George Bird Evans

Book excerpt: The complete, authorized biography of one of America's premier outdoor essayists and dog breeders. This book tells of the lives of George and Kay Evans, their life together at Old Hemlock, and of the founding and perpetuation of their world-famous line of Old Hemlock setters. George Bird Evans established a beautiful, stylish line of English setter bird dogs. In the 1950's, he began writing about gunning the uplands over his Old Hemlock setters, which became his legacy. Over the next four decades, Evans wrote for several major sporting magazines and completed 20 books, including the classic The Upland Shooting Life. Evans continued to write and hunt until his death in 1998 at the age of 91. His passionate and contemplative literary contribution to upland gunning has influenced both writers and hunters for decades. This book offers one of the most complete biographies ever written about any of the greats of sporting literature.