Stephen Wallace

“There should be a law against leaving a shotgun in its case all summer. The thing loses all sense of direction and has no more pointing instinct than a St. Bernard pup.”
― Burton L Spiller, DRUMMER IN THE WOODS. Twenty-One Wonderful Stories About Grouse Shooting

“While I have great respect for the pointing breeds, I remain a hopeless afficionado of the Labrador retriever. I love Labs; don’t ask me to explain. We just seem to understand each other and to approach the world with a fundamentally similar set of priorities, an admission with which certain co-workers and an ex-wife would no doubt agree. Because I make it a point to live in places where I can hunt a lot, my kennel has to be productive. It also has to be versatile, since any given day here on the prairie might provide the opportunity to hunt everything from Huns to geese. Sure, I could have Labs and more traditional upland bird dogs, but every place in the kennel occupied by something other than a Lab would be. well, one less Lab in my life.”
― E. Donnall Thomas Jr., Fool Hen Blues: Retrievers & Shotguns and the American West

“There may be worse vices than dog breeding, but I have never experimented with them. Moderate indulgence may not in itself be harmful, but sooner or later the time will come when moderation fails to provide a kick. One yearns for more dogs—and more and more and more, and unless he does something drastic about it his yearnings are going to be gratified. The ordinarily sane individual has no conception of the extent that dogs will multiply under favorable conditions, when nature is permitted to run its course. Rabbits are ultra-conservative by comparison.”
― Burton L Spiller, DRUMMER IN THE WOODS. Twenty-One Wonderful Stories About Grouse Shooting

“Any normal man who will shoot a weekly round at skeet during the summer can learn the fundamentals of wing shooting, and can acquire a skill sufficient to kill a fair percentage of his good shots at birds within the range to which he has become accustomed; but if he wishes to hold his own with a seasoned grouse hunter he must serve a long apprenticeship in the woods. He will find innumerable angles there that can never be duplicated on a skeet range.”
― Burton L Spiller, DRUMMER IN THE WOODS. Twenty-One Wonderful Stories About Grouse Shooting