Album: National Sportsman & Hunting and Fishing

William Harnden Foster was born in 1886 in Andover, Mass. and studied art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He was editor and chief illustrator of 'National Sportsman', 'Hunting and Fishing', and 'Skeet Shooting News' magazines, wrote 'New England Grouse Shooting' (published posthumously in 1942), and in 1928 was selected as the first President of NSSA, having helped create the sport in 1915. He died in 1941 while reporting the New England Open Grouse Championship. Other cover art contributors included Philip R. Goodwin, Lynn Bogue Hunt, P.B. Parsons, Howard Proctor, Abbot Cheever, William Eaton, Walter Hemenway, Harry Livingston, Edwin Megargee, Gordon Nichols, Arthur Hutchins, and Lee Willenborg.

Foster led National Sportsman magazine to become the "Premiere Advocate of the Game Restoration Program." From 'New England Grouse Shooting' - "Grouse hunting without a dog is not grouse hunting at all." "Hunting with a good dog during the shooting season is the essence of the sport and because of the shortness of the season many grouse hunters continue to follow the grouse with their dogs, fully absorbed in watching the work and continued training, with no sense of loss because the gun is packed away at home..." "As the grouse hunter's interest in better dogs increases he becomes more careful of the only bird on which a grouse dog can be made and thus becomes more sparing in his shooting in order to preserve a supply of game that is more important to his future sport alive than dead." "In referring to some carefully-kept records covering the last ten yearsof average New England grouse shooting, we find that the average distance at which grouse were killed throughout the seasons was in the neighborhood of 23 yards. These records were compiled by shooters of average reactions who use guns weighing a little under 6 pounds. This average distance will seem short to those who have never taken the time to measure the ranges at which grouse, both early and late in the season, are actually hit."