Grouse shooting is what it is for you, not for someone in some fabulous faraway place. Grouse gunning can be either a game of numbers or identificati… - George Bird Evans

Time that gives so much and Time that takes so much away has put its mark on this place that is Old Hemlock almost without altering anything. In that gray-black blend of night-to-dawn I lie and think of all that Kay and I possess, aware that what is good is not what is new but what is loved and used, with a patina from hands and years.

And if gunning over an intelligent handsome setter enriches my sport, certainly a hearthful of them on a winter evening or speckled faces peering out of our station wagon are things to value.

I have not written this book as something that is over. When you have lived like that, it will be present always, like the gun I shot and the dogs and those grouse living in the subcellars of my brain.