Introduction

To sportsmen all over the world, the very word “Game” evokes vivid memories of sights, sounds, scents, and flurries of sudden adrenaline-pumping action—midges and the glorious colors of maple leaves; birch and aspen trees and the sound of running water; a raven croaking above a highland corrie; an elk bugling; a ruffed grouse exploding from a forest floor. A bell tinkling on a Brittany spaniels’s collar; the iodine smell of the sea; dawn and skeins of geese honking overhead; the russet plumage of a woodcock blending with the golden colors of dead bracken; numb feet and thin, wintry sunlight glinting on the phoenix plumage of a pheasant; the graceful movement of a white-tall buck; the earthy smell of wet dog; the exquisite sensation of hot water on frozen limbs, log fires, and in all its different forms, the most delicious food.