undogs
G
By Tom Davis
B
A Montana trip to field-test
Garmin's Alpha gives the
author a chance to hunt
over as fine a setter as
he's ever seen.
eigen, Brad McCardle's stylish English
Tsetter, high-tails a covey of Hungarian
partridge on the Montana prairie.
S
the benefit and enjoyment of all. So if
you were asked what DeVoto, who
died in 1955, considered America's
greatest contribution to world
culture, you'd naturally think along
the lines of, say, our Constitution,
or our system of national parks, or
maybe Huckleberry Finn.
And you wouldn't even be in the
ballpark. In the estimation of Bernard
DeVoto, America's supreme contribution
to world culture was the martini.
That's right. The silver bullet. The
see-through. The eye-crossingly cold,
ernard DeVoto, for those of you
unfamiliar with him, was a Utahborn, Harvard-educated writer,
critic and social commentator who's
best-remembered for his books on the
history of the American West – Across
the Wide Missouri being perhaps the
most famous. He was an acknowledged
authority on a variety of subjects,
notably the Lewis and Clark Expedition
and the life and work of Mark Twain.
He was an ardent conservationist,
too, one who passionately championed
the idea of preserving public lands for
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