The same woods, just one less shadow

He raised his son in these woods. Then he had to learn how to walk back into them alone.

When Tony Bolt lost his seventeen-year-old son, Cody, he didn't know how to keep living. He only knew the woods were still there - the same tree stand, the same creek bottom, the same gravel pull-off where they'd parked before first light a hundred times before.

The Same Woods, Just One Less Shadow is a father's raw, unflinching, and often unexpectedly funny memoir of hunting and fishing through the hardest grief a parent can carry. From an oversized orange vest on a six-year-old's first opening day, to an empty seat bolted into a tree stand, to letters written to a son who will never read them, these pages follow one family's slow, honest climb from devastation toward something that finally resembles peace.

This is not a grief manual, and it's not just a hunting book. It's both, woven together the way Tony's life actually was: a boy learning to call turkeys and read water, a father learning to keep loving someone who is gone, and a family finding out that grief and gratitude can sit in the same tree stand without either one canceling out the other.

Inside, you'll find:

• Vivid, lived-in hunting and fishing stories spanning nearly two decades
• An honest, non-clinical account of surviving the loss of a child
• Quiet lessons on grief, memory, and what it means to teach the next generation
• Moments of real humor alongside real heartbreak

For anyone who has lost someone impossible to replace, and for anyone who simply loves the outdoors, this is a book about what remains standing after the worst has already happened, and what it takes to walk back into it.