"The deerskin rug on our study floor, the buck's head over the fireplace, what are these after all but the keys which have unlocked enchanted doors, and granted us not only health and vigor, but a fresh and fairer vision of existence."

Paul Brandreth, Trails of Enchantment (1930)

Maybe stalking the woods is as vital to the human condition as playing music or putting words to paper. Maybe hunting has as much of a claim on our civilized selves as anything else. After all, the earliest forms of representational art reflect hunters and prey. While the arts were making us spiritually viable, hunting did the heavy lifting of not only keeping us alive, but inspiring us. To abhor hunting is to hate the place from which you came, which is akin to hating yourself in some distant, abstract way.
-Steven Rinella

“For the hunter, fall is the island and the rest of the year is the swim.”

-Charles Fergus
A Rough-Shooting Dog, 1991


“There’s no such thing as too many good books or too many paintings and prints. Or bronzes of Labradors and pointers and Brittanies and setters. Or glasses with pintails and canvasbacks and salmon and trout flies. Or pictures of you and Charlie with old Duke and a limit of bobwhites, or a pair of muleys, or a half-dozen Canadas, or about a yard of rainbows. Or old decoys and duck calls. There are never too many memories of days past or too many dreams of good times to come.”

-Gene Hill
A Listening Walk, 1985

“There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.”
Aldo Leopold

More commonly, hunters are the ones who battle to live without wild things.

"The spectator undoubtedly feels a sense of excitement and appreciation for the game. However, the player has a deeper understanding of the game and is able to directly influence its outcome. He/she feels the highs and lows more intensely and develops a deeper sense of appreciation and love for the game .... often to the point where it becomes part of their very existence. The hiker, camper and game-park visitor is the spectator. The hunter, being an active participant, is the player."
Dimitri

"Now, therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take me some venison." — Genesis 27:3, King James Bible

"Choot'em!!"
- Troy Landry

"We still do not realize that today we can enjoy the wilderness without fear, do not appreciate the part that predators play in the balanced ecology of any natural community. We seem to prefer herds of semi-domesticated deer and elk and moose, swarms of small game with their natural alertness gone."

Sigurd Olson, The Singing Wilderness (1956)

My favorite.


“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.”

― Edward Abbey

"In a civilized and cultivated country, wild animals only continue to exist at all when preserved by sportsmen." -
Theodore Roosevelt

"The true trophy hunter is a self-disciplined perfectionist seeking a single animal, the ancient patriarch well past his prime that is often an outcast from his own kind...If successful, he will enshrine the trophy in a place of honor. This is a more noble and fitting end than dying on some lost and lonely ledge where the scavengers will pick his bones, and his magnificent horns will weather away and be lost forever."

Elgin Gates, Trophy Hunter in Asia (1971)

"There is never as much lying as before elections, during war or after a hunt."

"He isn't a hunter, but the tendency to exaggeration is noticeable"

(both Otto v. Bismarck)

Killing a big buck is 90% pure luck, which means staying on the stand longer equates to buying more lottery tickets.