Bird Dog Days, Wingshooting Ways

Archibald Rutledge

Description

An expanded edition of Rutledge's stories on game-bird hunting and devoted canine companions

Archibald Rutledge has long been recognized as one of the finest sporting scribes this country has ever produced. A prolific writer who specialized in stories on nature and hunting, over the course of a long and prolific career Rutledge produced more than fifty books of poetry and prose, held the position of South Carolina's poet laureate for thirty-three years, and garnered numerous honorary degrees and prizes for his writings. In this revised and expanded edition of Bird Dog Days, Wingshooting Ways, noted outdoor writer Jim Casada draws together Rutledge's stories on the southern heartland, deer hunting, turkey hunting, and Carolina Christmas hunts and traditions.

This collection, first published in 1998, turns to Rutledge's writings on two subjects near and dear to his heart that he understood with an intimacy growing out of a lifetime of experience—upland bird hunting and hunting dogs. Its contents range from delightful tales of quail and grouse hunts to pieces on special dogs and some of their traits. Bird Dog Days, Wingshooting Ways also includes a long fictional piece, "The Odyssey of Bolio," which shows that Rutledge's literary mastery extended beyond simple tales for outdoorsmen.

Sujets

• Sports
• Essays
• Dog writer
• Dog World
• Turkey hunting
• Bird dog (disambiguation)
• Screech-owl
• Gleaning (birds)
• Waterfowl hunting
• Plott Hound
• Over the Hedge
• Mountain Cur
• Gamekeeper
• Merlin (bird)
• Recreation
• Nos voisins, les hommes
• Hunting

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 15 juillet 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781611176551
• Langue: English

Extrait

Bird Dog Days, Wingshooting Ways
Bird Dog Days, Wingshooting Ways
A RCHIBALD R UTLEDGE S TALES OF UPLAND HUNTING
Edited with a New Introduction by
JIM CASADA
2016 Jim Casada
Published by the University of South Carolina Press Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/
ISBN 978-1-61117-654-4 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-61117-655-1 (ebook)
Front cover photograph Christina Power Photography, 2016 www.christinapowerphotography.com
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
A Note on Selection
Introduction
Part One: The Friend of Man
The Friend of Man
Dog or No Dog
Some Startling Dogs
Start Em Early, Arch
The Odyssey of Bolio
My Most Memorable Dog
Daisy and the Chimera
Then Gabriel Blew His Horn
Part Two: The Magic of Grouse
The Partridge
Grouse of the Little Hills
Still-Hunting Sir Ruffneck
Grouse of the Cloudlands
Patsy and the Princes
The Prince of the Woodland
It s the Scotch in Them
My Last Grouse Hunt
Part Three: A Bevy of Bobwhite Tales
The Baby Toddles
The Enemies of Quail
Wintering Bobwhite
Quail of the Kalmias
Part Four: A Mixed Bag
Ringnecks in the Stubble
The Philosopher among Dogs
What Sportsmen Bring Home
Bibliographical Essay
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This is one of five collections of Archibald Rutledge stories I have edited and compiled, and as was the case with the first three, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to the late Judge Irvine Rutledge. Prior to his death, he was consistently supportive and complimentary of my efforts, as have been other members of the Rutledge clan.
In a wider sense, every sportsman owes the University of South Carolina Press, along with a relative handful of other publishers, a tip of the sporting cap. They are offering us fine books on sport even as the big boys of the publishing world turn their backs on works dealing with the quest in a misguided belief that there is something fundamentally wrong with the ethos of the hunt or that the joys of being afield and astream no longer have currency.
The staff of Dacus Library at Winthrop University, where I taught for many years, was helpful in answering research questions and obtaining copies of obscure articles through interlibrary loan. I have acknowledged the role of my parents, Anna Lou and Commodore Casada, in every book with which I have ever been involved, and with good reason. They actively nurtured my love of the wild world, scraped and scrimped financially to see to it that a mountain lad had ample exposure to education, and shared my pleasures connected with hunting and fishing adventures. Similarly, it was my good fortune to establish a meaningful relationship, one which otherwise almost certainly would not have existed, with my late father-in-law, Earnest Fox, through shared bird-hunting adventures. I am grateful to the memories he thereby gave me. As ever, my wife, Ann; my daughter, Natasha; her husband, Eric; and their daughter, Ashlyn, are sources of support and inspiration. They tolerate my constant ventures afield in good spirit, encourage my literary efforts, and give me their love. Every sporting scribe should be so lucky.
A NOTE ON SELECTION
It is a testament to Archibald Rutledge s enduring popularity among those who cherish fine writing on the wild world that publication of this collection is possible. Previous volumes in what I presume it is now safe to say is a series have focused on his deer- and turkey-hunting tales, along with a selection of his writings on Christmas and an anthology of The Best of Archibald Rutledge . There remains work on a full-length biography of the sage of the Santee to complete my long-running labor of love connected with his life.
Here, as the title suggests, the focus is on dogs and bird hunting. Both were near and dear to Rutledge as a man and a sportsman, and when he wrote of them he wrote from the heart. The place (or places) where each selection has previously appeared in print is given at the appropriate point in this book, although it should be noted there are in all likelihood other printings of the stories which have escaped my eye. For example, with a number of the selections, only a previous appearance in a book is noted, yet I feel confident that in virtually every case the material also was published in a magazine. Rutledge was not only a prolific writer; he was exceptionally adept at selling second (or third, or fourth) rights to his material. All of his major books on hunting and the outdoors comprise pieces that, for the most part, first appeared in magazines. Indeed, his stories appeared in so many forms and places (magazines, books, anthologies of the writings of multiple authors, school readers, and the like) that compiling a comprehensive bibliography of his work would be a project well worthy of a doctoral thesis. Still, I feel serious students of Rutledge would like to know where these selections have previously seen the published light of day.
Today, most of Rutledge s books are out of print or else available only in shoddy print-on-demand form. Indeed, original editions of many of them have become valuable collector s items, and copies of many of his outdoor-related books bring prices in the three-figure or even low four-figure range. As a result, many modern readers are not conversant with or else are unable to afford works by a writer who was a household name among sportsmen in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Even those who do remember Old Flintlock probably recall him primarily as someone who wrote on deer and turkey hunting.
The present collection makes it abundantly manifest that he was a serious bird hunter as well, and few indeed are those writers who have understood the ways and wiles of dogs the way Rutledge did. His writing on the outdoors belongs to the sporting ages, and everyone who thrills to a whopping covey rise or a dog going birdy in a grouse covert, every sportsman who has been privileged to own a dog of a lifetime or who has marveled at a miraculous retrieve, will find a kindred soul in the pages that follow.
INTRODUCTION
Archibald Rutledge was a sportsman and naturalist for all seasons. A staunch son of the Southland, he was a hunter from his earliest days. From the time when he took his first tentative footsteps toward becoming a nimrod until he was a bedridden octogenarian, hunting was an integral and vitally important part of his life. In many ways he was blessed in his early exposure to sport. For a mentor he had his father, to whom he paid loving and richly deserved tribute in My Colonel and His Lady . He had a brother close to him in age, and their boyhood partnership is immortalized in Tom and I on the Old Plantation . Then there were the dozens of black huntermen who served as tutors, guides, and field companions. One of these, Prince Alston, whom he styled a companion to my heart, was probably the dearest friend Rutledge ever had. They grew up together and hunted constantly in season while pursuing other adventures, as boys and then men, with unflagging avidity. Even in the long years of exile when Rutledge was away from Hampton Plantation teaching at Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania, the pair remained close. Indeed, the real running of Hampton during those three-plus decades in Pennsylvania rested squarely on Prince s broad, capable shoulders.
Along with the joys of a sporting adolescence and being in close contact with adult companions who let him accompany them afield, the youthful Rutledge was always surrounded by dogs. There were deer hounds, bird dogs, yard dogs, and as those of us resident in the South are wont to describe canines of questionable lineage, just dogs. Along with this panoply of friends, human and canine, there were the wild, expansive environs of Hampton Plantation on which to wander and wonder. It was, quite simply, a wildlife paradise. Vast acreage along the Santee River, much of it too swampy or prone to flooding for cultivation, formed fine habitat and a refuge for all sorts of game. This was nicely balanced by the farm and rice fields of the plantation, which fed not only those who cultivated them but wildlife as well. Rutledge came to know every part of this wondrous world intimately, and he sang the praises of his homeland in books such as Home by the River, Santee Paradise , and The World around Hampton . From an early stage he knew a oneness with the land that few, even those who hunt, are privileged to experience. Indeed, so deep were his love for Hampton Plantation and his connection to the land that he would devote most of the prime years of his manhood to unstinted labor, as a teacher and a writer, rescuing the home and surrounding lands from the shabbiness, genteel neglect, and pressing financial problems which threatened ruination. Once he retired from teaching and returned to Hampton (he was only in his fifties at the time), he added intense physical labor to this noble effort. That he succeeded, ultimately deeding Hampton Plantation to the state of South Carolina so its citizens could enjoy it in perpetuity, was a singular achievement and one of the highlights of a life marked by many notable achievements.
Obviously, Rutledge was a man born into a world in which nature and sport loomed large, and posterity is fortunate that he sang the praises of life in the outdoors so long, so wisely, and so well. The story of his life is in many ways one of ongoing evolution as a writer and student of those things he knew best: nature s creatures and myriad wonders, various types of hunting, and his fellow man. To delve into