From the
Introduction
The major inspiration for this book was a desire to tread along a much
older trail—that of Dr. Charles C. Norris’s Eastern Upland Shooting,
first published in 1946 —to update things, to bring a sense of past,
present and future altogether and share with readers the status of upland bird
gunning in the 21st century in the states east of the Mississippi River. After
all, while the lure of the West was, is, and always will be strong in American
culture; it is the East where most of us live, work and spend our time,
particularly our sporting time. Adventures out West call us, but remain out of
reach for a great many gunners. What is in reach are the grouse and woodcock
coverts; dove, quail and pheasant fields; the turkey woods closer to home.
Distinguishing
the boundaries between what is East and what is the West in North
America is not an adventure for the Type-A personality. Great patience is
required for sifting through evidence of this being East and that being West. A
million niggling questions howl like coyotes in the middle of the night at the
adventurer seeking answers: What are the boundaries? Where are they? Certainly,
geographical divisions exist—rivers, mountains, some sort of land feature where
a foot one side means you’re standing in the East; a foot on the other, you’re
in the West. If no clear geographical boundaries arise, perhaps the boundaries
are cultural, say pickup truck cowboys vs. Mercedes tweedy dudes? What about
vegetation—sagebrush vs. forest; or maybe critters, like buffalo vs.
white-tailed deer, or prairie chickens vs. woodcock. Or maybe it’s in
demographics, people densities, the West is supposed to be “wilder” than the
East.
If
not there, history has to have some answer…look at settlement patterns, how
areas came to be, old to new. And politics, that old right coast, left coast
stuff…California, the land of the fruits and the nuts!
Maybe
it’s all a matter of nuance, of definition, of who says this is East and that
is West.
In
reality, East and West have nebulous boundaries. Both are defined by all of
these things—and more.
For
example, the geographical boundaries between East and West frequently depend on
interpretation: A Georgian, for example, might well insist that Missouri is
“out West,” while his Tennessee neighbor believes the “real West” doesn’t begin
until you’ve crossed the Missouri River. Cross Big Muddy up on the northern
plains, heading west on I-90 in central South Dakota, and the river seems a
valid division: The eastern bank is a land of flat cornfields, soybeans and
pheasants. The western bank is the Great Plains, a former shallow sea bottom, a
landscape of sage green undulations rolling into the horizon. This land looks
like buffalo country, it sprawls infinitely. It looks West. Yet down at the southern
terminus of Big Muddy, where the river bends, cutting The Show-Me State in
half, the land west of the river is not all that different from the land east
of the river: Olean, Missouri, infamous home of the annual early-June Testicle
Festival—where the Jaycees and local residents, as well as perplexed onlookers,
come to enjoy good old-fashioned beef andpork cojone cooking—is
not all that different from Brookfield, Missouri, which lies between General
John J. “Black Jack” Pershing’s Linneus, Missouri home, and Walt Disney’s
Marceline, Missouri home. Western Arkansas, eastern Oklahoma, and certainly
much of east Texas look more like East, with forests and crop fields and green
grass, than the dry, brown grasslands of the West. Big Muddy here doesn’t meet
the standards of an East-West boundary. (1)
So
what about flora and fauna? There are no wild bison in western Pennsylvania’s
coal towns, or Buffalo, New York. So how did Buffalo get its name? Honestly.
Three, some say four, subspecies of bison (a.k.a. buffalo) once roamed North
America: 1.) the plains buffalo’s (bison bison bison), whose range
extended all the way to the western Appalachians; 2.) the woods buffalo (b.
b. athabaca), a northern race whose
remnants still reside in Canada; 3.) the Eastern buffalo, (b. b. pennsylvanicus), which roamed the
Appalachians and some points east of the mountains. The eastern race inhabited
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia but were extinct by 1815. One account
credits the last buffalo in the East being killed in 1799.
Whitetails
would seem to be the quintessential deer of the East. Yet they aren’t,
especially during the last century, when whitetail populations—with the help of
man—have pushed further west. About 30 sub-species of whitetails currently
inhabit North America between the edge of the Arctic Circle and where South and
Central America meet. Historically, whitetails were not a big feature of the
West, particularly in the Great Basin and in the deserts of the Southwest. They
were present but not common on the prairies, thanks to periodic large-scale
fires. Today, however, whitetails, like starlings, are everywhere, even
regarded as a threat to native mule deer because the whitetails can push muleys
out of their traditional habitat. Nature abhors a vacuum, and the hand of man
is always quick to “help.”
Surely
an Eastern bird like woodcock, or western birds like prairie chickens could
help to define East vs. West? Not so. Before John Deere’s sodbuster plow broke
Illinois’ rich tallgrass prairie loam in 1837, prairie chickens, like buffalo,
extended across Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, even western Pennsylvania. Although
the birds tolerated a 60/40 percent mix of crops to native grassland habitat,
as more land fell under the plow, the fate of prairie chickens was clinched.
Also, the prairie chickens’ cousin, the heath hen, another pinnated grouse,
filled a habitat niche on coastal plains along the Atlantic seaboard from
Virginia through New England.
Woodcock
breeding territory does fall mostly east of the Mississippi, yet Mississippi
valley becasse heading to Louisiana wintering grounds have been found
quite far west of the big river. Is a Kansas woodcock an eastern bird? The
boundary grows fuzzier.
Okay,
what about flora? The prairie is regarded as a Western land feature, while
temperate forests are an Eastern thing, right? This all depends on whether
Ohio, Illinois and Indiana are eastern or western states, because the tallgrass
prairie was a prominent natural land feature in these states, as was a
transition zone, a mixture of forest and prairie, between the Eastern forests,
including the vast flatland oak-hickory forests west of the Appalachians in
northern Illinois and Indiana and central and eastern Ohio.
Sagebrush
(Artemisia) could well be deemed a truly western plant, limited as it is
to the dry Plains and Great Basin. Yet the gray, hairy-leaved perennial Dusty
miller (Artemesia stellariana), which, like all artemesia, including
sagebrush, originally hails from Asia’s steppes, has colonized East Coast
beaches. Again, nature abhors a vacuum. (2)
If
messy nature cannot define East and West, can man be more precise?
History
certainly can’t. Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier “safety valve” thesis—it
says that without a western frontier to escape to, to conquer, to explore, the
people of North America would have developed more like Europeans, than they
did, as if the “ugly American” isn’t bad enough.
Turner’s
frontier has mutable boundaries. In the early 1600s, the East is the Atlantic
seaboard’s Roanoke Island, Virginia. It moves to Jamestown, and the coastal
plain; then the piedmont and east flank of the Appalachians, during the
Colonial period and Daniel Boone’s day; then the west flank; then the old
Northwest Territories (the Lake states); followed by the prairies and the Rocky
Mountains though the 19th century’s tumult of Manifest Destiny and its resultant
subjugation of the lands, peoples and resources between the Atlantic and
Pacific coasts. Without knowing it, map makers followed Turner’s lead, changing
what represented the East as growing beyond the Appalachians in the early
1800s, to the Mississippi by mid-century, and beyond that by the late 1800s. (3)
Demographics
show settlement patterns coming from both East and West coasts, not from just
the East. A quick look at a modern map of North America shows just how this is
so: The heaviest densities of human beings occur along the Atlantic, Pacific
and Gulf coasts, followed by the shores of the Great Lakes. The midlands of the
nation remain fairly empty. This bi-coastal development began with the first
Spanish settlements in California during the 17th century, and exploded with the Gold
Rush of 1849.
What
of “accepted” definitions of East and West? Certainly someone has decided this
is East, that West. In my Oxford American Dictionary, “East,” lying
between “easel” and “Easter,” is “the eastern part” of the United States as
well as that part of the world lying east of Europe—Asia and the former
communist nations of the Soviet Union.
If
East represents what is not West, how about West? Again my dictionary is
vague. “West” slinks between “werewolf” or “-wolves,” and “westbound.” West,
the dictionary says, is that point on the horizon “where the sun sets”; that
part of the United States lying west of “the originally settled areas;” land west
of the Mississippi, the western part of something, as well as Europe and
United States in contrast to “oriental” countries. (4)
All
these contradictions put the adventurer seeking East between a rock and a hard
place.
Six
degrees of separation…six key connections, six
people, separate Elizabeth, Queen of England from the homeless man
wandering New York City. The Lakhota (Sioux) have a concept that predates this
by a couple thousand years, mitakuye oyasin, literally “all my
relatives.” A more useful definition is all things are connected. And that is a
theme that connects various aspects of this book.
So
let us make our own definition of East—yet remain connected to the rest of the
world. Our East includes the states east of the Mississippi River, as well as
Minnesota, which straddles the Mississippi. We’ll touch a bit on the Canadian
provinces of Ontario, Quebec, Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, New
Foundland, and Prince Edward Island, as well.
A
number of gunning writers have discussed their home places—in the Appalachians,
in the South, in New England—but no one since Dr. Norris has looked at the East
as a whole. It is long past time to do so again.
I
call the East home —sometimes reluctantly. I was born and raised here, I am a
product of its quiet, rural, birdy places, its forests, fields and farms; as
well as its cities and suburbs, its bulging mass of people, its throbbing
industrialization. The East has been my home for all but a season of my life. I
know its beauty and its ugly warts.
I am
a reluctant Easterner because to identify one’s self with the East often has
its disadvantages, especially when headed West. For example, during my
post-college cowboy/mountain man period in the summer of 1982, when I worked
for a big game outfitter in northwestern Montana, being an Eastern “dude” was a
definite handicap. Especially when the client relying on you to lead him from a
trout fishing lake back to camp discovers that the ride to the lake was the
first time you’d been over that trail, and he asks you about grizzly bears. It
is also a handicap when you’re trying to gun western quail or grouse and people
assume you couldn’t understand anything about the struggle over grazing rights
or the Dust Bowl’s impact on the prairie; or when they labor under the
supposition that you and your big, pretty setter are incapable of handling the
physical rigors of the Wild West. Many Westerners seem to assume
Easterners—especially quail and ruffed grouse gunners—are effete, tweedy,
pipe-smoking sports who spend their time perching on stone walls, an old double
draped across their lap, dog at their feet, glorying only in the past.
Encountering this attitude, the nasty part of me would love to trot the
hard-bitten types up and down some Appalachian Mountain grouse coverts I know,
then see who wants to sit on a stone wall. My better half merely smiles and
shows them I can more than keep up.
Yes,
elements about a great many Eastern gunners, including myself, are rather
tweedy. To be honest, I like these things. They are part of what makes gunning
the Eastern uplands special, they add a unique sense of continuum to the
timeless flow of gunning—a sense of maintaining traditions, if you like. I
won’t, for example, trade my classic side-by-side for any plastic-stocked
autoloader, no matter what the cost. My dogs will always be big, handsome
creatures of substantial minds, stout hearts, classic DeCoverly lines and
well-feathered, silky legs and tails. And I expect to wear my version of a
necktie—a neckerchief with a slide—while gunning because I like to. Never mind
that it’s quite practical, helps keep the twigs, grit and field fluff out of my
shirts.
So,
I am an Easterner.
My
home is about 60 miles due west of what was Dr. Norris’s “Main Line”
Philadelphia estate, now moldering in the consumptive shadow of
megalopolis—that immense, connected collection of urbanization that spans the
Atlantic coastline and piedmont from Boston, Massachusetts to Norfolk,
Virginia. (The folks between Atlanta, Georgia and Miami, Florida may soon apply
for admission, thus completing a very formidable wall of humanity along the
Eastern seaboard.) However, for the time being, however, 320-year-old
Philadelphia remains the midpoint of megalopolis.
William
Penn, Philadelphia’s founder, took stock in the power of naming, christening
the crown jewel of his densely-forested colony, “the city of Brotherly Love,”
an amalgam of Greek. Penn regarded his colony—proffered as payment for a debt
by England’s Charles II—as a “holy experiment,” and as governor and proprietor
ensured that his pacifist Quaker ideals were respected in his colony by the
crown. As a result, Pennsylvania had more religious freedom than most other
colonies, as well as a liberal government.
By
1776, Philadelphia was the second largest English-speaking city in the world,
second only to London. New York eventually surpassed Philadelphia in population
(in 1800), and as New York assumed a role as the nation’s cultural, commercial
and industrial center, Philadelphia’s fortunes slowly declined throughout the
19th century. Five yellow-fever epidemics between 1793 and 1820, which killed
thousands but led to the construction of the nation’s first city water system,
didn’t help. Yet Philadelphia enjoyed some amazing growth throughout the 19th century.
Many cultural and educational innovations took place here. It also became a
versatile manufacturing center, famous for high quality ships, hats, carpets,
saws, locomotives and textiles. City industrial workers lived a good life,
because the majority lived in homes they owned, usually within walking distance
of their employer’s mill or factory. The city even hosted the World Exposition
in 1876.
In
1894, a 37-foot bronze statue of Penn, sculpted by Philadelphia artist
Alexander Milne Calder and cast at nearby Tacony Iron and Works, was bolted to
a perch atop Philadelphia’s City Hall Tower. It was considered one of the
wonders of the modern world, and by gentleman’s agreement, for a time, no one
built anything higher than the bronzed Penn, so as not to obstruct the
founder’s metallic view of his colony, his city. (5)
We—Nancy,
her children Will and Katy, and the dogs and I—own two semi-wild acres along
the bluff that overlooks the Susquehanna River, near Columbia, Lancaster
County, Pennsylvania. It is our oasis in the midst of megalopolis.
Bald
eagles, once DDT victims, ride the river’s thermals above our home on occasion.
One day, I saw three adult birds, white heads and tails gleaming in the sun,
circling over the house. We’ve got nesting Baltimore orioles, Carolina wrens,
pee-wees and indigo buntings nearby. Last winter, we counted no less than 14
cardinals in a single bushy tree near the feeder we can see from the office
window.
Bobwhites
call from nearby farm fields each spring —probably escaped from a frustrated
gun dog trainer, because Pennsylvania hasn’t had decent bobwhite populations
for more than 30 years. Our wildlife agency’s wisdom wrote quail off, claiming
our winters are too cold, despite quail surviving Midwestern blizzards.
I
also hear pheasants crow on warm spring mornings up over the hill, beyond the
development of gargantuan, keep-up-with-the-Joneses houses on equally huge
lots. Pennsylvania’s pheasants were once the gem of Eastern gunning, with
million-bird harvests common in the mid-1970s, comparable to a good year in
Iowa. Lancaster and York counties were the epicenter of pheasant gunning,
out-of-state licenses common on the opener. In this region, pheasant openers
were once as big as the pumpkin army deer opener is statewide.
Hearing
a pheasant stirs something inside me because they were once my birds,
the birds of my heart—before I discovered ruffed grouse, and before the
wildness of York County’s farmland was yanked out by the roots. Today, all that
remains of Pennsylvania’s once copious pheasant fields are the game farm birds
our wildlife agency releases for gunners who want to remember. Compared to wild
pheasants—the natural (albeit imported) products of the land—it’s a poor excuse
for gunning. But it is what we have.
Deer
live their lives in the corridor of woods that cover our river hills. One
particularly large buck likes to show himself each deer season, just to keep
Ray, our flintlock-shooting neighbor down over the hill, a Harley-Davidson
motorcycle repairman, interested. The river’s hills were too steep to plow, too
poorly soiled to grow much. Yet Washington Boro, the village just downriver
from Columbia, is regionally famous for its tomatoes—something in the soil, the
way sun and river create a micro climate here, I’ve been told.
Waterfowl—diving
ducks, an assortment of puddlers, as well as Canada geese—nest on the river.
Early on foggy spring days, our setters often surprise paired mallards from the
swimming pool’s oval. In winter, squadrons of Canada and snow geese and tundra
swans dominate the open water below the islands, the whoosh of wings carrying
them over the house on their flights from the river to nearby fields and back.
We owe the discovery of our oasis to snow geese: Four Valentine’s Days ago, we
spotted a flock from the York County shore, crossed the river to see where the
birds landed. On the way back, we noticed the “For Sale” sign at the bottom of
the long, imposing gravel drive, and signed our lives away that spring.
Locals
believe the river hills attract people who march to the beat of a different
drummer. It is a back-handed compliment to be deemed a “river rat.” Yet I enjoy
it. Most people who live inland, away from the river, deem river rats to be
less significantly involved in “the right” social circles than those who
inhabit cookie cutter developments or some upscale city townhouse apartment.
But I’ve found river rats to be kind and good people, friendly, willing to lend
a hand wherever they can, and especially good to their neighbors. Assemble the
good traits from a cross between hillbillies and hippies, and you might
approach a river rat.
We
moved here three summers ago, acquiescence to schooling for children more than
a desire to be a part of Lancaster County. (Don’t tell anyone in Lancaster
County, but I, one of those York County hillbillies, slipped across the border
one dark night when the guardians of the three bridges spanning the river
between the counties weren’t looking. I don’t think they’ve discovered this
mistake yet, so I’m keeping a low profile.)
Despite
the tourist promotions about the bucolic Lancaster County lifestyle and how the
land is mostly farmland, connected to the Pennsylvania Dutch, a collection of
19th century Anabaptist Mennonite, Amish and other German religious
sects—we’ve had difficulty feeling towards the rest of Lancaster County the way
we do about our oasis. Lancaster County has far more warts than beautiful
features.
While
it’s neat to see Amish buggies pulled by high-stepping horses set against green
farm fields, and know that Lancaster’s farmland is some of the richest in the
world, the world surrounding us is far too typical of megalopolis to be loved
by anyone who has a strong appreciation of wild things.
Lancaster
County is becoming increasingly urbanized, yet many, particularly the tourist
promotion people, fail to recognize this. It has more far more strip malls,
convenience stores, highways, stacked interchanges, housing developments and
shopping outlets, than it does Amish farmers and bucolic countryside. Even the farms,
intensively cultivated from roadside to roadside, lack character. Hayfields are
cut four, sometimes five times a year. Corn and bean fields contain only
sterile rows of crops, never “weedy” bird cover. One biologist, commenting on
the lack of farmland wildlife habitat, stated that a crow flying over Lancaster
County would have a hard time spotting enough food and cover to support a field
mouse. Despite a few anomalies, like the pheasants and bobwhites I hear in the
river hills, the only birds Lancaster County can really support are migratory
birds like doves and waterfowl, that use the sterile fields as feeding grounds.
Looking at the economics, you can’t blame farmers. They are aging, their
families—in many cases, three and four generations off the farm, most with
higher education and working city jobs—have broken the land lineage. So when a
developer dangles the cash carrot in front of a plow jockey, usually more money
than he has ever seen, it’s hard to pass this by. Still, Lancaster County
farmers grow more housing developments and shopping malls than corn or dairy
cattle lately. Even the Amish have begun catering to the economic power of
tourism instead of living their 19th century agrarian lifestyle. Each
new mass of people that follow a new development require more land, more water,
more sewer lines, more recreation facilities (most, especially their children,
don’t know about the outdoors), more shopping places, more roads, more of
everything. Each day their numbers clog highways like platelets jamming an
artery. It is a slow, lingering death, where once bucolic Lancaster County is
being absorbed by Philadelphia’s suburbs, becoming one with megalopolis. Few
seem up to the losing battle of keeping it at a distance.
A
short canoe paddle downriver from my home are islands, part of the Susquehanna
Flats—a famous waterfowl gunning spot a century ago. Each autumn, its
reputation is rekindled, opening day bearing a resemblance to a Civil War
re-enactment until the ducks get wise.
Nearly
20 years ago now, wildlife artist Denny Burkhart (his work graces these pages)
introduced me to gunning the Susquehanna flats. I remember many exceptional
river days with Denny, mallards slip-sliding into the decoys, wings cupped,
orange legs reaching, our lungs blown out from calling the birds away from
other decoy spreads with those Olt Big River calls. Waterfowling—especially now
that I had a canoe—was one reason I wanted to live here.
For
over a century, what was basically unlimited public access to the Susquehanna
was a part of river life. Carry your canoe 10 yards across a pair of
little-used railroad tracks, climb down the embankment, drop the decoys in and
off you go. Many river dwellers maintained small boat docks and stairs leading
to them across the right of way. In another example of good-things-gone-bad
under megalopolis, for the last three summers the river is now largely
off-limits from the Lancaster County side—if you want to remain a
law-abiding citizen.
In
the name of public safety, Norfolk Southern Railroad began seriously enforcing
right-of-way private property rights on their Lancaster County track along the
Susquehanna (nearly 50 miles of track). Essentially, they closed all but three
widely-spaced public access points to the river in Lancaster County. Norfolk
Southern also requested that any stairs and boat docks be removed, or these
would be torn down.
The
company employs what we river rats affectionately term “railroad dicks”
(railroad police) to patrol the roads along the tracks in white horse-head
logo-marked company SUVs. The rail cops will prosecute trespassers, even if a
fellow merely steps across the rail line to reach the river.
This,
the company claimed, came about as a result of a teenager who died after
falling from a rope swing and striking his head on a rock in the river. The
tree was on railroad property. (Can you say liability lawsuit?) Others met
similar ignominious ends over the years, but nothing was done to protect us
river rats from our unfortunate selves until three summers ago—which happened
to be when we moved into our oasis. This time, however, the railroad was going
to get tough. Considering that in 2003 casualty claims cost the railroad $51
million, while other expenses were much higher—rents of $107 million, diesel
fuel bills totaling $104 million, etc. Did they have something else in mind? No
one knows, yet. (6)
I
love the history associated with our oasis. Our house is an 1895 farmhouse,
which once belonged to the uncle of a neighbor. Years before we found it, I
became fascinated with Conejohela, one of the last strongholds of the
Susquehannocks, a race of native people encountered by Capt. John Smith on his
initial adventure up the Chesapeake Bay and into the mouth of the Susquehanna.
Smith described the Susquehannocks as a tall, fierce people, covered in bear
and deer skins, whose voices sounded like they came from the bottom of a
barrel. Connejohela was a palisaded settlement, erected for protection against
Iroquois depredations, from whom the Susquehannocks are believed to have separated
about A.D.1000. Conejohela was located along the river somewhere near our
oasis, but from there the descriptions vary. Some say it was on the York County
side of the Susquehanna, between Wrightsville and East Prospect. Some say it
was on the Lancaster County side, near Columbia and Washington Boro.
Archeologists searched for the distinct ring formed from the remaining
palisades, but never found them, and it was always something of a mystery.
One
morning paddling downriver with a group of 18th century re-enactors, we stopped to
visit the petroglyphs carved on Indian Rock, at what was the mouth of Conestoga
Creek before Safe Harbor Dam was built in the early 1900s. The 25-mile float,
which included bypassing three of four lower-Susquehanna dams, was to celebrate
the spirit of the 1700s, French & Indian days, as much as possible. We
began at Shelley Island, in the ominous shadows of Three-Mile Island’s infamous
cooling towers; and ended at a two-day 18th century encampment, held at Indian
Steps Museum. The museum was erected in 1912 by an eccentric, yet far-sighted
York attorney, John Vandersloot, to celebrate his fascination with native
people and their influence on the area. Standing on Indian Rock, the half-way
point of the journey, I felt like I had traveled back in time as we moved
downriver. I admired their signs, a bird man and other creatures. Suddenly, it
occurred to me that the exact location of Conejohela really didn’t matter,
because I was in the midst of this ancient influence whenever I was on the
river. To be so close to this energy, so close to markings modern man can’t
decipher, yet they held meaning for an ancient people, was to connect with
Conejohela, with the Suquehannocks, with Vandersloot, with a continuum of time
and energy. In many respects, I had found an inner Conejohela.
Our
home, our oasis, lies between any number of worlds accessible via that time
continuum.
East
is the blue-blooded Main Line world of Dr. Norris. Like Norris, I grew up with
an appreciation of Pennsylvania’s once-abundant pheasant population, and
experienced some Keystone quail gunning, literally within steps of the
Mason-Dixon line. West is George Bird Evans’ West Virginia world of ruffed
grouse, woodcock and Old Hemlock setters. Like Evans, I came to know and develop
a sincere passion for ruffed grouse, woodcock and belton setters. I journey
frequently to this world each autumn—to some places Evans actually hunted (with
a mutual friend)—although it usually takes a few hours travel away from the
piedmont reality to enter this world. North lies William Harnden Foster’s New
England grouse shooting, and Col. Harold Sheldon’s tranquility. These rich,
maple red and birch yellow worlds I have visited, enjoying more grouse,
woodcock and waterfowl gunning. South is relatively new ground, a place I’m
honored to say that I’ve recently explored a good portion of, a rich
collections of Havilah Babcock and Nash Buckingham’s bobwhite world, Archibald
Rutledge’s and Tom Kelly’s turkey world, as well as other dimensions of southern
quail, grouse, woodcock, doves and turkeys.
We’ll
explore all these worlds in this book, both physically and metaphysically, as
well as some others perhaps you are not aware of. I hope that in this journey,
you’ll discover that gunning the Eastern uplands is really a journey of both
within and out, a journey of mind and body, traveling both forward and backward
in time. And this is, I believe what makes it unique….Let’s go.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Book I:
Dr. Norris, His Book & His World
Chapter 1 - The Quest For Sadie’s Man...
Chapter 2 -The Man & His Book.
Chapter 3 -Discovering Fairhill
Book II:
The Land
Chapter 1 - Quartet: Gun - Dog - Land - Time
Chapter 2- Regions
• The Coastal Plains...
• The Piedmont...
• The Appalachians...
• The Till Plains & Central
Plateau...
• The Great Northwoods...
• The Rice Prairies &
Mississippi Valley...
• The Eastern Prairie...
Book III:
The Dogs
Chapter 1 - Going To The Dogs
Chapter 2 - The Classic Eastern Gun Dog
Chapter 3 - The Modern Eastern Gun Dog
Chapter 4 - Darkness & Light
Book IV:
The Guns
Chapter 1- Karma...
Chapter 2 - A Quest For The Ultimate Shotgun...
Book V:
The Birds
Chapter 1 - Ritual.....
Chapter 2- Doves
Chapter 3 - Quail
Chapter 4 - Pheasants
Chapter 5 - Ruffed Grouse
Chapter 6 - Woodcock
Chapter 7 - Turkeys
Epilogue.
Conservation
Organizations
Endnotes
Index
