Many outdoor writers are quotable on occasion, but some seem to be infinitely so. Gordon MacQuarrie, member in good standing of the Old Duck Hunters Association, Inc. (for incorrigible), is one of them. In a way that few—if any—writers have been able to match, MacQuarrie was more poet than newspaperman, more magician than magazine writer. He could bring out the beauty in any and everything, from a trout rising to a duck landing, from the sunrise of a snow-covered day to the warm rain in the black of night. Whatever MacQuarrie focused his typewriter on became art in a way that paint and brush could never hope to rival. These quotes prove just that!
“As a member in good standing in the Old Duck Hunters’ Association, I felt some responsibility, that October day, to deport myself with some slight skill. I had been hunting ducks for—let’s see—six or seven years, with considerable avidity and attention to detail. When there were ducks, I got ducks.”
— “Chickens Fly Funny”
“Hunting men know the feeling! On your own, with your own shotgun. Best of all—in your own country, the kind of country so familiar that you feel like tipping your hat to old landmarks. And they say men won’t fight for that?”
— “We Shall Gather at the Icehouse”
“He’s ‘pa’tridge’ here in Wisconsin. No Badger hillbilly would waste time wrapping his tongue around ‘ruffed grouse.’ And if you said ‘Bonasa umbellus,’ your man of the pa’tridge woods, from the blue Baraboo hills 300 miles north to Lake Superior’s shore, would think you were swearing at him. No, your best class of pa’tridge hunters in Wisconsin refer to our gallant fantail as just plain old pa’tridge—‘an’ dang it, neighbor, if you c’n ketch one toppin’ the hardwood, ye’ve earned him.’”
— “Pa’tridge Fever: Cause and Cure”
“I got [Mister President] a bowl of that precious oatmeal, and he was grinning at me when I handed it to him. I was afraid to say anything. Sentiment of the surface kind is foreign to the Old Duck Hunters. I jiggled the stove lids, piling in more wood. There was supper to get.”
— “The Day I Burned the Oatmeal”
“That’s how the President got my new waders. He stole across the street to my house and removed them while I mowed the lawn. I saw him sneaking back home with them, the dog tagging along behind. The dog was supposed to be my dog but had found a boon companion in Mister President. He seemed to have found advantages in the President’s mode of life that I could not offer.”
— “The Bandit of the Brule”
“The story has often been told and lost nothing in its repetition. Or maybe it’s a new story every time it happens. Maybe every new dauntless breast before a 12 gauge is distilled drama as sweet as honey, as right as rain.”
— “Gallopin’ Goldeneyes”
“An evening rite each day was to listen to weather reports on the radio. I was impatient for the duck blind, but this was Indian summer and I used it up, every bit of it. I used every day for what it was best suited. Can anyone do better?”
— “Nothing to Do For Three Weeks”
“The back porch light flicked on and the Old Duck Hunters were summoned to sit at a table arranged there of fried chicken and fearsome quantities of strawberries. Any number of people who have been entrapped on that back porch in the strawberry season can testify that when they leave they can be picked up and bounced, like a basketball.”
— “You Can’t Take It With You”
“Until that single whirring chicken shot by me so close that I could feel his propellor wash and I touched nary a feather, I was secretly telling myself that this upland bird shooting ought to be easy after shooting ducks. That lone cock of the popple country, slamming by me not more than thirty yards distant on an apparently straight course, took the duck hunter’s conceit out of me so thoroughly that I couldn’t readjust myself again that day.”
— “Chickens Fly Funny”
“The beginning is often a poor place to start the story of a duck hunt. The true devotee of the wind-swept autumn waters hunts many other things besides ducks. He hunts the unfolding secrets of the dawn and the message of the wind. He hunts the curling waves and the tossing tops of suppliant trees. He hunts the poignant loneliness of a tender, departing season and the boisterous advent of one more rigorous. All these he hunts and, old or young, he finds them as they were before—primordial, healing, and soothing to mankind in his whirling world of complexities.”
— “A Pot-Hole Rendezvous”
The cover image for this article is “Broadbill Shooting from a Sneak Box” by Lynn Bogue Hunt. The painting is one of some 150 included in Sporting Classics’ new book, Lynn Bogue Hunt: Angler, Hunter, Artist. At 9×12 inches and 192 pages, this extraordinary book has been published in two versions: The Collector’s Edition, hard bound with full-color dust jacket, sells for $60; the Deluxe Edition, leather-bound and limited to 500 books, all signed by Paul Vartanian, is $90.
To order, call 1-800-849-1004 or click HERE.
New, Just Released Lynn Bogue Hunt Art Book!
