Wild River Press is proud to present this high-quality reprint of one of the greatest grouse books ever written—and illustrated. For William Harnden Foster was not only a fine writer. He was also a classically trained artist. His mood-capturing paintings, charcoal drawings and pen-and-ink sketches of gunners and their bird dogs roaming the half-overgrown farms and tumbledown stone walls of early 20th-century northern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire are among the finest ever created. His lyrical writing is the perfect match.

New England Grouse Shooting is a wonderfully captivating book by an erudite and educated bird hunter who experienced the heart of the golden era of ruffed grouse hunting, when market hunting was vanishing and a new sporting ethic was emerging. Indeed, Foster played an influential role in shaping that ethic. This is the masterpiece to which dedicated upland bird hunters return again and again, for inspiration and a reminder of those good old-fashioned feelings about why we love the sport.

New England Grouse Shooting was first published in 1942 by the prestigious New York publisher Charles Scribner’s Sons, home to legendary authors Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. Tragically, the author never saw it. Foster died suddenly of a heart attack the previous October at the end of a field trial in Connecticut; he was only 55. Foster’s literary and artistic legacy lives on in this classic book whose charm, warmth and wisdom radiate from every chapter:

  • The Little Gun
  • Yesterday’s Pa’tridges
  • Your Grouse of Today
  • The Grouse Dog
  • Grouse Guns and Loads
  • Hitting a Grouse
  • Grouse Shooting Outfits
  • A Lesson in Grouse Shooting