From The Journal

    The opening weekend of the 2003 bird season I took my German wirehair pointer north for her second trip to the North Woods. Our first morning up there the woods dripped from a nighttime of steady rain and the sun hid behind a dark mottled sky.

      As Chara hunted down the slope ahead of me, I followed through alders and young poplars, trying hard not to brush against anymore wet foliage than necessary. We were searching for woodcock in those alders. Thirty years earlier I had hunted that same covert with my first bird dog, a boneheaded Brittany spaniel that taught me a lot. Unfortunately, I could teach that dog little.

       It’s funny how you don’t mind the wet woods once you find birds. At one point, before we had found any birds, I remember thinking that none of my friends would have enjoyed that morning, with soft mud sucking at boots and soaked cold clothes plastered to the skin.

      Near a brook that twisted down the hillside we chased two grouse in circles. It was like they didn’t want to leave their home territory and kept circling back. A few dozen fat fir trees along that stream broke up the yellowing poplars and still green alders, and provided excellent cover for those rotating grouse. Those stubborn leaves gave the grouse such an advantage that we finally lost track of them.

      But there were woodcock and Chara proved her worth. I shot as the first bird disappeared into the foliage and felt certain it was a clean miss, but my girl came bounding back with bird in her mouth. And the day kept getting better. When we walked out of the woods at eight-thirty a limit of woodcock rested in my game vest.

      Yet the best part of the morning was sitting on the tailgate of my truck and sharing cookies with Chara. 

      Parked on a logging road in the middle of nowhere, we watched the sun burn away the clouds to illuminate the reds of the maples and golds of the birches. As the air warmed, it smelled of sweet drying leaves and spicy grasses. The only sound came from far away in the hills, where a raven made his soulful cry.

Worm Soup

Alders

      The rain had finally stopped. It was time to get the dogs out hunting again. With the youngster in the house, Maggie, that meant looking for woodcock, because no finer bird was there ever for training a young pointing dog.

      The woods was soaked after three or four inches of rain in only a matter of hours. Winds had approached hurricane force and the power was out back at the house. Hundreds of trees were down everywhere. Logging roads would be impassible, unless one hacked their way in with a chainsaw. I opted for easier going and picked a covert next to a state road.

      Soft wet ground, like runny chocolate pudding, oozed down the hillsides. We pushed through raspberries and then blackberries into a stand of young alders. Maggie and Colby were in hyper mode, hunting hard, oblivious to the mud. Down the slope we sloshed. Then, where water puddled among alders, a bumped woodcock flew back over my head.

A rock pile left by a farmer.

      Clumps of young firs, growing on a series of hummocks the size of overturned bushel baskets, divided the alders from more poplars. We skirted an enormous pile of moss-covered rocks, left by a long gone farmer, and another thicket of blackberries. More fencepost-size poplars stood above bent and brown ferns, then into another cluster of alders we waded. Where were the woodcock?

      Far ahead, Maggie’s bell screamed silence. Colby’s still rattled off to my right. Then Colby’s fell silent too. Silence. Two dogs were pointing, what to do? How long would the young dog wait? I quickly stepped in front of closer Colby, knowing that if a bird flushed a gunshot would send Maggie into overdrive.

      No bird, I breathed relief, then hurried toward Maggie, while saying to Colby, “There’s no bird Colby. Where is Maggie? Let’s go find Maggie. This way girl, come on, this way.”

      Colby zigzagged through where she thought the bird was, but, finding nothing, she galloped ahead, disappearing into the alders. Ducking under and stepping over limbs and leaning trunks, I first saw the unmoving white of Colby’s coat and then Maggie’s brown silhouette, like a statue a dozen feet ahead of her. My heart pounded.

Soggy ground. How many dogs in the picture?

      Trying to approach through the tangle was frustratingly slow. And I needed to be able to stand to shoot, but the world was a jumble of limbs and trunks. As I stepped over a roadblock of tilting alders, the bird tweetered toward the sky. A shot is pointless, but tried anyway. The bird disappeared into the swamp.

      The dogs went into overdrive, fueled by bird scent and gunfire. We worked downhill to where thick grasses grew between the alders. Water was everywhere and the ground felt like stepping on a soggy pillows. Turning to the right, we followed where the saturated bare ground met the soaked grasses.

      In a spot wetter than most, puddles and pools dictated detours. Maggie pointed thirty yards ahead. As I tried to find a route towards her, Colby pointed to my right. White splashes covered the ground. A step toward Colby sent another woodcock aloft, but a shot was impossible. I hurried toward Maggie and a second one launched, offering an easy going away shot.

      After that the dogs were wound tight, with bird scent is in their nostrils and the taste in their mouths. Hunting hard and fast, they covered a lot of country, while I struggled to keep up. The scenario repeated three more times in the swampiest of places. Only one more bird fell to the gun.

      What were these birds eating? Drowned earth worms? Marinated in rainwater? How did the woodcock stay dry? Ducks would have swum happily between the trees.

     After we turned back toward the truck, I attempt to steer the dogs toward an old apple tree where ruffed grouse like to loiter. To my left, Maggie was up the hill further than I wanted and out of sight. Then her bell fell silent. I coaxed Colby in that direction, hoping she would find her for me.

      But Colby went on point where a small stream created an expansive quagmire in a flat spot. That woodcock flushed well ahead of me and disappeared into a cluster of firs. Colby dashed off toward the apple tree. Mumbling to myself, I headed toward Maggie and called Colby back.

      The young dog’s bell jangled again, then a woodcock weaved through the trees toward me, passed overhead, and disappeared down the hill. Impatient Maggie charged along in hot pursuit.

Wild apples and an abandoned field.

      The three of us followed the bird’s path into intertwined alders. Maggie’s bell went silent, then Colby’s too. I followed to the edge of a gully, where I could barely see both dogs locked on point not forty feet ahead of me. Stepping, twisting, crawling, and cursing, I pushed in. The woodcock tweetered upward and then down the hill, dropping like a stone beside a lone fir tree.

      We followed. The dogs hunted hard, tearing up the turf with water splashing. The bird seemed to have disappeared, but then took off next to my right foot. I never lifted my gun and neither of the dogs noticed it go.

      Hunting again toward the truck, both Maggie and Colby each found another woodcock where another tiny trickle wound down the hill, but in the tangled jungle both flew off without a shot being fired.

      Later that day we hunted across the street among ancient apple trees that the grouse love. We found no grouse, but, about to turn around and head home, I coaxed the dogs into a tiny patch of alders next to a small field. Colby instantly snapped into a point, then Maggie too. I marched into the alders and a woodcock twisted skyward through the branches. When it reached the treetops I fired.

Colby looking good.

      Colby made the retrieve and the dogs tussled harmlessly for a moment over ownership. 

      With wet feet and very happy dogs it was time to go home.

A Winter’s Walk

    The snow is deep and climbing over the plowed up snowbank is difficult. Then caution is required going down the slope, although slipping would only land one in a bed of thick fluffy snow. Stepping into the shelter of the softwoods a tiny stream gurgles beneath the snow, but a few steps on there is silence. The new snow has stolen all sound.

     The dogs zig and zag, following their noses and scents we can only try to imagine, snow is flying everywhere, then they disappear ahead.

    Boisterous squawks and clucks and thundering flaps of wings ahead!

    A big black turkey flaps overhead, then another. Hurrying on, the huge three toed tracks cover the snow. The dogs bound about with enthusiasm, going back then rushing ahead. Another turkey is aloft…five in all.

 

   When things quiet we proceed. Colby, the oldest German Wirehaired Retriever, stuffs her head into a fresh deer track. There are many tracks, all headed down the hill and none were there before this last snow. Both dogs show interest, but neither follow, instead vaulting ahead on the path hidden by snow. They know the way.

    An opening in the forest allows sunlight, it is almost a small field, and another slope through wrist-sized maples takes us to the valley’s bottom. More deer tracks, most wandering, with a few snowshoe hare tracks mixed in.

    Beneath tall softwoods a stream rushes, coming down through ledges above us and hidden by ice to be easily crossed. Only the muffled babbling gives away its presence.

    Next to the edge of a meadow, whose tall grasses are unseen beneath the snow, stands a fat ancient white cedar. The deer have beaten a path, coming down a particularly steep slope and passing next to the big tree. Maggie, the younger wirehair, plows through the open meadow in big bounds, the feathery snow up over her shoulders.

    On the far side we hear a grouse flush from a tree.

    Our path follows the edge where the soft boggy open ground meets the forested steep rocky slope. Above us spruce, maple, and birch cling to craggy ledges. Fractured rock shapes the hillside, creating vertical walls. A deer used our path since the last snow while one or two others crossed the spongy meadow.

    In a thicket of young fir trees we leap over a small brook. No ice has formed there yet. Only a couple of weeks ago spawning brook trout swam in the gravely shallows. Perhaps the soil of the boggy meadow warms the water to keep it from freezing. Beyond the stream the softwoods are huge and again swallow up the sound.
Branches bent with snow hang into our trail, sometimes sneaking snow down the collars of our coats. The path is hidden beneath the new white blanker and we stop to sort things out.

    A second ruffed grouse thunders from high up in a fir tree.

    The dogs sniff beneath its branches with tails wagging. There are no bird tracks in the snow. In ever widening circles they search. We walk on.

    Approaching a dogleg in the main stream we pass through alders then step out onto what is a gravely bar in the summer, but now is a plateau of snow. On the far side a small field allows the north wind to drift snow over the stream’s banks, creating wavy shapes with sharp edged shadows. A gentle wind nips at our faces so back into the shelter of the tall softwood trees we go.

    An otter created a shortcut where the brook makes a bend, leaving a lumpy trough through the snow. How many trout might the critter consume in the winter? Our path now parallels the stream. Pools that hold trout in the summer are now covered with ice and snow, but dark inky runs and riffles have so far remained fluid.

    Deer have crossed where the forest hugs the stream from both sides, avoiding the field and a near vertical slope ahead on the far side. Rabbit tracks mix with the deer tracks. Squirrel tracks look tiny. Unidentifiable little tracks look like stitching on the snow.

    A fir that leaned over the stream the past three summers has shattered from the weight of snow and now bridges the stream, its stubborn jagged stump pointing defiantly upward. Clumps of ice cling where the green branches touch the water and balls of snow sit atop, while dark water bulges around their bases.

   The path continues between the straight trunks of tall spruce and firs. Rusty barbed wire, inches inside the wood, stretches between a handful of trunks. Other fallen trees lay cross the stream, but have done so for two or three years. One day a large spring runoff will carry them away, but in the meanwhile summertime trout hide beneath.

     At another large bend, where the stream alters its course to create a gravel bar half the size of a tennis court, the otter again made a shortcut, probably preferring the shelter of the woods to an open exposer. Even though its tracks are fresh, the dogs show no interest.

    In the opening a second freshly fallen fir collects ice and snow, enough to make the water bulge on the upstream side. The spring freshet will rip the tree from the bank for sure and again change the shape of the stream. In ten years that gravel bar has quadrupled in size.

    Maggie covers all of the flat ground between the stream and the hill, hunting hard and oblivious to the snow. Colby doesn’t like the cold or the snow and stays closer. Neither dog shows any interest on walking on ice where the stream is frozen, but we keep an eye on them anyway.

    Beneath tall softwoods the path bends where the water has undercut the banks in another sharp turn. Upstream, an almost continuous riffle creates a long straight stretch. Rabbit tracks weave with no discernible pattern. In an abandoned field on the far side, alders have flourished to create what looks like excellent woodcock cover.

    Eventually we turn away from the water to cross to the slope that will take us up to our home. Deer have followed the edge of the incline, staying in the dense cover of young fir trees. Their tracks pass under unbelievably low leaning dead softwood trunk. We pick through the thick trees up to an old skidder trail then follow it up the hill.

   Ahead of us is home.

A Quickie

    We’d had a full day and our tired legs enjoyed the ride back to Camp Grouse. Never quite sure how much guests can endure, I halfheartedly suggested one last a quick hunt in small covert that we would pass on the way home.

    Jim was game, but Peter’s ankles protested so he offered to wait for us. Old football injuries still plagued him.

    We parked at the beginning of a logging road near a stream, let out Colby, my younger German wirehair, and readied our guns. After walking across a logging bridge, we slipped into the alders.

Jim Kline in the alders.

Colby on a woodcock.

    Almost immediately Colby became birdy and then locked up solid beside the brook. But we couldn’t find a bird. We coaxed her on, only to have her stop a short distance away on the far side of fat old fir tree. Through the tangle of trees a woodcock spun upward only to fall to Jim’s gun.

    Only a few feet away Colby pointed again and that time a woodcock climbed spiraled like skyward like a rock only to tumble from my gun and fall within a few feet of Jim.

During the next few minutes we moved five woodcock, of which three came home with us. That covert is perfect, between a clear cut and alders along a stream, with scattered gnarly fir trees poking up over the cover.

A woodcock under Jesse's nose.

    Jim looked mighty happy as we climbed back up to the road, having rounded out his limit of woodcock. Peter smiled when he saw us, I’m sure happy for Jim and anxious to get home. With tired feet and hungry bellies we traveled on.

Tired girls at the end of the day.

A New Pup

Our wirehairs, Chara with Colby the pup.

     We are down to two dogs in the house. After living with three for so long the place feels sort of empty. This past spring we had to put our high strung Vizsla down. The hole that she left behind is larger than her diminutive size. She may have been the runt of the litter, but she rose to be queen of the castle here.

     Sally, my virtual wife, has always had a soft spot for German shorthaired pointers, and, seeing that I picked the last dog, a German wirehair, it is her turn. She did a lot of research and has picked a kennel, one with a hunting background because that is important to us. We want a dog that will be at home in the rugged terrain of northern New England, and that is where this pup will be born.

     

Georgia, a friend's GSP at five months on point.

So now the mom has been bred and the wait begins.

  

Not My Favorite, but…

     There is this place that I hunt because it is close to home, not because it is the best hunting. It’s state owned land, complete with stocked pheasants and feeble pen-raised quail and lots of hunters, but the memories go way back, well over forty years, to my earliest days with a dog and a gun.

Colby in the early morning haze

     Even in the off season I stop there to walk the dog sometimes. Often I’ve told myself that I really haven’t hunted that property all that much, not wanting to really admit how often I’ve been there. But when I get out in the woods and walk into the first field I always recall where the pheasant hid in that corner on the last day of a season and can even still see it burst upward through the limbs of the oaks again. Or there’s that thicket, just north of the old sand pit, where the other hunter’s dogs had just passed through, and then mine locked up solid on a sulking pheasant. And as I pass by that old blow down that fell over four or five years ago, I see again the covey of quail that exploded in every direction, making my head spin and the dog go crazy.

     That particular blow down is near the corner of a field where my first bird dog, a young Brittany male, who at that time knew more about bird hunting than me, located his first covey of quail. I can still see his eyeballs doing circles in their sockets as about two dozen quail huddled together six feet from his trembling pink nose.

There's a quail hiding in there

     And then there’s the place under the power lines where my oldest German wirehair, well over a decade ago, back when she was only five months of age, pointed her very first quail. When I shut my eyes the pup still stands at the edge of the weeds. I remember how nervous I felt, not wanting to miss when that bird flushed, but I can still see it fall and her hurried grab.

     All three of my wirehairs have hunted there. My youngest retrieved the first bird shot over her only three seasons ago. It happened in a logged-over area and I can still see her prancing back with that bird in her mouth, looking ever so very proud.

     There have been a few golden moments too, like the occasional woodcock twisting up from under my feet, and even points that produced exploding ruffed grouse, although I never would shoot one there with their numbers so low in that neck of the woods.

Chara pointing and Colby honoring

     Every fall the same faces are there in the parking lot, people who I barely know, but we hunt together and our dogs back each other’s and we share laughs and stories and watch each other miss. It’s a camaraderie that predates modern man.

     Around every turn and over every knoll are places that remind me of good times. I guess forty plus years multiplied times a couple of times a year adds up to a whole lot of…pretty good fun.

Porcupines

Little that can be said good about porcupines.  A long time ago, when I lived in New Hampshire, they were thought so ill of up in that country that there was still a bounty on them.  I think the state paid only fifty cents, which isn’t a lot, but that fact that someone paid to have them killed tells you something. 

Foresters hate the critters because they eat the bark off of trees, often girdling the tree and hence killing it.  During the time that I worked as a logger, we always were careful not to leave the hose from the fuel tank hanging down too low or the porcupines would chew on it to get the salts our hands left behind.  There were stories about them chewing through tires and almost anything made of wood that human hands had touched.

Photo by Mark Laken

One time a friend named Don Pouliot and I hiked up to Stub Hill Pond to fish.  We left very early in the morning and then walked hard to get there before the sun climbed very high into the sky.  To this day I vividly remember how my lungs felt like there were going to burst on that hurried hike.  A friend of Don’s had offered us the use of his boat, a small pram that he towed up there during the winter time behind a snowmobile. When we reached the pond we found the pram upside down over two poles, which were tied between two stout fir trees, with the oars tucked neatly inside.  But one of the oars had been chewed enough by a porcupine to make it useless.  We rowed in circles that day and caught nothing.

My first bird dog, a Brittany spaniel named Zac, had a pronounced stubborn streak.  Twice he pointed porcupines, and let me tell you, porcupines hold really well for a point.  After a while though, when nothing happened, he swatted the critters with his paw, resulting in dozens of quills right through the foot.  On both of those occasions I had the help of friends to deal with the problem, and mostly they sat on the dog while I yanked the quills through.

One fall though, in a thick stand of alders where lush foliage cloaked the ground, Zac locked up on a rock solid point.  I assumed the dog pointed a bird, because it certainly looked like the right sort of place for a woodcock, so I walked with my gun ready and eyes ahead, expecting a woodcock to tweeter into the sky.  But instead of a bird flushing, my dog pounced on a porcupine and tried to bite it.  What a mess.  Quills were sticking out of everywhere.  Many went right up through from inside his mouth and out the top of his nose.

I took the dog to the vet that time and the dog was sedated before the quills were removed.  Months later, when I was scratching Zac’s nose, I felt a quill working its way up out of his nozzle.  Pliers yanked the thing out.

Back in those days, large trunks of dead yellow birch could be found in the woods.  I don’t recall seeing any during the last few years, but back then we called these things stubs.  Most stood maybe twenty or thirty feet tall, and two men together might put their arms around them, and all had lost their tops.  These enormous trunks were nearly always hollow, like a big chimney, with their red heartwood having rotted away.  Quite often there would be a hole at the bottom somewhere and almost always it would be piled high with porcupine poop, sometimes several feet deep, and a person could see where the dreadful rodent had tread over their own droppings as they came and went.  At times the ammonia smell of urine alerted me to these porcupine dens long before I saw them, and looking at the filthy mess you really didn’t want your dog to get quilled by an animal that disgustingly dirty.

About three years ago, while bird hunting, I found a stand of sugar maples where almost every tree for a hundred yards in every direction was chewed.  Not many were girdled, but some were, and many were badly wounded.  Two years ago my oldest GWP pointed a porcupine.  Walking up to the dog, I was able to heel her away unharmed.  Last fall my two wirehairs pointed side by side, while the porcupine tried to hide under a pile of bulldozed-up stumps.  Again, I heeled them both away.

One time I found a dead porcupine, turned almost completely inside out with most of the meat gone.  That puzzled me, but an old-time woodsman explained to me how a fisher cat could flip one over and kill it without getting quilled, and then eat the thing through the unprotected stomach.  Fishers must be fast, or very very hungry to try that.

Sitting on a knoll against a stump and waiting for deer one November, I heard something shuffling through the leaves.  Rising up slightly I could see it was a porcupine just off the crest of a rise.  Figuring that I would scare every deer for miles if I shot the thing, I let it pass.  It went about two hundred feet and then climbed the only hemlock in the stand of hardwoods where I sat.  I remember the claws making quite a racket on the way up the rough-barked tree.

When the animal got up among the limbs it started screaming and snarling loudly.  At that point my curiosity got me up on my feet and I figured every deer within a mile could hear the ruckus anyway.  About twenty-five feet up two large porcupines we looking down at me, obviously more afraid of me than they were angry at each other.  Was it two males fighting for territory?  Or was it their version of a marital disagreement?  Or two grown siblings quarreling over something? 

I will never know, but I do know that a .35 Remington makes a very effective porcupine cartridge, just make sure you know where they are going to fall.  The faces and front legs of both critters were filled with quills, obviously from fighting the other.  I can’t imagine how they would have ever removed the things.

The last time I saw a porcupine dead in the road it was on the Route 495 belt west of Boston.  And the one before that was on Route 9 out near Belchertown, MA.  It seems their range is expanding back into country where they haven’t been seen in years. 

Taking a cue from the people who train hunting dogs to ignore rattle snakes, a friend of mine shot a porcupine and when his dog showed interest in the animal he zapped the dog an e-collar at its highest setting.  I don’t think the dog has been quilled since then, but I don’t know how many porcupines it has encountered either.

If you hunt with dogs in porcupine country you should have needle nose pliers or forceps handy, as well as scissors or snips of some kind.  Immobilizing the dog is usually the hardest part of the task, so you may want to give it some thought ahead of time.  A big stick across the back of the mouth will hold the jaw open, and a large coat or blanket wrapped around the dog may keep it still.  The quills do come out easier if you snip them to let the air out, which makes them a little less rigid, and quills that pass through tissue are more easily removed by pulling them through.  Remember, there is a hook on the end that went in first and it wants to catch and tear on the way back out.  Liberal amounts of peroxide or some other disinfectant is good to wash the wounds out with.  It is always best to see a veterinarian, but often in the best bird country they are hours away.

Dog days of summer

Ever wonder about the phrase "dog days"?  It is mentioned by the ancient Greeks.  The Romans believed that Sirius, which they called the Dog Star because it was the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major, caused the hot sticky weather.  During the hottest months of the year the star used to rise about the same time as the sun.  That is no longer true because of the precession of equinoxes, but that's another subject.  The Roman's supposedly sacrificed a brown dog to appease Sirius, my guess a chocolate lab.

During the dog days here our two GWPs and the Vizsla sleep much of the time, so still that the sound of their breathing is the only way I know they’re still alive.  Early mornings and late in the day they get their walks, usually somewhere that there is water that they can swim in.  Young turkeys are strutting about in the woods behind the house this time of the year and the dogs love to chase them up into the trees.  Lately there have two or three peacocks that have joined the turkey flocks, but they don’t hold much better for a point than the turkeys do.  I have to wonder if the turkeys and peacocks ever interbreed and what they would look like.  And how they’d taste?