Sam Lucy has been hunting upland birds and waterfowl for 30 years and now characterizes his avocation this way: "It's a lot more about friendships shared and the dogs. Hunting has become more pretty places and the silence and the rawness of the birds themselves. It has also become the great celebration of eating their wild goodness, more than the numbers bagged. "The mystique is what first caught me and it is what holds me to this day: the fascination of the untouchable; the reckless emotion that hits me at sunrise on a quiet marsh; the final turn of a call-fooled mallard drake; the sudden roar of the ruffed grouse's flush through the November wood; or the twitter and teeter of the timberdoodle." These words perfectly describe the mood Lucy creates in this extraordinary collection of stories. Whether he is writing about a noble Lab's final retrieve, the halting steps of a young setter with a nose full of grouse scent, or the homecoming of a young woman reconnecting with her past, the author is a consummate craftsman whose prose and poetry will touch everyone for whom bird hunting in all its facets is a lifetime gift.