Every outdoors person I know is a sentimental character who finds as much joy in the recollection of days afield as in an actual game kill or catch. There is one sure-fire way to feed the warm glow of a pleasant memory, but the trail ends since October no longer plays a hand. At this time of year, the Maine woods are garbed in their fiery autumn finery. The leaves and foliage are taking on one last glow of brilliance.

The woodlands are quieter this morning because the footprints of two fine men, Richard “Dick” Wolters of Hanover, Va., and Del Phinney of Dennysville, are no longer seen on the autumn stage. Their tracks have been washed away by the winds and rains.

In the world of the hunter, the curious, the exceptional, those two were special people.

Wolters was an author, lecturer, artist, and dog-lover. He died last week on a Virginia hillside. His counterpart, though I suspect they’d never met, Del Phinney, was a world-class trainer of retrieving and pointing dogs. His time on earth ended at a trap and skeet shoot in St. George, Canada.

I could tell you much of about those two stalwarts, my friends.

For more than three decades, Wolters debunked the hallowed tenets of professional dog training. In 1961, his book, “Gun Dog,” which, when I last heard, was in its 39th printing, recommended that a dog’s training should begin at the tender age of 49 days – the precise time animal behaviorists claimed that a canine’s learning processes come alive – instead of waiting the customary year.

When Wolters’ “Gun Dog” hit the book shelves, professional trainers the length and breadth of the continent ridiculed the 49-day timetable and immediately pegged him to be some kind of a screwball.

While the experts fussed, Wolters went on to prove his point by turning spring puppies into working bird dogs by fall. Meanwhile, his first book was selling out at the shops.

His best-seller triggered a series of books: “Water Dog,” which applied Wolters’ technique to the retrieving breeds; “Family Dog,” “Beau,” “Instant Dog,” “City Dog,” and a classic tome titled “The Labrador Retriever,” all the while producing magazine pieces dealing with topics from cooking a fish to ballooning.

But dogs, all dogs, got most of the Wolters’ attention.

“Everyone knows big dogs do not belong in little apartments,” he wrote. “Wrong. Anymore than the law of the land saying fat guys should not ride motorcycles. Dogs come in all sizes and shapes. I never heard of a lobster fisherman choosing a wife by size, so why should it be different for dogs? A good dog, like a good spouse, adapts to any reasonable living conditions if there is love and affection in the living.”

The good in that sentence is significant.

He had opinions about good and bad dogs and expressed them publicly. Wolters held that some breeds were better than others if they were to be town and city dogs, especially where children were part of a family. Basset hounds, beagles, retrievers, English setters, and Brittany spaniels had a place on Wolters’ favored list. And, as you likely suspect, he had a “bad” list.

This lineup included such favorites as the Chihuahua, dachshund, Scotch terrier, Yorkshire, and cocker spaniel. He made these judgments based on temperament and how much care a breed demanded and how easy it was to train the breed.

Wolters’ so-called bad list cut into his social calendar.

Laughingly, he once recounted that one of his New York neighbors took it as a personal affront when he included the Chihuahua on his bad list. One individual, a neighbor, vowed in writing that Dick and his wife, Olive, never again would be invited to his New Year’s Eve cocktail party. Since Wolters never attended a cocktail party he didn’t like, this hit him like a Rocky Marciano body blow.

Dick Wolters made the cold, windy days of fall more pleasant. He dressed for hunting like a model introducing a new shirt in Gentleman’s Quarterly. He was a fashion plate on the fall hunting stage, seldom wearing the same bush garb two days in a row. He accompanied Jack Randolph and Larry Koller one fall, and this was our first meeting.

I recall one night at Loon Bay, New Brunswick, where we had been birding. Dick got into a face-to-face dialogue with a man who said he favored German-bred bird dogs. Wolters heated up the conversation by saying, “In most cases, they are one-man, hard-headed animals who need a firm hand in training. Prussian dogs are very different than English dogs. Like their owners, English dogs tend to have a quiet dignity and are good-natured.”

There was a cold snap in the wake of that conversation. The man with the German shorthair and Wolters never so much as said “Good mornin’!” to each other after that confab.

Wolters was ahead of his time when talking about dogs at clinics and seminars. Before folk began barricading their doors to prevent crime, Dick was telling dwellers to forget their ideas of an attack dog. “Get and train what I call an alarm dog, one that barks and lunges menacingly when given a secret command, such as clearing one’s throat.”

This was a rare and talented man who regularly left tracks in Maine bird covers. He was a graduate chemist, snow skier, angler, hunter, camper, art director, author, media consultant, glider pilot, balloonist, photographer, and no Roy Clark when it came to strumming his ever-handy guitar. He was a thoughtful, kind, compassionate, talented soul, and now that he is gone, October will be missing one of its fondest admirers.

There was a lot of Wolters in my longtime friend, Del Phinney.

He was an accomplished and avid hunter and a trainer of dogs. Del loved the woods and the waters of Maine. The know-it-alls who write books about hunting tell us we should be traipsing around the woods if we plan to have a successful year of gunning. Del did that year after year to acclimate himself to the surroundings and learn about the habits and movements of the birds he planned to hunt.

If one can borrow from today’s baseball language, the real Mr. October was Del Phinney. Grouse, woodcock, waterfowl, and World Series baseball. This time of the year was when Del was at the top of his game.

Del’s career was more than that of a mortal whose forte was training a dog to perform like a champion. This man dearly loved his Washington County home field and that region’s other interests – basketball, baseball, et al. He was a man for all seasons.

It’s a lovely but hard old world we share, and in hours like these, remembering what October meant for a Phinney and a Wolters, understanding is not easy. Not easy at all.