William Harnden Foster

       "It was the toughest assignment I ever had," he said. In a bright Rhode Island evening at the Northeast Woodcock Championship in 1998, I attached a small wired microphone to the shirt of Frank Foss, set a video camera on a tripod and began asking him questions. Frank reported trials as far back as the 1930's and was the reporter for the inaugural running of the Grand National Grouse Championship in 1943.

        But that 'toughest assignment' that Foss spoke of came a year earlier. Frank was judging the new England Open Grouse Championship in 1941. Both judges and the reporter were on foot. Foss turned around to say something to the reporter when he saw the reporter pitch backward and fall to the ground. "Dr. Neachem was in the gallery," Foss recalled, "I can still see him kneeling there and looking up and saying, 'This man is dead.'" 'This man' - the man lying there, was William Harnden Foster. Foss had to finish Foster's reporting assignment.

        Born in Andover, Massachusetts on July 22, 1886, Foster showed a talent for art early. After graduating from Punchard High in Andover, MA, he studied art at the Museum Of Fine Arts in Boston for three years and then studied another three years at Howard Pyle Art Colony in Delaware. His first work was published by Scribners on a series of trains titled "All in a Day's Run". He did the paintings while still studying under Pyle, who suggested that he show them to Scribner's Magazine to see if they might be interested in publishing them. They were, and asked him to write a few words to go along with them. That began his writing career to go along with his painting.  He was then commissioned by Scribners to cover the building of the Panama Canal. The following year a series of Foster paintings of what were then called "aero planes" was published by Scribners.

        W.H. Foster was also, from his early days, an avid sportsman. Eventually his association with the National Sportsman Magazine brought him into contact with a number of noted sportsmen and conservationists. During this period he and several associates developed a method for practicing shooting moving objects which came to be called "Skeet." (Foster is in the Skeet Hall Of Fame.)

        And for much of his adult life William Harnden Foster was also interested in wing shooting, bird dogs, and field trials. Field Trial Hall Of Fame reporter William Bruette noted, "Mr. Foster's interest in the New England Field trials was constant and primarily directed to the introduction of a higher class conception of the working grouse dog." In time Foster collected his thoughts on wing shooting and grouse and dogs in book called New England Grouse Shooting. Filled with history , wisdom, and stunning illustrations by the author himself, the book is still one of the great classics of our sport.

We are proud that our top dog award honors the memory of this fine and talented man.