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… - George Bird Evans

If I could shoot a game bird and still not hurt it, the way I can take a trout on a fly and release it, I doubt if I would kill another one. This is a strange statement coming from a man whose life is dedicated to shooting and gun dogs. For me, there is almost no moment more sublime than when I pull the trigger and see a grouse fall. Yet, as the bird is retrieved I feel a sense of remorse for taking a courageous life. About the time I passed fifty I noticed this conflict becoming more pronounced...

I want there to be woodcock forever flying over in October, and solitude, and Hunter’s Moons. But most, I want there always to be Grouse- of all wild things, the wildest- in these endless mountains we call home.

Some men dream of wealth and power. I tell of days. Of woods taking me where they wanted to go, hawthorns scarlet with October, the lacy loveliness of hemlocks, old lanes gold with Autumn, fall colors like stained glass showing through the leaded lines of black branches, each tree a love, each leaf a now, the dry-bone look of maple twigs in winter, the silent snow. For more than seventy Indian summers I have begged each one not to go, even as I spoke, the leaves showered down around me.