As you can see, this image looks more like a color sketch than a fully developed painting.  I felt this approach captured the feeling of chaos that surrounds the sudden flush of game birds.  Even when you know they are there, you can't suppress the startled response to a flush rooster pheasant.  When the company I painted it for got the image and the suggested title, their response was, "We like the painting, but the title doesn't work.  The bird flushed, it didn't hold."  I told them that there was more than one bird in the painting.  The title stuck.  However, "holdin' tight" won't escape the nose of these two pointers.

-- Excerpt from the book "Wild Things, Wild Places" on the painting "Holdin' Tight"