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

I live in a major metro area, so I relate to this excerpt from Wallace Stegner very strongly -

"Still in waders, with the string of ducks across his shoulders, he stood hesitating on the sidewalk in the cold November wind...Today, all day, he had been alive; now he was back ready to be dead again."
 
Two lengthier quotes from Faulkner's Big Woods:

"...the buck moving in it somewhere, not running yet since he had not been pursued, not frightened yet and never fearsome but just alert also as they were alert, perhaps already circling back, perhaps quite near, perhaps conscious also of the eye of the ancient immortal Umpire. Because he was just twelve then, and that morning something had happened to him: in less than a second he had ceased forever to be the child he was yesterday. Or perhaps that made no difference, perhaps even a city-bred man, let alone a child, could not have understood it; perhaps only a country-bred one could comprehend loving the life he spills. He began to shake again."

"But he could not stop the shaking. He did not try, because he knew it would go away when he needed the steadiness—had not Sam Fathers already consecrated and absolved him from weakness and regret too?—not from love and pity for all which lived and ran and then ceased to live in a second in the very midst of splendor and speed, but from weakness and regret."
 
“Let others lie abed and rise three hours later in the full light of the day. The duck hunter, probing the secrets of a new day, sees the night retreat, and nothing is so fine as daylight coming and night departing while wings overhead whisper the old and unsolved mystery of migration.” -Gordon MacQuarrie

If you like hunting and fishing reads the collection of Macquarrie's short stories should be in your collection. “Stories of the Old Duck Hunters and Other Drivel,” “More Stories of the Old Duck Hunters” and “Last Stories of the Old Duck Hunters.”
 
"At that early age I had not yet isolated the fact, although I had seen its signs, that hunting is a lonely sport, that the hunter is essentially a lonely man, more often than he is a 'lone' man; and the bigger the game the lonelier it gets."
Edison Marshall Heart of the Hunter
 
"At that early age I had not yet isolated the fact, although I had seen its signs, that hunting is a lonely sport, that the hunter is essentially a lonely man, more often than he is a 'lone' man; and the bigger the game the lonelier it gets."
Edison Marshall Heart of the Hunter
Man that’s good!
 
1508654-Robert-Ruark-Quote-If-a-man-does-away-with-his-traditional-way-of.jpg
 
"I hunt because it teaches me what it taught our earliest ancestors: the benefits of cooperation, inventiveness, division of labor, sharing and interdependence." William Tapply
 
Gene Hill is my favorite author, along with Charley Waterman for their humor in writing

“If there is a place in heaven for Labrador Retrievers (and I trust there is or I won't go) it'll have to have a brook right smack in the middle - a brook with little thin shoals for wading and splashing; a brook with deep, still pools where they can throw themselves headlong from the bank; a brook with lots of small sticks floating that can be retrieved back to shore where they belong; a brook with muskrats and muskrat holes; a brook with green herons and wood ducks; a brook that is never twice the same with surprises that run and swim and fly; a brook that is cold enough to make the man with the dog run like the devil away from his shaking; a brook with a fine spot to get muddy and a sunny spot or two to get dry.”
― Gene Hill

“Whoever said you can't buy Happiness forgot little puppies.”
― Gene Hill

Most of the world is covered by water. A fisherman's job is simple: Pick out the best parts. - Charles W. Waterman
 
"Antlers proclaim a male's ability to grow a large amount of bone in a short time (no salacious pun intended) and thus they say something about his foraging ability." - John A. Byers
 
I wish I had the quote in front of me but I don't so this isn't exact and I hope I don't butcher it.

"We base our hopes on a willingness to go to hard to get at places..... We rise early and we stay late. We freeze if need be. We hunt and we hunt hard often when the chances are poor and in that way we get a few occasionally" Gordon MacQuarrie.
 
One by Elmer Keith, after being fired by "The American Rifleman" and his wife asking, "What are we going to do on only $150 a month?". Elmer replied, "I'm going to Africa."
Another by Pat McMannus (who may not be a "gun writter", but...). "Real ponies don't go oink."
 

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