Bird Dog Days, Wingshooting Ways Quotes

“When I have the approximate distance a grouse has gone, and his direction of flight, I follow him, but I try never to go straight at him. Wild game is alwavs able to recognize a hunter who acts as if he were on the warpath. As I never walk directly toward a grouse, so I never try to sneak up on him. That is a maneuver that will scare the wits out of him. My general attitude in approaching game is that of elaborate and rather goofy indifference; I try to act as if I were idly looking for posies, or dreaming of some lost love of the long ago. The hunter who is stalking, if he shows himself at all, should always try to create the impression that he is doing anything else in the world but hunt. By this sort of trickery I have often been able to walk within twenty feet of a grouse, whereas, had I stormed down at him, he probably should have kited out of cover while I was still fifty yards away.

If you want a real chance at your grouse, don’t let him say of you, “Oh, my gosh, here comes that killer!” Always persuade him to say unconcernedly, “I wonder who that booby is, wandering around vaguely?”
― Archibald Rutledge, Bird Dog Days, Wingshooting Ways: Archibald Rutledge's Tales of Upland Hunting

“As these two grouse rose and came up the hill toward me, beating their way masterfully up to the treetops, I had, even while getting ready to shoot, a chance to watch their flight. It does not appear that anyone can ever regard it as anything but thrilling. In our attempts at locomotion, we improve our cars, our airplanes. But the grouse, countless centuries ago, perfected a flight that has the finality of finished art. It is graceful, swift, powerful, and yet strangely enigmatic. It attains what the finest automobile strives for: formidable power immediately available and under the most delicately adjusted control.

I do not know that it is a better flight than that of the quail, but it is far more impressive. And because the grouse is a bird of the forest and must needs do constant maneuvering while in flight, I think he handles himself more deftly than the bobwhite. In the flight of the larger bird there is endless variety. Especially interesting to me are three features: one is the occasional silent rise, the big bird taking wing with hardly a sound; one is the instinctive habit of putting an obstruction between himself and his pursuer, and the other is his love of often going almost straight up to clear the trees and then tearing away over their tops, as if he were running the hundred yards in the Olympics. Indeed, the flight of birds alone would afford a man a lifelong study.”
― Archibald Rutledge, Bird Dog Days, Wingshooting Ways: Archibald Rutledge's Tales of Upland Hunting

“And Bolio, being far wiser than most of his kind, was fully aware of the nature of this night-prowler, the approach of whom it was his duty to challenge. Down the steps the powerful black dog had stalked, his growl warning the intruder. There were stepping stones across the yard to the little gate. Down this pathway the black warder of Jeff Wise’s lonely cabin went, slowly, certainly, his head high, his eyes ablaze. What to him were rain and the night, mystery of that vast solitude peril—the lush scent of the enemy? Such a dog has a passion for duty; and Bolio’s present duty was to fight.”
― Archibald Rutledge, Bird Dog Days, Wingshooting Ways: Archibald Rutledge's Tales of Upland Hunting

“I can’t do nothing more tonight,” the mountaineer told himself. “Drat my Sunday suit—what will I do without Bolio—now the b’ar season is a-comin’ on? I have had dogs what would have give me pleasure to see slip off yon rock; but this one—I'd almost as soon go over myself. Tomorrow I can tell—unless he’s dropped into the river and been washed away. And he did it a-guardin’ us, too. Damn. What a dog! I don’t know what he met, but I'll bet a thousand dollars out of my next week’s salary that that stranger thought hed run plumb into a mangling machine. If Bolio went off that rock, he had company, that’s sure. It would be just like him to turn up here tomorrow morning.”

But on the following morning, with the rain over and the sky clearing, the great black hound did not appear. Jeff Wise was up by daybreak, and his chief business was to find his dog. He woke to a world washed clean; to delicious fall fragrances; to misty hemlocks and a cloud-filled gorge. Before the sun was up, he had been out on the platform of rock; he had searched the wooded brink of the canyon. But not a sign remained of the desperate struggle that had been waged. What the night had concealed, the day could not divulge. The evidence of that obscure and fatal encounter the storm had completely obliterated. The hemlocks shed their rainy fragrances as before; the falls roared their ancient mountain anthem; the rhododendrons shivered dewily, shedding silver drops into their dusky shadows. Giant red dahlias in Jeff's yard seemed to mock him with the affluence of their gorgeous beauty.”
― Archibald Rutledge, Bird Dog Days, Wingshooting Ways: Archibald Rutledge's Tales of Upland Hunting

“There are, however, marked differences between the two greats of bird dogs that have long been generally recognized; and these differences may influence the choice of other men more than my own. The pointer was the first dog ever used to point game, and he seems to be built strictly for business. His place is in the field. When well broken he is almost unbelievably staunch. One brace of English pointers once stood point for an hour and twenty minutes, while a single English pointer stood game for six hours. A pointer has been known to have been frozen to death while on the point. But for all practical purposes the setter is just as staunch. A setter of mine once found a covey of quail at dusk, gone to roost in tall grass. I suppose I must have searched and called for half an hour before the dog was discovered, statued, with the whole covey just a few inches off his nose. The setter is the better companion; he is more gentle, affectionate, and demonstrative. The pointer always looks stripped for action; he does his work with admirable efficiency, and with a grim determination that is in high contrast to the setter’s ease and grace. Of the two, the pointer is the more independent and needs less encouragement. The pointer works as if it were his business to work; the setter as if wanting to please a watching master. The setter seems to work with his master; the pointer works for him. And each can do his work in a way to give eternal joy to the eye and the heart of a sportsman.”
― Archibald Rutledge, Bird Dog Days, Wingshooting Ways: Archibald Rutledge's Tales of Upland Hunting