Another Season Ends

 

It was two years ago, I took our two German wirehair pointers to one of my favorite out-of-the-way town roads to hunt. The road usually is unplowed during the winter, but that year the town was keeping it plowed. We started hunting on the uphill side in familiar country, 
        The woods starts out as spruce and fir trees, but gives way to young hardwoods coming up in an old cutting. A storm earlier that fall uprooted or broke off dozens big softwood trees. Scattered clumps of standing softwoods remained, left behind by the loggers and creating what I consider excellent cover for ruffed grouse. Red twig dogwood and an occasional wild apple tree grow in many of the openings. The dogs and I worked through the cover up to my favorite little clearing, where there’s a field with several ancient apple trees and a bit of a stone wall. The previous fall my last bird of the season fell there in front of one of my Maggie's points. 
        We then dropped down into a steep gulley beneath huge softwood trees to cross a swollen brook. The plan was to hunt across the top of the field. and then down the other side of the brook. In the unusually warm weather, the woods looked much like it would in April, with eight inches of snow in places and bare ground beneath softwood trees. Melting snow had raised the brook, but not enough that it couldn't be waded in my Muck boots. Wearing long johns, I was overdressed for the forty degree temperatures. Just above where we crossed, large fir tree trunks crisscrossed the stream like giant pickup sticks.

        On the other side of the stream the cover started out much the same, but at the top of the field the woods changes to old field-grown softwoods with apple trees spread out between them. Further up the hill is a ten year old clear cut. where we had found woodcock on other hunts, but they had long gone by the end of December. Maggie, my older wirehair, had a grouse flush wild ahead of her and she went into her usual high pitched excited yip-yip voice. It looked like great cover to hunt the next fall when there still may be apples around. Rather than turn down the hill we continued to the east.
        When we intersected a logging road that runs uphill into a large piece of private property, we headed down it. Nobody had been up the road since the last snow and heavy wet snow remained unplowed.
        While the dogs worked cover ahead of me and to the left, a gray phase grouse bolted from beneath two tall poplar trees on my right, disappearing into the forest to never be seen again. The droppings on the ground indicated the grouse had been eating buds in those poplars. The dogs worked the scent and I thought they might find another bird, but no luck.
        When we reached the town road, I took the dogs across to the low side, but someone shooting a twenty-two not far away made me decide to call it a day. The heavy snow and soaked squishy  ground made difficult walking and I had enough. I’m sure the girls would have hunted longer, but they had a pretty good workout by then too.
        The day ended with no shots fired, no birds harmed and a pile of memories.

My Boss

At first I just knew Jim as the boss, or officially as the Director of Operations, in charge of all the logging on Brown Company’s 600,000 acres. After a couple of years I’d worked my way up the ladder until he was my direct supervisor.

Don’t ask dumb questions, work hard, work long, and run the job as if it were your own, that’s how I’d been brought up. I knew little about Jim and tried to do my best, running the first mechanical tree harvesting operation in New Hampshire.

Our feller-buncher cut two stems a minute, all day long, and the whole tree chipper roared through a hundred cords of hardwoods a day, turning trees into woodchips to make paper. What grouse cover we created! Poplar would regenerate from the roots to be six feet tall or more in two seasons.

A young Brittany spaniel named Zac waited at home for me every night. That dog knew more about bird hunting than me and had little patience for my lack of experience. Feeling bad for the dog, and to stop him from eating the house, I started to take him to work with me. Eventually, I learned Jim had a German shorthair at home and liked to do a little bird hunting too.

When he would stop by the jobsite, he’d pat the dog’s head and ask how Zac was doing that day. After a year or two, the company gave me a truck to use. Anyone who’s visited a logging site can tell you what serious mud is and we’d make the kind that sucks your boots off your feet. A four-wheel-drive truck barely could waddle through.

Zac always managed to keep a healthy layer of this mud inside that truck. When Jim visited the job site he often would slide into the truck, unfazed by the mud, to ask about production. Any other boss would have told me to leave Zac at home.

I left the company after a few years, searching for whatever young men search for. A couple of decades later I found Jim’s home and went to knock on the door. He was inside on his knees with his back to the entry, fixing a screen door that lay on the floor. When I knocked, he yelled without turning, “Come in.”

I stepped in and said, “Jerry Allen here.”

He got up and said, “Jesus Christ, just last week I was trying to remember what the hell you last name was.”

We caught up on our lives, and then talked of dogs and guns. The following fall he came hunting with me, not carrying a gun, but just to see the dogs work. A year later we shot together at the Groveton Rod and Gun Club and he followed the dogs through the woods again. On almost every trip north, no matter what the season was, I’d stop in to talk dogs and guns, and every fall he’d ask about the birds. But time works against all of us.

It got harder for him to move about. During a tumble at the club, he broke the stock of a beloved old Ithaca. He got a price from a gunsmith to have it repaired, but the cost was way too steep. I took the gun back to my shop and did a less than cosmetically perfect mend, but at least the gun was useable.

His shooting ultimately stopped, as did the trips to watch the dogs work. He kept talking about going again, but the body was tired. We’d still talk dogs and guns, and I’d learn a thing or two and we’d share a laugh.

The last time I visited he said little, and sometimes forgot where a sentence was headed before he got half way through. When about to leave, I said something about us old bird hunters having to stick together, and that brought a smile to his face.

Now he gets confused and often doesn’t know where he is. Hell, that happens to me all the time bird hunting. But he may not be with us much longer, so that is sad. He’s a tough old coot though and the body doesn’t give up.

I hope that lifetime of memories he collected is still going around in his head.

*

I wrote this several years ago not long before Jim passed. I learned a lot from the man and miss his stories.

Chara

       

A special pup.

 June 3, 2001 - August 12, 2016

     Sometimes we are really lucky and in 2001 I certainly was. Stumbling around looking for a German wirehaired pointer, I came upon a breeder in New York who introduced me to Weidenhugel Chardonnay, a predominately white German wirehaired pointer pup. It was love at first sight.

          By then more than a dozen years had passed since a bird dog had been part of my life. Chara was smart, learned quickly, loved to hunt, and became more than a dog, much like a best friend. When I worked in my shop she hung around, always ready for a two or five minute lesson. Heal, stay, whoa all came easily to her. Pigeons and quail became part of my life, for without birds you will never have a bird dog.

          The first hunt, at five months of age, was in a state run wildlife management

Learning together.

area. She pointed a pair of quail and brought back the one that fell to the shot. I never felt prouder. And throughout her entire life, her hunting enthusiasm never waned.

          I could go to the post office in our busy town and ask her to sit outside by the door and know she would be there when I came back out. Walking unleashed, she would heal through the sidewalks as people passing patted her head. I beamed.

          Exiting the post office one day a car’s tires screeched. A scared young golden retriever dashed across the street not twenty feet away, narrowly dodging the skidding vehicle. Good Samaritans tried to catch the dog, but it was too scared to trust anyone and dashed hither and yon, eyes big as golf balls. I walked to my truck and let out Chara. She trotted over to the frightened dog and the two sniffed noses. Slipping my finger into the collar of the golden retriever, then I walked the dog back to its owner. Never did I feel prouder of Chara.

   

As a young dog.

       On our first trip to grouse country she never actually pointed any of the skittish grouse, but she performed perfectly on woodcock. It was the beginning of a partnership that lasted her life time. We hunted old coverts that I had hunted as a younger man with an overly eager Brittany spaniel. Chara’s performance made that Brittany look like a fool. Together we stomped all over the north woods.

          Our first duck hunt together confused poor Chara. Why weren’t we walking and looking for birds? After all, we had a gun with us? Forcing her to sit, we sat in the weeds behind a few decays that I had carved years earlier. If it wasn’t for my hand on her neck and finger inside her collar, she would have dashed off looking for upland birds. Not long after legal shooting time a pair of mallards fell out of the sky and I stood to shoot, causing one to tumble into the water.

          About to give the retrieve command, she was already in the water and halfway out to the duck. Duck hunting was a piece of cake after that. One cold January she even retrieved a golden eye.= that fell a hundred yards from our duck boat.

          I learned to trust her nose and never doubt when she worked bird scent. Sometimes it wasn’t pretty in the classic sense, but with the nose to the ground she always found the bird. Grouse have always walked and now woodcock seem to also, but with Chara it didn’t matter, she would always find them. Point, think, wait, re-point, think, move, re-locate…it would continue, and I could always tell when the bird was pinned.

            The memories go on…the day where we must have found a hundred woodcock,

Hard on a point.

or the woodcock that fell into the river, or the crippled Canada goose that paddled out over a hundred yards from shore. Or the grouse pointed on opening day one year while her fourteen month old sibling honored, only to have the each retrieve one wing of the bird while the breast stayed where it fallen. Or the time she pointed straight up at the bird in a softwood tree? Or the day we hunted all day from the house and moved so many birds, but none really offered a shot. When I broke open my gun back at the house I had forgotten to load it. We laughed, at least I think she did too. Those things will stay with me.

          So many times, when her bell went silent and I knew she was on a point yet I couldn’t find her, I would call her name. It’s a mystery how she figured it out, or even how she did it, but Chara would move just enough that her bell would ding once, letting me know where she was without frightening the bird.

          So many other dogs passed through Camp Grouse, but Chara was always the Grande Dame. In the alder thickets or grouse coverts, she never seemed to notice the other dog’s presence. Dogs hunting with her learned a lot, of that I am sure, and I wish our young pup had had a season or two with her.

          But that wasn’t to be and last week Chara left us. It was her time, with fifteen hunting seasons behind her. It was more than I could ask and a life that most dogs would dream of, never tethered and in the woods almost every day.

In her last years she loved the cool stream.

         The last few bird seasons were easy hunts, but some that I will remember forever. Hunting over an older dog is very civilized, with a slower pace and avoiding the nastier thickets. She stayed determined and hunted hard until the end. We hunted the cream coverts the last couple of years, flat with few thorny thickets.

         Now she is buried beside the apple tree behind the house and I hope the grouse come out to visit her. I am sure they can share stories and have a few laughs. Come spring time she certainly will be able to hear them drumming.

          Chara, I will never forget you.

As I will always remember her.