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S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 2 3 2 Send us your favorite quotes from sporting literature and receive one free gift subscription for every quote that is published. Include the author, title of book and date of publication. Send to: Quotes, Sporting Classics, PO Box 23707, Columbia, SC 29224 I can pass thousands of men on the city streets; they may mean nothing to me, and I certainly may mean less than nothing to them. But when I meet a hunter in the lonely woods or on the windswept marshes, something draws us together. It is the invisible but strong bond of mutual interest in the same sport; it is a natural rugged fellowship that calls for no introductions. I would take nothing for my lifelong association with hunters. Archibald Rutledge, Hunter's Choice, 1946. Submitted by Albert Mull of Johnson City, Tennessee. If in a single day we smell coffee, dawn, gun oil, powder, a wet dog, woodsmoke, bourbon, and the promise of a West wind for a fair tomorrow—and it's possible for us to reek "happy"—that's just what we will do. Gene Hill, A Hunter's Fireside Book, 1972. Submitted by Jon Osborn of Holland, Michigan. . . . the most appreciated, enjoyable occupation for the normal man has always been hunting. Jose Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Hunting, 1972. Submitted by John Reesor of Shakopee, Minnesota. With autumn, when the world is brown and the season hesitates between smoky Indian summer and leaden November; there comes to proper hunting men an urge to scuff their feet among the curling sweet fern and poke a load or two at pa'tridge. Gordon MacQuarrie, Last Stories of the Old Duck Hunters, 1994. Submitted by David R. Drinan of Somers, Connecticut. And although catching a great fish can sometimes look like simple luck, every fisherman knows it's more than that: something like intelligent curiosity combined with cagey, skillful persistence, more like luck at poker than on a slot machine. Whatever you call it, I think a lot of us fish day after day as much for what could happen as for what actually does happen. John Gierach, Standing in a River, Waving a Stick, 1999. Submitted by Roger A. Bradley of East Petersburg, Pennsylvania. The perfection of a life with a gun dog, like the perfection of an autumn, is disturbing because you know, even as it begins, that it must end. Time bestows the gift and steals it in the process. George Bird Evans, An Affair with Grouse, 1982. Submitted by Rob Greenside of St. Joseph, Missouri. There is a royalty, either of dynasty or temperament, that can be humbled only by dogs and their Maker, who perhaps made them in part for that purpose. Elizabeth Goudge, The Heart of the Family, 1953. Submitted by Russell G. Terra of Redding, California. The Duke states: "And this our life exempt from public haunt Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks, Sermons in stone and good in everything. I would not change it." William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, Scene 1 in the Forest of Arden. Submitted by Jon Armon of Golden, Colorado. Reader Favorites u o t e s O l