Picking a Shotgun

Some decisions are agonized over....

    Picking a shotgun is perhaps a more difficult decision than choosing a spouse.  It is best to try several different types before settling down with any one in particular.  Do you prefer a wide shooting plane, or perhaps a slender one?  Do you shoot better with a little weight forward, or maybe butt heavy suits you better?  Most seem to enjoy a balance somewhere in between.

    For many, the first experience is with a pump action, but later they discover the beauty and smooth handling of doubles.  Some enjoying side by side, while others like one on top of the other.

    A stock of high figure often brings a higher cost, but many find the expense worthwhile.  High-priced guns often have lots of glitter and even gold trimmings, and, although pleasing to the eye, don’t necessarily perform any better than unadorned ones. 

Older ones may be missing a screw.

    Older ones are often appealing, particularly if they have not been abused.  Nothing detracts from their appearance more than dings and bulges, and nothing is worse than one that just sat somewhere and became rusty.  Many enjoy wondering about the storied history of the older ones while using them.  You must remember though that the dimensions preferred years ago are quite different than those of today, and some may feel awkward when mounted.

A wide plane catches the eye. 

    Older models in pristine condition are often expensive, and you may not even want to use them.  They are sometimes referred to as “safe queens”, but I’m not sure what they are safe from.  It is best to admire them with as little handling as possible, to wipe off with a soft cloth any fingerprints that you may have left behind, and then to leave them where you found them.

    Perhaps you have friends with different types, and you could ask them how they like them.  Maybe they will even let you try theirs, but that is not common.  Some may not want you to take theirs out into the woods, but most will at least let you look at them.  Be sure to ask their opinions, whether they prefer side by side or over and under, ejectors, wide or narrow fore end, and straight grip.

    Large bores are becoming less popular in the upland woods, with the slender twenties becoming quite common.  As many men get older, they look for a twenty-eight with a properly proportioned frame, which they feel makes for a more appealing look. 

   Their light weight feels nimble in the hands and is a delight to experience, but a proper mount must be practiced, or the motion is too jerky and may cause a miss.  Practice mounting is the key, and can even be done in almost any room at home.

    Remember, practice safe shooting.    

A favorite, leaning against a tree.

  

Christmas Time

     It is the season to be jolly, but it is also the time when the local hunting seasons are winding down.  Upland bird hunting in our state is but a memory, and in the surrounding states it will soon be over. Snow will be piling up in the woods and the ruffed grouse will have enough of a struggle without us adding to their woes.

     Duck season lingers, but ice will close the season here long before the law does. As I get older, the idea of setting out large spreads of decoys seems daunting, so I usually just throw out a few where blacks or mallards have been congregating, and then wait.  Many morning the most excitement I have is seeing the sun come up or tasting coffee from my thermos, but the ducks do drop into the decoys often enough to keep me coming back. 

     I hate to put the guns away for a last time and wonder what the dogs think, watching me do that.  I’m sure the oldest recognizes the little rituals, and I have to wonder if she will hunt another year.  

     But I fight the melancholy, trying to remember the grand days, like the day we moved thirty-eight grouse, or the visiting German shorthair’s first solid point on a grouse, and that old country road where the grouse seemed to be everywhere, and the morning by the pond, where pairs of ducks dropped in one after the other.  Looking back at pictures taken and my notes, there are so many great times that it is hard to separate the memories. This past fall more friends visited and shared a hunt than ever before.

     We truly have a lot to be thankful for. 

Opening up Grouse Camp

    Every spring it is the same thing, I make plans to fish as the ice comes out of the lakes and the landlocked salmon come up the streams, chasing the smelt. Or maybe I’ll fish the ponds as the ice fades away and the brookies are on top. And every year it’s the same old thing, I’m too busy with work.

    We live in a tourist destination, Martha’s Vineyard, and when the days get nice down in the cities, the summer homeowners start to remember all the things they wanted to have done before the next vacation season.  So the phone starts to ring, of which I am usually quite glad after waddling through the winter, and I get very busy, too busy.

    But this coming weekend we are finally sneaking away to Grouse Camp to open it up for the summer.  My daughter is visiting with her boyfriend, so there will be a lot of catching up to do, and hiking and puzzles and watching the warblers (there will be tons of them) from the deck.

    And at some point, I’ll sneak down to the trout stream below our place and wade into the water. There will be fish, none of them very big, but all nice brookies, and maybe I’ll bump a woodcock along the banks. It has happened often.

     And I bet I hear grouse drumming more than once.

Closing up Grouse Camp

     Everything ends, whether it is spring, summer or fall, day or night, and the hunting season is no exception.  The leaves have long dropped and the trees are all silvery sentinels, waiting for the snow to pile up deep around their bases.  Most of the song birds disappeared over a month ago and the geese no longer honk up high in the sky.

     My bird hunting companions have all gone back to the flat country, only my two dogs and I remain.  The last day or two is usually spent in the woods alone with them, often with the intention of looking for new cover to hunt the coming year.  With the barren trees it is easier to see distant ridges and hillsides than it has been any other time of the year, so I drive almost empty logging roads, stopping occasionally to poke around with my girls someplace that I’ve never been before.  Somehow it just feels right. 

      On what I know will be the very last hunt of the year I seek out an old favorite covert though.  A couple of years it’s been over on South Hill, with the snowmobile trail, abandoned orchard, and alder thicket.  Once it was the alder patch on the other side of the stream from our camp, but it felt so empty, with the woodcock long gone and all of the grouse missing, that I’ve never hunted there as a last hunt again.  And one year I hiked up North Hill, mostly for the views of rolling hills that seemingly stretch out forever, but found the abandoned orchards empty, as I thought I might. 

     Most often the last hunt is up the hill from our camp, through mixed age forest and along old grown-in skid roads, up steep country to a boxed-in basin where weeds and grass keep the forest at bay, creating a natural opening about the size of a suburban house lot.  There always used to be a half dozen grouse on that hunt, but the forest is maturing and the number now is more likely to be half that.  It’s the memories that keep me going back though, and on that last hunt of the year that is what I seek.

     The bird seasons always seem too short, and the years so few, but there are certain places memories accumulate, like snow or leaves do in the corner by the bulkhead.  One August, when we thought we’d lost our crazy Vizsla, we found her pointing a whole covey of grouse up on a rocky knoll way up that hill.  In a dozen places I can still see my oldest wirehair pointing grouse, often finding birds in almost the exact same location year after year, like one particular cluster of red twig dogwood that almost always produces.  Oh, there have been bumped birds and lots of missed shots, but if any of this were easy we’d soon get bored with it.  So I now laugh at the follies and rejoice at the triumphs, relishing both with almost equal joy. 

     I remember my youngest wirehair standing next to her elder, together pointing the first grouse of that bird hunting season, which was also the youngest one’s first point on a ruffed grouse ever.  Remembering their contentious retrieve, with each of them bringing me back a wing while the breast of the bird stayed where it fell, still makes me chuckle.  Fortunately, since then they haven’t been as argumentative.

     And somewhere along that last hunt of the season their bells will stop and I’ll walk up a partridge, and maybe we’ll get to bring it home, or maybe not.  It doesn’t seem to matter as much as it used to.  Hopefully it will be another memory that sticks though.

     We’ll be back at the house when the shadows are gone.  Whatever is left in the refrigerator will make dinner; it has to be empty and off when we leave.  The dogs will be fed, probably getting some bonuses out of the collected leftovers in the fridge, and my gun will get a good cleaning, and then I’ll whittle away at the chores, things like sheets cleaned, clothes collected, and my desk packed up.  And when I’ve done all I can do until morning, I’ll curl up in my favorite chair and savor a single malt along with a favorite book, until I just can’t stay awake any longer.

     In the morning the heat is shut off and the water drained from the pipes.  The dogs always know what is happening and stay near the stacked gear or the door, their heads down and resting on their paws.  As I shuffle about closing the house up, I sometimes talk to them just because it makes me feel better.  The older dog will look reserved, accepting our departure as I do, but the younger will watch in disbelief, as if to say, “Why can’t we stay here and hunt forever?”

     Spring will come soon enough and we’ll be back to chase trout and listen to the grouse drumming in the woods.  The way time passes, with ever increasing speed, bird season will return before we know it and we’ll again hunt.  I have to wonder though how many more seasons my oldest dog will hunt, with her accumulated wisdom and white muzzle.  And my years can’t go on forever either.   

     When the truck is packed, my girls will anxiously jump onto the back.  I know they’ll soon be asleep and in dreams of hunts for the long trip home.  I envy them that.