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.

Pheasants

     Yesterday pheasant season opened in our home state.  The local Fish and Game, oh, excuse me, now it’s the more politically correct Fish and Wildlife Department, released pheasants three days before. The birds are dumb and most poor fliers, but it’s an excuse to walk the woods with a gun and let the dogs have some fun.

     We hunted one of the prettiest places on the island, with old pastures breaking up the oak woods, and ancient stonewalls zigzagging across the fields. Every year the birds are released in almost exactly the same spot and seldom do they wander far in the few days before the season opens, so to make an event of the day I lead the dogs in a circuitous route to the release location.

     But early on, in the first field after the trail comes out of the trees, the older German wirehair, Chara, gets birdy. I coaxed the younger wire in the same direction, but she showed little interest. In the muted early morning light the somber fall colors appeared shades of rust.

     And then the dogs point! I wandered in and the pheasant took off like a helicopter, laboring for altitude. At the crack of the shot it fell and the dogs were on it. Colby, the younger dog, pranced to me with it in her mouth. Chara already searched for another.

     Colby bumped a second pheasant up on a knoll that flew quite well, soaring over a cluster of young trees and into a second field filled with knee-high sumac. Marking where it landed, we trekked over there but never found it.

     Timeworn cart paths, edged with lichen-covered stonewalls, took us past old stone foundations and through a short section of woods to second set of pastures. We hunted up the fields and then looped around another old tote road that crossed a tiny stream and to head back toward where we came.

     Both dogs got birdy next to a thicket of briars, but Chara abandoned the scent and went on. Colby didn't give up though, and cautiously poked into the briars. A few feet in she locked up like a statue. Peering into the tangle, I could see the pheasant hunkered down only a few feet beyond her nose.

     Now that presented a quandary. The wall of bull briars was higher than my head and almost impossible to see into, let alone walk into. I circled to the left, but things didn’t get better. Around to the right, things improved a might, so I pushed in. I had to give high marks to the McAllister waxed-cotton coat for protecting my upper body. Chara, by that time, circled back and snaked into the briars too, honoring Colby’s point only a foot or two behind her.

     Thorns clawed at my face, dislodged my glasses, and attacked my legs, and why I didn’t wear my brush pants I will never know. If I had tripped, I never would have hit the ground, the tangle would have held me aloft.

     When I looked again, the two dogs had relocated, and the pheasant sat only about eighteen inches from two sets of jaws, its eyes were wide open as I’m sure it knew it was in a pickle by then. At that point I knew the dogs would catch the bird if it tried to fly, because flight in the tangle would have been impossible.

     So I shouted, “Fetch”, which eliminated the middle man, meaning me with the gun. Chara  snapped up the bird and gave it a shake, then dropped it. Colby carried it back to me. I think Chara didn’t want to walk any further in those briars than she had too. She’s a smart girl.

     That gave us our two bird limit, so I untangled my body from the prickly vines and headed home. Later I would find that my legs looked like I’d lost a fight with a bobcat.

Stocked Pheasants

Our state stocked pheasants today, in preparation for the season that opens this coming Saturday.  For the last few days I’ve been working with a friend’s five-month-old German shorthaired pointer, and, because we had easy access to the area where some of the pheasants were stocked, I decided to take the young dog over there, along with my two German wirehaired pointers. 

     We poked around the woods a bit, and then I led the dogs to the spot where the pheasants had been released every year for as long as I’ve been around.  Sure enough, as we approached one of the pheasants let out a squawk and my oldest dog, the one that is supposed to be a hundred percent steady and reliable, bolted for the bushes and flushed the bird upward.

     The poor bird barely could fly, but did manage to land in a tree about twenty feet above the ground.  All three dogs were very excited as they inhaled the scent and zigzagged all over the place where the bird had been.

     On the way home the younger wirehair pointed into to a tangle of thorns.  Then the older wire honored.   The shorthair pup sort of poked around the edges of the thicket, trying to figure out this puzzle.  The demeanor of the two older dogs told me the pheasant was walking, and soon both of them re-located on the far side of the mess.  Then I spotted the pheasant sneaking out from under the brush and heading my direction.  It froze when it saw me, sort of hunkering down in the leaves.

    I called the young shorthair and she circled around the thorn-pile the long way, then came straight toward me with the pheasant between us.  Coming around a tree trunk the pup almost ran into the bird. 

    I’m sure the pheasant was as surprised as the dog, and the dog certainly hadn’t ever seen a bird that big, nor one dressed like a clown before.  That bird didn’t fly much better than the previous one and if the tail had been longer I’m sure the pup would have snagged some feathers.  It too landed in a tree, that time not much higher than a dog could jump.

     Not much sport was presented by those birds.