"Words Say It All"

How many things can one person excel at in a single lifetime?  While I don't know if any answer is truly correct, I do know that the simultaneous pursuit of perfection across multiple subjects at one time can drive a person absolutely mad!  As someone who is a little OCD, a lot ADHD and who's brain probably looks similar to a fall carnival, complete with loud music, horses bobbing up and down and colorful fireworks, I feel completely qualified to make such a statement.  Having confessed to how "jacked up" I really am, I do believe that we all wish that we were better at many things in life.  While the business owner probably wishes he was as good at hunting as he is at accounting or the professional baseball player wishes he was as successful at catching fish as hitting the clutch single, I secretly wish I was as good at writing, as I am at selling stuff.  As I type this blog, I can't help to think that what I am typing is complete garbage and doesn't do justice to the 10,000 thoughts that are going through my head.  Anyway, I digress.  Below, I have listed some of my favorite quotes and hope that one day I can be as eloquent with the written word as the men that penned them.

"Thus we see that the lot of the duck hunter is not a happy one. He is the child of frustration, the collector of mishap, the victim of misfortune. He suffers from cold and wet and lack of sleep. He is punished more often than rewarded. Yet he continues. Why? Because one great day-- and great days do come, days when the ducks are willing and the gun swings true-- repays him many fold for all the others." -Ted Trueblood

"I pity the duck hunter who goes for ducks alone. I pity the duck hunter who has not filled his being the dawn magic. I pity the one who cares not, or knows not, what he has killed...There is a great deceit in duck hunting by which men count their sport in terms of 'limit bags' and 'good shooting.' Be not fooled. These same men would great the rising sun in season though they knew their chances of killing even a single duck were very, very poor indeed." -Field & Stream, December 1937

"I have always had a soft spot in my heart for marshes. They challenge me to come and look. Their capacity for mothering wild life is far greater than the drier uplands, no matter how beautiful they may be. It seems to me that no man is closer to the beginning of things and the eternal motherhood of the outdoors than when he is familiar with a marsh." -Field & Stream, December 1936

"When you have shot one bird flying, you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways, but the sensation is the same and last one is as good as the first."-Ernest Hemingway

“There is a solitude, or perhaps a solemnity, in the few hours that precede the dawn of day which is unlike that of any others in the twenty-four, and which I cannot explain or account for. Thoughts come to me at this time that I never have at any other.” –George Bird Grinnell

“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

“In a civilized and cultivated country, wild animals only continue to exist at all when preserved by sportsmen.” –Theodore Roosevelt

"We keep our memories in the same place we bury dogs and pals who are no longer with us. We keep these treasures in the vaults that hold the sights of geese pitching into a set of field decoys and quail buzzing out of a brushy corner by a split-rail fence. And when the time comes, when it’s easier to remember old times than to gather up new ones, it is to this place that we go, you and I, to watch for the flight at sunset." – Steve Smith

"A goose represents the rebel in all of us and because they’re wild and free, they have a certain quality that shines out and makes us wish that we were not bound to labor in life, but rather that we could drift as they do with the seasons." – Paul Bernsen 

"There is much to be said in behalf of the solitary way of fishing and hunting. It lets people get acquainted with themselves. Do not feel sorry for the man on his own. If he is one who plunges into all sorts of work, if he does not dawdle, if he does not dwell upon his aloneness, he will get many things done and have a fine time doing them."

"Time is probably more generous and healing to an angler than to any other individual. The wind, the sun, the open, the colors and smells, the loneliness of the sea or the solitude of the stream work some kind of magic." – Zane Grey 

"Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in." -Mark Twain

“We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected.” –Henry David Thoreau