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A Dog, a Gun and Time Enough (Part 8)
The George Bird Evans Collection
Written by John Cuthbert, Curator of the West
Virginia and Regional History Collection at West Virginia University
By the time of his death in 1998,
the bibliography of books by George Bird Evans had grown to some
twenty-seven monographs (including re-issues) and well over 100 articles.
Adding to his legacy is his enduring contribution as the breeder of the Old
Hemlock line of English setters whose descendants are still treasured by
bird dogs enthusiasts across America.
In his own eyes, however, it is quite possible that
Evans would consider his greatest accomplishment to be his very existence
and the manner in which he lived it. Still hunting at age ninety-one, just
a few weeks before his passing, his life was, after all, the epitome of
everything he desired – a life well spent, in the company of his beloved
wife Kay, with “a dog, a gun and time enough.”
A Page from the Shooting
Journal.
The Regional History Collection is pleased to
announce the receipt of a vast array of publications, manuscripts,
illustrations, audio visuals and personal papers of George and Kay Evans
from the Estate of Mrs. Evans who died in 2007. Among the many treasures of the George
Bird and Kay Harris Evans Collection is George’s voluminous “shooting
journal” which document the details and results of some 65 years of hunting.
The following entry, one of thousands of similar
entries, is the first of the 1945 season. It was the first entry made by
Evans after his return to Old Hemlocks after World War II.
Shooting
Notes 1945
20 October, Saturday. Home to our
hills, for all time – and all the hunting that will ever be! Indian Summer
at its golden height made for poor visibility today, but glorious autumn
woods to walk thru with Kay, Blue, and my gun. Delayed by the necessity of
a phone call to New York, we started our
opening day after lunch – hunting the territory along Sandy
[Big Sandy Creek] across from Ray Guthrie. We found sawmill operations in this
section had changed the cover considerably but evidently not to any degree
to affect the birds. We moved two grouse below the log road in the thick
growth that covers the ridge above Sandy.
Blue found another in the edge of the fields in a brush pile that almost
gave me a shot. We covered the rhododendron ravine with no results, but a
very nice point from Blue that produced nothing.
At
the foot of this ravine Blue made a beautiful point upon striking scent and
then moved in and froze. A big grouse flushed to my right from under a
large hemlock and zoomed skyward without my having a chance to shoot. Soon
after, we flushed another from the edge of Sandy. We crossed to Ray Guthries’ and
about sundown found four grouse that gave us some excellent hunting but no
shooting. Blue made another beautiful point – striking scent and then
moving in and pinning the bird – exactly the way I want him to handle
grouse. We came home in the light of the full “hunter’s moon” after a
beautiful day in beautiful woods. No Shots (flushed 10 or 11) moved 10-10
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