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S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 2 0 0 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 The hunter is, at one and the same time, a man of today and one of ten thousand years ago. In hunting, the long process of universal history coils up and bites its own tail. Jose Ortega Y Gasset, Meditations on Hunting, 1996. Submitted by David R. Drinan of Somers, Connecticut. Some people who spend a lot of time in bear country wear bells on their packs or vests to alert bears to their presence. There's an old joke about that: How can you tell the droppings of black bears and grizzlies apart? The grizzly turds are the ones with bells in them. John Gierach, Standing in a River Waving a Stick, 1999. Submitted by Roger A. Bradley of E. Petersburg, Pennsylvania. People have been trying to understand dogs ever since the beginning of time. One never knows what they'll do. You can read every day where a dog saved the life of a drowning child or lay down his life for his master. Some people call this loyalty. I don't. I may be wrong, but I call it love—the deepest kind of love. Wilson Rawls, Where the Red Fern Grows, 1961. . . . there was nothing save the dawn until suddenly the buck was there, smoke-colored out of nothing, beautiful, magnificent with speed: and Sam Fathers said, "Now, shoot quick and shoot slow," and the gun leveled rapidly without haste . . . and crashed and I walked to the buck lying still . . . in the attitude of that magnificent speed and bled it with Sam's knife and Sam dipped his hands into the hot blood and marked my face forever while I stood trying not to tremble, humbly and with pride too though a boy of twelve . . . William Faulkner, "Delta Autumn," 1931. Submitted by Steven J. Masello of Wilmette, Illinois. The next few hours were one of those timeless interludes with which every life should be adorned, one that forever richens your memory, to be brought forth and savored in life's less kindly moments. Michael Altizer, The Last Best Day, 2007. Submitted by Richard H. Chamberlin of Hickory Corners, Michigan. Apart from his courage and trickiness in the field, the bobwhite has the power of inspiring nostalgia in the evening, when the fire snaps and hisses and the bourbon melds gently with the branch water. He tastes as good on the plate as he looks in the field, and no bird of paradise was ever handsomer to the hunter than this little brown gentleman's gentleman. He often ennobles the man who shoots him, a trick that has not yet been perfected by humans in relationship to each other. Robert Ruark, "The Brave Quail," Field & Stream, December 1951. Submitted by Albert Mull of Johnson City, Tennessee. If there was ever wild music made to go with a mid-November moonlight, cold and brittle, it is the mysterious, unseen, fluting of the owls. The presence of owls to the hunter is a humbling thing late on a November night. The murmuring of owls is more an accent to the dark silence than a wild cry. Gene Hill, A Hunter's Fireside Book, 1972. Submitted by Jon Osborn of Holland, Michigan. Reader Favorites u o t e s O l