Holding Ground

Sam Lucy has been hunting upland birds and waterfowl for more than three decades. In Holding Ground: Game Birds, Gun Dogs, Friends, And The Land In Between, Sam draws upon his years of experience and expertise to write twenty-three stories and poems about game bird hunting ranging from his youth hunting the valleys of eastern New Hampshire to his current abode in Washington's Cascade Range. Here are images of a noble labrador hunting dog's final retrieve, the halting steps of a young setter with a nose full of grouse scent, the homecoming of a young woman reconnecting with her past, and so much more that will resonate in the mind of the reader long after Holding Ground is finished and set back upon the shelf. Winter River: Come winter, I'll take a river/clear, cold, mountain born/lined in cottonwoods/kept by fields.//Mallards, pintails, snow/funnel down the north wind/straight from a somewhere prairie/to these strewn rapids/and long, quiet pools/freezing only at zero,/puffing restless mists,/driving late ducks.//Raucous fowl regale/feeding for what's ahead,/hungry from what's behind./My Lab and I watch/tucked close to a brush line/savoring the minutes/till the time now has come:/I stand,/the dog tightens,/the winter river roars, and/wings of current permeate.