Memorable Quotes Over the Years
A collection printed in the 1996 issue of Sporting Classics
The streams that hold trout are filled with spirits. They are filled with magic that will stay as long as someone comes to feel it. When we come upon old gear that has been well made and well cared for, we can feel the spirits in that, too. As long as we appreciate these things, and as long as we seek out and worship at the magic places, they and we will live forever. —Cliff Hauptman Fishing Column, Sept./Oct. 1990
He has become not so much a bird as a psychological force. He reminds you of a good general. When you are in the company of the right kind of general officer you are not so much in contact with a man as you are with a presence. A turkey, tuned to the pitch at which he stays through the spring, is such a presence. —Tom Kelly, excerpt from “Tenth Legion,” March/April 1987
In the first split-second when my buffalo burst from the bushes, I thought he was the most wonderful creature that ever lived, and when he dropped at my feet with a bullet in his brain and his eyes still open and fixed upon me, at that moment I knew a thousand times more about Cape buffalo than I had even minutes before. —Terry Wieland, “Vengeance,” Nov./Dec. 1993
You see, it was Harry who first introduced me to the fraternal oath of all fishermen. Never be caught telling the whole truth about how big or how many fish were caught. Always lie about the catch. — Frederick Pfister, “Dead Fish Tell No Lies,” May/June 1987
The reason dogs touch us in ways and places that nothing else can is that their souls are free from darkness. —Tom Davis, “Best of Breed,” Jan./Feb. 1995
Bird hunting, walking or riding, is a heritage sprung from the soil and the soul, steeped in the simple, manly values of honor and gentility as surely as one bracemate is expected to honor another and passed from generation to generation on golden, sun-dappled thanksgiving afternoons as a gift of the heart. —Mike Gaddis, “Here ’N There,” Nov./Dec. 1994
The fish jumped, shimmering like wet silver. He was a sight. If he were a sound, he’d have been thunder. —Scott Waldie, “Heaven is a river,” March/April 1987
Props make some guys nervous, but I like airplanes that have their stuff right out where I can see it working. I believe jets are reliable, but they remind me of my mother-in-law’s mind — I know it’s in there spinning like crazy and generating a lot of hot air, but I never know how. — Robert L. McKinney, “Caribou-Hoo, Nov./Dec. 1993
Since the heart attack, people who cared had urged him to take things easy, or at least not to go out fishing alone. He knew it wasn’t realistic to expect them all to understand that his best medicine would be the solitude he’d found on this stream nearly a lifetime ago. But he also knew that if he couldn’t fish and live his life the way he wanted to, he might as well be dead already. — Michael Altizer, “Last best Day,” Nov./Dec/ 1993
Grain fat and heavily antlered, an old Dakota plains buck can run into a treeless, overgrazed pasture, pull his tracks up behind him and disappear down a gopher hole. —Ron Spomer, “Them’s the Breaks,” Jan./Feb. 1995
Against the bright, luminous sky one sees just after sunset on clear, cold days the geese were etched, flock upon following flock. Those farthest away bore on with steadily beating pinions, the nearer birds beginning their glide, great wings cupped. It was beautiful beyond speech, almost heart-aching to behold and suddenly Carl was aware of the guns slanted back across his curved arm — and without reason (but with a certain knowing) he saw the gun gave the sight a greater beauty, for it was his hunter’s soul that transfixed him at the sight of the living splendor overhead. Kenneth H. Otterson, “The Bronze Goose,” Nov./Dec. 1990
Perhaps that is what makes Opening Day truly special, for no matter how old we are, no matter what or where we hunt, we have to put our guns and boots and coats away every winter and wait almost an entire year before we can take them back out. And that wait turns us all into seven-year-olds again. —John Steinbreder, “Opening Day,” Nov./Dec. 1995
I too, will sooner of later be shackled by age and health concerns. I will abandon exotic trips. I will sell my boat for lack of the strength to muscle it around. I will carry a minimum of tackle and haunt the safe and accessible places that will also, inevitably, be the most populous. I will begrudge the inquisitive few minutes of conversation they seek as I sense my time to fish running out. And will obsess over my proprietary right to some square yard of worn bank knowing that, good or bad, it is a place from which to do what I absolutely love most, and that time and circumstance are fast making it the most precious square yard on earth. —Cliff Hauptman, Fishing Column, March/April 1993
Blond, bearded, curly haired Ray Johnson is the kind of rugged Alaskan fishing guide you just assume was born two casts from the water and three jumps ahead of a grizzly. —Ron Spomer, “A Rush of Silver,” May/June 1990
The leader snapped like a disgruntled postal worker. — Tom Davis, “Skulling the Bones,” May/June 1995
Editor’s Note: This collection originally appeared in the 1997 March/April Issue of Sporting Classics.
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