers, though Recreation itself went on. Largely through the efforts of Dr. Hornaday, the New York Zoological Society soon raised money to establish Shields' Magazine, which was published until August 1912. Shields now devoted his whole time to lecturing.
In his later years he was frequently given the title of colonel, evidently merely by courtesy. He spent his last years in straitened circumstances in New York, where he died in St. Luke's Hospital in the early hours of the morning, November 11, 1925.
George Oliver Shields founded the popular magazine Recreation, through which he carried on vigorous campaigns, first against the excessive taking of game and later against the use by sportsmen of the automatic shotgun. He was influential in having game laws enacted in many states and in securing the passage of the Lacey Act, the first federal law regulating interstate commerce and importation of birds and game. besides, he was awarded a bronze medal by the National Photographic Society.
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He was a man of remarkable energy and enthusiasm, too sincere in his belief in the importance of his work to adopt politic methods in presenting his views.
Quotes from others about the person
According to Outdoor Life, he was called "unquestionably our most eminent and successful pioneer in the cause of the conservation of wild life".
He married but separated from his wife in 1892; they had no children.
