Favorite quotes by outdoor writers, gun writers, conservationists, naturalists, ect.

[Dinkshooter]

As I took that step, I knew he was running. He wasn't in the browse at all, but angling into invisibility at the rock wall, racing straight into the elevation, bounding toward zero gravity, taking his longest arc into the bullet and the finality and terror of all you have made of the world, the finality you know that you share even with the Princess and your babies with their inherited and ambiguous dentition, the finality that, any minute now, you will meet as well.

 

[Dinkshooter]

The Heart of the Game

A consideration of hunting

www.outsideonline.com

 

[Jbotto]

Can’t think of any good conservation quotes off the top of my head right now but stumbled across this screenshot from a few years ago. I wish my sense of humor was so quick.

 

[Bullshot]

Whoever first said, upon shooting an elk, “Here is where the fun ends and the work begins” is probably the most-quoted individual in all of hunting.

 

[Irrelevant]

"Do not jump into your automobile next June and rush out to the Canyon country hoping to see some of that which I have attempted to evoke in these pages. In the first place you can't see anything from a car; you've got to get out of the goddamned contraction and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbush and cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark you trail you'll see something, maybe. Probably not. In the second place most of what I write about in this book is already gone or going under fast. This is not a travel guide but a elegy. A memorial. You're holding a tombstone in your hands. A bloody rock. Don't drop it one your foot - throw it at something big and glassy. What do you have to lose?" - Ed Abbey

 

[geetar]

Found this one. Thought I’d add it.

 

[BraidenR]

"A true conversationalist is a man who knows the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children." John James Audobon

 

[ovis2]

Lots of great quotes. Some appreciatively humorous, some thought provoking. One of my favorite, more contemplatively serious quotes is also from Aldo Leopold.

"

We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes – something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view."​

 

[Sytes]

From a recent Bugle magazine, Confucius notch from the tag of life...

 

[SC Living Outdoors]

This might already be on here, but my favorite hunting quote is by Big Fin.

"Hunt while you can. You'll run out of time before you run out of money"

I didn't see that quote until a year or 2 ago, but 3 years ago I made that decision. I sold my golf clubs, quit my other hobbies. I truly decided to devote all my extra time to hunting. One of the best decisions of my life.

 

[noharleyyet]

“I never knew a man that hunted quail that didn’t come out of it a little politer by comparison.” — Robert Ruark, Use Enough Gun

"Don't tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish." — Mark Twain

 

[Tradewind]

“It isn’t elk hunting unless it hurts.”- Jim Zumbo

Amen

 

[Harrier]

"It was a pleasure to walk in the easy rolling country, simply to walk, and to be able to hunt, not knowing what we might see and free to shoot for the meat we needed."

Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa

 

[longbow51]

This is from Corey Ford's Letter to a Grandson. He wrote "The Lower Forty" back when there was real literature in outdoor magazines, not just ads for the newest compound. This, while not a quote per se is very evocative, and concerns sensations he hopes his grandson loves as he did.

"The smells that men like to remember-pipe smoke and boot dubbing and Hoppe’s No. 9, and fly dope on a red bandanna handkerchief, and the smell of leather that is more like a taste, and the before-breakfast smell of coffee and bacon frying, and the smell of a cottonmouth, the smell of fear, and the fall smells of sweet-fern and rotting apples and burnt powder in the frosty air."

 

[The Yetti]

"If cabbages had legs, I'd hunt them too!"

Matt Rinella in "Stars in the Sky"

 

[Wildabeest]

“What the <bleep>?. Holy <bleep><bleep>. Oh <bleep>”. — Uncle Larry.

 

[mtmuley]

Amen

Yep. Said a bunch of those (and other unmentionable words) last Sunday. mtmuley

 

[Hunt&FishCO]

“The mountains are calling, and I must go”
- John Muir

 

[Mtrimble]

This

 

[get-n-birdy]

Our old man always told my brother and I to "pay the insurance" as a duck or rooster was going down if it had any twitch left in its gitty'up. Believe he got it from Capstick, but not 100% sure on that.

He also likes Phip Robertson's quote about reducing birds to possession vs loosing them. He hated loosing birds when he still hunted and would rather collect soup stock then have a bird go off and suffer and die so the scavengers could have a meal.