PURSUIT

Hunters and Huntresses in the Field

By Dog Willing Publications

September 7^th, 2015

I guess most people would describe me as a photographer of gundogs. And it’s true. I do spend ungodly amounts of time, energy and money capturing images of gundogs. But along the way, I also snap a shot or two of the hunters and huntresses who follow the dogs, ready to harvest the game their canine companions manage to outwit.

Here are some of my favourite images of the hunters and huntresses with whom I’ve had the honour of sharing the most precious moments of my life. I hope you enjoy looking at them half as much as I enjoyed taking them.

A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience, rather than by a mob of onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this fact.
Aldo Leopold

For us hunting wasn’t a sport. It was a way to be intimate with nature.
Ted Kerasote

If there is a sacred moment in the ethical pursuit of game, it is the moment you release the arrow or touch off the fatal shot.
Jim Posewitz

But I called on the heavenly easer of travail, Artemis, mistress of arrows, and she is always — the gods be praised — my much-envied visitor.
Troezenian women. Euripides, Hippolytus 165

Der Jäger kennt den Atem der Natur, ihren gleichmäßigen Pulsschlag und selbstverständlichen Rhythmus. Ihre Einfachheit und Ursprünglichkeit empfindet er als Glück. Der Jäger ist nicht der Feind des Tieres. Er kennt vielmehr eine mystische Verbundenheit mit ihm, auch dann, wenn der Kampf elementar und tödlich ist.
G. Blüchel

If some animals are good at hunting and others are suitable for hunting, then the gods must clearly smile on hunting.
Aristotle

All the sounds of this valley run together into one great echo, a song that is sung by all the spirits of this valley. Only a hunter hears it.
Chaim Potok

At home a friend will ask, “Been bird hunting?” You will say that you have, and when he asks, “Have any luck?” You will think of what you have held in your heart instead of your hand, and then answer that you certainly did — without a doubt. -
Gene Hill

How then, can you love a bird and kill it and still feel decent? I think the answer is, to be worthy of your game. Which boils down to a gentleman’s agreement between you and the bird, never forgetting that it is the bird that has everything to lose. It consists of things you feel and do, not because someone is looking or because the law says you may or must not, but because you feel that this is the honorable way to do it.
George Bird Evans

Je me demande quel homme j’aurais été si je n’avais, dès mon enfance connu la chasse. Différent, c’est probable. Moins humain, c’est certain.
Paul Vialar

Our greatest trophies are not things, but times.
Gene Hill

We’ve hunted together before and we’ve hunted together since, but the talk always takes on a softer, special tone whenever one of us starts a sentence, “Remember that day in the rain . . .”
Gene Hill

Write your story here. (Optional)

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
John Muir

Write your story here. (Optional)

A grown man walking in the rain with a sodden bird dog at his heels who can smile at you and say with the kind of conviction that brings the warmth out in the open, “I’d rather be here, doing this, right now, than anything else in the world,” is the man who has discovered that the wealth of the world is not something that is merely bought and sold.
Gene Hill

I would request that my body in death be buried not cremated, so that the energy content contained within it gets returned to the earth, so that flora and fauna can dine upon it, just as I have dined upon flora and fauna during my lifetime
Neil deGrasse Tyson

We recognize a universal truth….that our life, our breath and our thoughts are given to us by the plants and animals we eat. This is true for every one of us, whether we get our food by hunting, fishing, gathering, farming, gardening or shopping. The only difference is that we who inhabit the cities and suburbs and towns have forgotten. Our forgetfulness is created by the supermarket, where we pluck from the shelves processed bits of plants and animals that are hidden inside boxes, cans and packages, creating an illusion that we can have food without harvest, that life can be maintained without death, that our daily existence is separate from the land, and that we are fundamentally different from all other organisms.
Richard K. Nelson

Remember when time was cheap? The songs we sang about it told us that we had time on our hands, that time stood still, that tomorrow would be time enough. And now we find it was not. Suddenly times to come have become times past, and we must hoard it and spend it cautiously as the tag ends of a small inheritance . . . which is what it really was all along—except no one told us.
Gene Hill

Like my photos? Check out my book

Over a decade in the making, Pointing Dogs, Volume One: The Continentals is more than a rich collection of photographs. It is a definitive guide to the versatile gundog breeds of Continental Europe. It is an in-depth study of the history, development and current status of the pointing dog. And it is a remarkable travelog of an incredible journey. Written by a hunter for hunters, this volume provides detailed descriptions of all the pointing breeds from Continental Europe and it is illustrated with stunning images of hunting dogs doing what they were bred to do: hunt! Click here for a preview of the book or click on the photos below to order a copy.