The ACL Saga

Our youngest German wirehaired pointer has had long gangly hind legs from the beginning.  About a year ago we noticed she walked a little funny, not bending the hind legs, sometimes dragging her toes during the stride, but she never complained.

     Then last fall, during hunting season, she came up lame, to the point it hurt to watch her walk.  I took her to a veterinarian up where I hunt, and she was at a loss.  My vet back home mentioned possible acl or hip problems, and we x-rayed the hips, which looked fine.

     I started doing my homework, reading everything I could find on acl problems in dogs.  My vet suggested an orthopedic surgeon, who looked at X-rays of the dog’s knees and said he could fix them, at $3,650 each leg.  I went home to see what the options were.

     There are four common surgeries for acl damage.  In dogs, the surgery is used to stabilize the joint so scar tissue can form around the damaged area and stabilize it permanently.  In humans they try to actually repair the torn acl. Two of the surgeries on dogs, the TPLO and the TTA drastically alter the shape of the bone in hopes of stabilizing the joint.  The newer Tightrope and, what is called, the conventional surgery use nylon cords to stabilize the joint, and are much less invasive or expensive.  My surgeon wanted to do the TPLO.

     I stumbled upon a website http://www.tiggerpoz.com/id7.html , which warned of the dangers of acl surgeries, and the author feels strongly the surgery is unnecessarily overdone.  He suggests first trying an extended period of light activity, meaning months on a leash.  The recovery from the surgery would be about the same length of time.  Of course the gamble is that if the rest period didn’t work we would have wasted the time, but I also read a large percentage of the surgeries give less than perfect results, so we decided to give it a try.

     After a week on lead she seemed fine.  After sixteen weeks, Colby is doing great.  For two weeks now she has short periods off-lead, about fifteen minutes, in the woods behind the house.  When she gets up from rest, she does have a bit of stiffness, but it passes quickly and then she walks, trots, and gallops normally.  She never appears uncomfortable.  I am very optimistic that she will have a complete recovery by sometime this summer.

     Things in her favor are her age, a little over two, and she doesn’t have any extra weight on her at all.  I have been giving her extra glucosamine daily, lots.  My older wirehair has benefited tremendously from glucosamine in her diet, almost aging backwards two years, so I am a strong believer in it.  And German wirehaired pointers are pretty calm for bird dogs, so keeping Colby quiet has probably been easier than if I owned a wound setter or pointer. 

     Acl problems seem to be more common lately and nobody is certain why.  A possibility is the spaying or neutering of dogs too soon, before their hormones help with the growth of their bodies.  Colby was spayed at six months of age.  Also, acl surgery is a big money maker for many veterinarians, so that may drive the rise in surgeries too.

     So that is Colby’s saga.  She’s a sweet girl with two seasons of grouse hunting behind her.  I hope she has a dozen more to go.

  

Brant

     About forty years ago, after years of being closed, the season opened up for Atlantic brant along the northeast coast.  The loss of eel grass caused the demise of the sea goose, but with the grass beds returning the birds flourished.

     We used to hunt a salt marsh on the north side of Cape Cod, and we would see the strings of brant trading back and forth out over the ocean.  The thought of getting a chance to hunt them seemed mighty exciting.  Nobody offered brant decoys back in those days though.

     My father owned a tree care business, and one of his crews came in at the end ofone day with an enormous white cedar trunk.  They were going to take it to the dump, but thought somebody might be able to use it.  I snatched the log and found a chain saw, and started whittling away.  Pretty soon there were four brant bodies roughed out.  Using a big sander, I smoothed out the saw marks, and then got down to carving some heads out of pine.  The following day I started painting them.

     On our next hunting trip to Cape Cod, we brought the four new brant floaters, all rigged with anchors and line, and six or eight Canadian geese silhouettes that I’d made a year or two earlier.  The ocean was quiet, and it really wasn’t the classic duck hunting day, but any day with gun and dog is better than none.  Sea ducks and brant were passing back and forth over the ocean, but well offshore.  We found an old washed up log to hide behind on the beach, then set my new brant decoys in the water about ten yards from shore.  The silhouettes we set right where the ocean met the beach, or maybe even one or two out in the water a little ways.

     Hiding behind that log we waited for a flock of brant.  When a bunch of about eight finally passed I gave them one sharp honk from a goose call, not the her-onk that I used on Canadian geese. 

     The brant reacted as if we had them on a fishing line.  They turned and came right toward us and we each shot one.  The Brittany ran into the sea and swam out to retrieve them one at a time.  Things couldn’t have worked out better.

     And in case you’re wondering, they tasted delicious, just like black ducks.

Frozen

     Back when ducks took up more of my time than ruffed grouse, we had a near perfect system set up.  Our family owned a cottage right beside a bay, so close that boats could be rolled up tracks into the cellar for storage.  I kept a duck boat in there, fully loaded with decoys and a motor on the back, always ready to go.  A friend named Peter would usually accompany me, and, while it was still dark outside, we’d roll that boat into the water and go hunting.

     One December, on a particularly dark Saturday morning, we arrived and walked down to the water, all set to open the doors and roll the boat out.  But the bay was frozen.  With no light, we couldn’t guess how far the ice went out, so we started tossing rocks.  They’d always land with a “boink”, and then bounce along, never a splash.  We walked out onto the ice a short distance and stamped our feet.  It felt solid, but that was as far as we dared go.

My homemade decoys

     We had no plan B. 

     We tossed a bag of decoys into the back of the truck and went for breakfast somewhere.  There was no sense looking for a place to set up in the dark.

As we drove around that morning, it looked like every bit of water had turned solid.  But bouncing along an old tote road, we spotted a bend in a small river where the current was fast enough that the water stayed open.  But you could hardly see it for all the ducks and geese crowded into that little opening.

     I parked the truck and we grabbed our guns and the bag of decoys.  As we walked down to the river, all the ducks scattered in a loud ruckus.  Thinking back on it, I don’t think we really needed to bother with the decays.

     No sooner did we start throwing the decoys into the river and the ducks started returning, in ones and twos, some up along the river and others over the tree tops.  We knelt in the weeds and both soon shot our limit.  The day turned out to be the fastest duck shooting I’ve ever had. 

Return to the Woods

I returned to the woods that year, back when my oldest Wirehair was barely over a year old.  Not the urban or suburban forests owned by some conservation trust, but real woods, forest tracts measured in miles, where the land pays its own way.  Where the big sprawling timberlands are owned so trees can grow into dollars, woods big enough to get lost in, to walk where deer, moose, and bear tramp more frequently than man; a place where the natural order of things still ambles along, in the same rhythm that it has since the beginning; woods to submerge myself in and wash away the trappings of my daily doings.

My companion, a young German wirehaired pointer named Weidenhugel Chardonnay, came along to teach me a few things, and to remind me of things I didn’t even remember that I once knew.  Over a decade had passed since I’d been in that country…it had been that long since I’d followed a bird dog into the forest. 

The logging trucks still rumbled by too fast, but the smell of the pulp mill was gone, replaced by the aromas drying leaves and dying grass.  In the early morning twilight, we left the motel searching for a particular old country road.  Frost cloaked the bottomlands, creating a ghost like world with haze hanging over the river valleys.  Driving slowly, I looking for anything familiar that might lead me to a favorite woodcock covert of long ago.

But the world had changed, or I had forgotten, and something was askew.  One landmark, an old abandoned dump, I found easily, but nothing else looked right.  There used to be a field and a place to pull off onto two wheel ruts, but memories sometimes mix things up and maybe this wasn’t the place at all. 

But, as an ember catching a whiff of air, a thought flared from a faded memory.  That field of so long ago used to have scattered young spruce and fir trees, most not much taller than head high, scattered over the weedy grass.  Perhaps the thick stand of softwood trees, standing almost like a solid wall next to the road, was where the field used to be. 

On the opposite side of the road I parked my truck and climbed out, then let Chara bound out onto the pavement.  The sun hadn’t climbed over the mountains yet and inside the canopy of spruce and fir trees it appeared to still be night.  But there it was—from the side of the road a moss covered path led into the trees.  It had to be the place. 

From the back of the truck I pulled my old Parker from its case, opening and closing it, feeling the gun in my hands.  That shotgun turned a hundred years old that year, worn and wonderful, with tales I wish it could tell.

We trekked into the dark woods and walked silently on the soft spent needles that covered the ground.  A hundred yards later the path ended and the sky opened up over a railroad bed...now things looked familiar.  We walked to the right, looking for a break in the wire fence, and found one exactly where it used to be, almost twenty years before. 

We slid down the banking onto the flats beside the meandering river the color of tea.  The land forms a bulbous point, like a giant thumb poking the river across the valley.  Overhead, towering red and silver maples arch together, creating a cathedral with a floor of ferns, interrupted by clusters of alders.  Not much had changed in all those years. 

We zigzagged along the river, Chara hunting hard, her bell ringing constantly.  Twice I called her Zac, which caught me by surprise.  Zac, a Brittany spaniel long gone, had hunted that same country with me ages before.  I laughed and even tried to explain to Chara that it was a compliment, but I don’t think she heard me.  The young dog was too busy living the moment and hunting hard. 

The river cut off our hunt, where it wound back against the steep bank below the railroad tracks.  There hadn’t been a single woodcock or partridge, but it still felt great to be in the woods again, carrying a gun, smelling the leaves, feeling the soil beneath my boots.  Chara continued to hunt with determination until we were back up on the tracks.  Never give up, don’t get discouraged, it’s fun just to hunt…important lessons she knew from somewhere.

A few miles away, high up on a nearby hill, we looked for old overgrown apple orchards that used to hold grouse.  But unbeknownst to me, a massive ice storm had flattened the entire hill top a few years before, bending or breaking almost every wooden stem at that elevation.  Broken trees and sprouting new growth hid any landmarks that I might have remembered.  The logging road had changed, of that I was certain, but another remembered road was missing.

Finally I spotted wheel ruts that disappeared around a corner into a thicket.  Leaving the truck behind, we followed then down to a familiar field. 

But the shattered forest surrounding the abandoned pasture seemed impenetrable.  Paths or abandoned logging roads that I remembered were lost under the rubble.  Chara did her best to poke into the mess, I climbed over tree trunks and fought with twisted limbs, but both of us made little headway.  The regenerating plant material had claws like a Maine Coon Cat’s.

But then a partridge busted into the sky ahead of Chara.  The young dog’s enthusiasm bubbled over and she bumped two more close by.    Up the hill I heard another bird flush.  Sitting on a log I waited, knowing Chara would return and the bumped birds would only build her enthusiasm.  And maybe the wild flushing birds would teach her a thing or two about patience.

On the way back down the cart path, Chara still wound with enthusiasm and my old Parker broken open and resting over my shoulder, a lone partridge burst from a spruce and offered an easy going-away shot.  There was another lesson there…a very obvious one.

Tired legs tempted me to call it quits, but I hated to waste what remained of the day.  Chara still appeared eager, so I drove up an unfamiliar gravel road not far from our motel, looking for new bird country.  By a tiny field, leggy apple trees and clumps of alders offered promise, so I backed the truck off of the road.  Just below us, a partridge flushed wild as the truck’s doors slammed shut, certainly a good sign.

The woods felt right, with bent old apples and young poplars among scattered alders.  The damp soil smelled of fall.  Chara hunted hard and fast, too fast.  A second partridge flushed wild ahead of us.

Working back closer to the road, the young Wirehair bumped a woodcock.  Marking where it landed, I encouraged her in that direction.  Well ahead of us the bird flew again, this time up over the gravel road and into a stand of tall fir and spruce.

          Under the lofty softwood trees, foot-tall seedlings covered the soft ground.  Chara zigzagged back and forth through their green needles, her hind end wagging and bell singing, but maybe a bit slower and more methodically than earlier.  And then, well away from the road, she locked up on her first point of a wild bird. 

Quickly moving closer, I actually spotted the woodcock against the brown needles on the ground.  As if frozen, one of the bird’s eyes seemed to be locked on mine.  A single step closer and it leapt skyward.

          The bird tumbled with my shot and in a moment Chara was on it.  Steady to wing and shot might come later.  I walked halfway to where the woodcock had fallen and then waited.  Chara mouthed her first wild bird with pride before carrying it back and dropping it at my feet.  Taking it, I patted the pup’s head and then stroked the bird’s crumpled feathers. 

Patience and perseverance are valuable commodities.  And as far as I was concerned the woods was just as I had left it over a decade earlier, sort of like an old friend visited after a long absence.  

Around-the-next-corner-ism

     How many of you suffer from what’s-around-the-next-corner-ism, or what is more often called WATNC (pronounced by medical professionals and sufferers as “what-n-c”)?  I have it bad, and it negatively affects both my bird hunting and trout fishing.  Possibly this malady is more prevalent in the thick northern forest areas than in the open plains country, where one can see for great distances.

     During my early college years I soaked up the tales of JRR Tolkien’s hobbits and to this day can recite some of the little guys’ songs, such as:

          “Still round the corner there may wait 

A new road or a secret gate
And though I oft have passed them by
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.”

     My whole life has been influenced by those books and I’ve spent more time searching “round the corner” than putting money in my bank account, and it shows.  And, sadly, it also has diminished the holdings of my game bag and creel.  The only thing I have accumulated is a bunch of memories, and the only conciliation is that at least those don’t disappear during downturns in the economy.

Can you see the dog?

     The typical partridge covert of the northeast is a fairly thick piece of property.  If a hunter can see fifty yards in every direction it feels wide open, more likely it’s twenty or thirty yards of visibility.  Not that we can’t often see hills and mountains all around us, we can through the leafless treetops, but the area where you can actually see your dog on the ground or a bird flush is rather confined.  So I always get to wondering, what is just beyond where I can see?  And then off I go, traipsing through places that may hold birds, but more likely not. 

     Don’t get me wrong, I have discovered some great places to hunt because of WATNC, but mostly have worn my boots thin and my clothes ragged.  The dogs don’t seem to understand why I’ll wander away from perfectly good cover through bland hardwood stands, just to see what is on the other side.  Sometimes they almost refuse to follow my wanderings.

     Trout fishing has suffered also.  The more bends and turns in a stream the more WATNC seems to rear its ugly head.  On one twisting northern river a few miles south of our grouse camp, a fishing trip a couple of years ago looked more like a hop-scotch marathon than a fly fishing excursion.  I started fishing at roadside and an hour later the truck was over two and a half miles away.  That’s a lot of walking in waders and not much time with the fly on the water.  Maybe I should fish ponds and small lakes where I can see all the perimeters. 

     So I am considering looking for grant money to study the problem and hopefully see just how prevalent WATNC is.  Did Meriwether Lewis suffer the ailment?  Columbus?  Possibly Daniel Boone?  Is there a cure?  Can a sufferer keep it under control?  Is there a twelve-step program?  Twelve steps wouldn’t be a problem…it’s the twelve thousand steps I take. 

     To which branch of our government do I apply for the grant?

A Late Woodcock

     Christmas morning my oldest wirehair pointed a woodcock at the edges of the trees beyond the field out behind our home.  She froze rigid so quickly it startled me, it certainly wasn’t expected, and our younger wirehair honored when she spotted her elder.  As I stepped past the dogs the woodcock twittered away through the trees.

     Yesterday morning, New Years Eve day, and in almost exactly the same spot, the scenario played itself out again, with the woodcock picking the same escape route through the forest.

     So far the fall has been mild, but cold weather is forecast for the coming week.  I have to wonder if that woodcock will be able to poke its bill into the ground when it is frozen.

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.          

Christmas

     There’s never been a Christmas hunt for me.  Somehow it just seems wrong to kill on Christmas day, and even the wild things deserve a day of rest.  I know that hawks still harass the grouse on this day, or that snow or freezing weather can make life miserable for my favorite birds, but none of that is my doing.  Instead, I’ll spend the day inside with loved ones and the dogs, all of us warm and snug.

     Hopefully under the tree there’s a book or two about dogs or bird hunting for me to read during the winter months, maybe even a new knife or other toy.  Later we’ll eat too much and walk the dogs in the fields out back.  It’s a great time to remember just how lucky we all are.

     Merry Christmas to all.     

Two of our sleeping dogs with their visiting cousins, all sharing the heater.

Oooops!

     About four years ago, my German wirehaired pointer Chara and I left our New Hampshire house walking northwest, more or less parallel with the brook that runs along the bottom of the valley. I knew it would be the last hunt of the season and we had the whole day, so there was no hurry.

     I’d traipsed this same course the year before, so I picked our way carefully.  To the right the land climbs steeply, in places sheer ledge that is almost impossible to go up or down.  A stream the width of a single lane road hurries down the valley to the left, impossible to wade across except in the driest of seasons.  Much of the flat area along the banks is covered with alders and softwood trees, but in a few places the hill comes straight down as ledge to the water’s edge.

     Not far from the house, beneath tall spruce and fir trees, a partridge flushed wild ahead of us.  Chara was younger then and full of enthusiasm, so it may have been her fault, sometimes it is hard to tell. 

     It is excellent bird country there, a plateau covered with softwood trees as big around as my waist, but with openings in the forest that are filled with weeds and leaning alders.  Where the hill rises it does abruptly, hemming one in between it and the stream.  We poked along, crossed an old abandoned beaver dam and then followed a narrow shelf between the water and the hill.

     That shelf ends where ledge plummets into the rushing little river, but a person can carefully climb up a bit and go along the top of the granite face, which we did.  On the other side, the land becomes less steep and is covered with hardwoods, mostly maple and birch, which go down to the stream and uphill to where it’s desperately steep again.  A major game trail crosses there and climbs the hill, the first place that animals have been able to go up the hill at all for almost half a mile.

     Ahead the water takes a turn to the southwest to detour around a large bony knob in front of us, which is covered with spruce that reach for the sky, and one giant white pine that towers to the heavens.  In several places the mound is faced with sheer granite, the largest expanse bending the stream.  We detour inland up into a tight little valley that is blanketed with knee-high ferns that remain boldly green.  It felt like elves should live there somewhere.

     The going was rough, with ground made of barrel-sized boulders covered with slippery moss and all hidden beneath the ferns.  I chose a route up on the hillside some, where the ground was mostly fallen leaves below large hardwood trees.  Chara stayed the course though, hunting the tiny valley’s bottom.

     My mind wandered, taking in the surroundings, and then I noticed Chara was acting birdy as all hell.  I tied to catch up to her, but as I worked downhill the footing became rougher and hurrying proved impossible.  About thirty yards ahead of the dog a grouse flushed from the ferns.

     The valley petered out into a large hollow that ran ninety degrees to our course.  It looked like every other tree there had fallen down, dropped like pick-up-sticks and every which way.  Most were softwoods or poplar, and picking a path through the chaos took time.

     On the far side of that mess, softwood trees grow downhill to the stream and open hardwoods cover the land up the hill to well beyond where one can see.  I chose a course slightly up the slope and through the hardwoods, hoping to find an ancient beaver pond that I’d visited once before.  The softwood/hardwood edge had provided plenty of birds on my previous visit to that country, and at that point I planned to save it for the hunt home.

     After the softwoods of earlier the hardwood stand felt wide open.  I could see a hundred yards or more in every direction, but it sure didn’t look like bird country.  And it wasn’t.  Eventually, a wall of green foliage that ran up and down the hill intercepted our course.

     We entered the softwoods and immediately crossed game trails.  Young birch and poplar mixed in with the conifers.  A moose rub shined on a maple trunk. 

     Chara started to get birdy, sorting out scent, but we never found one. 

     Walking diagonally across the grade, we gradually climbed into woods thick with young poplar, birch, and maple, all no bigger than my forearm.  An old logging road, edged with young softwood trees, slanted across our path and we followed it upward into almost flat country that looked familiar.

     Clusters of fir trees, about the height of a bread truck and not much bigger around, grow where the young hardwoods meet the edge of the old beaver pond.  The pond is more meadow than pond, all silted in and much of it covered with blown down cedar trees, creating an opening in the forest about the size of a football field.  In the center a small puddle remains, not much larger than a residential swimming pool.  Chara started to get birdy again next to one of those clumps of young fir trees, so I watched and waited, gun held at arms.

     A partridge exploded out of a fir next to my right ear.  I barely saw it.  Then a second one burst unseen out the far side of another tree.

Chara still worked the ground, sorting things out, her bell frantically ringing, and I waited.  Where the softwood trees thinned out into hardwoods she locked up like a statue. 

     I started toward her, and then a third bird took off, barely seen and about twenty yards ahead next to a blown down fir tree.

     The far side of the meadow is thick with softwood trees, and I thought about exploring over there and then down to the stream, or maybe hunt right back down the hill to the stream from the closer side of the opening, either of which would have led me to the softwood edge along the stream to follow it toward home.  I suffer from a malady though called “I-wonder-what’s-around-the-next-corner-ism” and, standing there, it pulled me in many directions. 

     It is a disorder that’s sometimes even stronger than my hunting addiction.  Finally, I decided to see how far I was from the top of the hill, which probably was the direction of the least amount of partridge.  But you never know….

     Upward we went, past maples and birch and even some beech trees with their bark like  elephant skin.  It seemed like forever, but I don’t really know how long the trek was.  There weren’t any birds, but I didn’t expect any unless we found different cover.

     About the time my legs really started to ache and it felt like my heart would pound itself to pieces, we came to an opening, either a small abandoned field or grassed over logging yard.  On the far side an old woods road disappeared southward, into the trees and upward.  Following, things started to look familiar.

     Pin cherry, mountain maple, white birch, and red maple, all not much bigger around than my wrist, covered the ground.  I thought I might have been on that road once before, coming in from the other direction and when snow bent most of the trees to the ground.

     Sure enough, the road crossed over a shoulder of the hill and started down into a bowl that I had hunted before.  My watch told me it was getting late, so I decided to hunt that basin and then work back down the hill toward home. 

     It’s a boxed in flat spot, surrounded by shoulders of the hill on three sides, up quite high and mostly wet underfoot.  There’s a large opening, filled with tall grass, weeds, and shrubs, all bordered by big spruce and fir trees.  Three long abandoned logging roads converge there, and maybe it was an old logging yard at one time.   The only manmade structure is a lone wooden post that stands in the middle of the opening, tilting to one side.  Every time I visit that spot we find partridge, but I’ve only killed two there over the years.  Usually the birds dash across the opening and disappear among the green boughs faster than my reflexes let me shoot.

     We worked the opening counter clockwise, as I always do.  Usually Chara searches the edges through the weeds and bushes, and I follow just back and further out in the woods a bit.  In the same exact place that it had happened before on two different occasions, Chara went on point just outside thicket of red twig dogwood.  I approached over a hardwood-covered knoll toward Chara’s silent bell.  As if in replay, two birds burst across the clearing and disappeared into the waiting limbs of spruce and fir trees, exactly like on the previous visits.  My gun rose to my shoulder, but I never touched the triggers.

     Chara started to hunt again, and I followed, continuing up the tote road that goes east.  At the height of the land I turned us around to start homeward.  We didn’t go twenty feet when a lone partridge burst up and away from the backside of an old maple tree, just behind my left shoulder and not fifteen feet away.  The bird was smart enough to fly low and remain behind the tree all the way, and I barely caught a glimpse of the bird before it disappeared over the crest of the basin.

     We hunted hard on the way down the hill, wanting to stretch the day, and thoroughly worked each of the spots likely to hold birds, but never found another.  Some days are like that.  My legs grew wobbly and my feet hurt by the time the roof of our house came into view.  Chara still hunted diligently, never giving up until we reached the edge of our field.  It wouldn’t have been the first time she’d found partridge or woodcock right there, but I’ve never even tried to shoot one so close to home.

     Stepping out into the grass, I opened my gun to see two empty chambers.

     I had walked for almost four hours over miserable country, hunting hard, seeing eight partridge flush, and all with a gun that I forgot to load. 

     I never told Chara.                 

  

First Snow

     The fist snow usually isn’t a hard or driving snow, more likely drifting flakes that accumulate slowly, or maybe even melt as they touch the ground.  Sometimes it is silent, the soft flakes absorbing all other sound in the woods, but more often the flakes are harder and bounce of still clinging leaves, creating the sound of trillions of tiny bells.

     Clothing is adjusted to keep the flakes off of one’s neck, maybe gloves come out if they aren’t already on.  The dogs hunt just they did as before the snow started and I often wonder if they even notice it.  But later, when the hunting is done for the year and the snow is deep, they will prance and play in the stuff, caught up in wonder just as we are.

     Sometimes the partridge disappear with the arrival of the first snow, yet other times they seem to sense an urgency and come out looking for that last good meal before winter covers everything over.  Can they guess the amount about to fall?  I often think so. 

     Lingering woodcock will wander to the bare ground under a nearby softwood tree, or maybe the soft wet ground along a stream that melts the freshly fallen snow.  Even the dogs know this and look for them there in accumulating new snow.

     Yet the snow reminds us that winter is coming and soon our hunting will be done for the year.  Later, when the snow gets too deep for the dogs to work, the guns will get a final cleaning and be tucked away in their safe.  In the meantime, we must collect memories to savor through the dark winter nights. 

Back to The Valley

     The drive in is about nine miles over a small mountain, and the after crossing the river it is either left further into the wilderness, or to the right and another nine or ten miles back out to the a different paved road.  We went left.

     About another six miles up the road I parked in the same place that I did back the end of October.  The woods looked more open, with the weeds squashed down by snow that had come and gone.  Every tree was stark naked, not a leaf remained anywhere except on the ground.

     Alders, twice as tall as I, cover an old logging yard there.  Behind them the land climbs gradually upward with lofty hardwoods growing among old spruce and fir.  Across the road young fir trees huddle together like cliques in a school yard, each separated by open expanses of bent or flattened weeds and grass.  Scattered maples and poplar sprouts remained upright, obviously unfazed by the earlier snow.

     Chara pranced a few steps from the truck and locked up on point, staring into the alders.  Hurrying shells into my gun, I slid by her and a partridge disappeared into the limbs of fir trees.

     We hunted behind the alders, more or less parallel with the road, and then crossed to the lower side, drifting between the clusters of fir trees.  About the sixth clump Chara’s hind end went into over-drive and then she froze, pointing into a tangle of green needles and gray trunks.   In the shadows I saw a boulder poking out of the earth, and as I committed to walk around the left side of the trees the partridge burst out of the right, a sound unseen.

     The scenario was played out again, and then again.  Two hunters might have shot some birds.

     Chara pointed into another cluster of firs, older ones this time, and I approached silently across bright green moss.  A partridge that looked the size of a turkey exploded almost at my feet.  Reflexes brought my gun to my shouleder, but as I slapped the trigger the bird ducked around a yellow birch trunk, which collected most of the shot.  I swear Chara struggled to control a laugh.

     A ways further a bird flushed wild from a thicket of raspberries, and another was pointed on the way back to the truck, but both escaped unscathed.

     Unloading my gun and putting it into the truck, I congratulated myself on the valiant conservation effort and the breeding stock that I have left behind.  Chara looked quite proud of herself, as she should with about a half dozen successful points. 

     Another spot further up the road deserved the same treatment.  There the thick new growth of a fifteen year old clearcut covered the hillside above the road.  Chara plunged in and I followed as best I could along wet and lumpy skid trails.  We didn’t find any birds and, if we had, I doubt shooting would have been possible in that thicket.  Eventually our course brought us back out to the logging road about a half mile from the truck. 

     We dropped to the lower side and worked back between the road and a roaring mountain stream.  Nearing the truck Chara’s hind end went into overdrive and, with her nose scouring the ground, she obviously followed a traveling grouse.  The trail went through thick grass, under clusters of young fir, beneath a blown down dead fir tree, directly over the top of a moss-covered boulder, across a log, back into a stand of little fir trees, and then into some raspberries that had claws like a bobcat.

     About fifty feet ahead of us, at the edge of the logging road, old Mr. Partridge decided he had enough and burst up and over the road, to never be seen again.

It was time to call it a day.

Back from the Big Woods

     What a trip!  Warm weather had erased all the snow, but a new dusting covered the ground when we woke our first morning.  Up higher, where we hunted the first day, an honest inch sat on the ground.

     My older wirehair, Chara, and I hunted the same cover that held grouse last fall and came up empty.  Dropping down through the cuttings we picked up the edge of the softwood that ran along the river and followed it back toward the truck.  Sure enough, we found lots of our partridge, but the ground was steep, the woods thick, and the walking tough. 

     We found small plateau stuck out in the river, covered with spruce, birch, and fir.  On the side against the hill an old beaver pond hid in the shadows.  I started taking pictures, and then realized I couldn’t hear Chara’s bell, and she was only thirty yards away a few seconds before.

 

     I jammed the camera in my pocket, spoke her name, and two partridge burst from the edge of the pond just below my perch.  One flew straight away and I knocked it down with my second shot.  With dismay I watched it bounce on the ice and then sliiiiide…and for a moment I hoped it would slide to the shore, but no.

     In a panic I called Chara, not wanting her to run out onto the ice.  Seldom do I regret having let her “unlearn” the steady to wing and shot routine, but that was one of those moments.  Fortunately she never saw the two birds, which took off twenty yards from where she pointed, and she immediately started to hunt again.

     I called her to heel, then brought her to the edge of the pond and had her stay while I searched for a stick long enough to hook the partridge and slide it ashore.  It was about eight feet out and the ice was only about a half inch thick, and, like most beaver ponds, there was no bottom to the mud I am sure.

     My retrieve was successful.

 

One More Weekend

      Tomorrow afternoon I head back up to Grouse Camp for one last weekend.  It’s a bonus weekend, something that only happens once in a while, certainly not every year.  There hasn’t been much snow and the temperatures have been mild, so I’m optimistic.  Some years there is just too much snow for dogs to work.

     So where will the grouse be hiding?  Much of that depends on the amount of snow and what the weather deals.  Time will tell.  I’ll be alone with my older wirehair, just the two of us, like we used to hunt most of the time.  She’ll revel in her task.  I plan to take loads of pictures to remember the weekend all through the winter, spring, and summer.

     I’m sure we’ll poke around the softwoods down where the stream runs below the house.  There’s shelter and abundant food for the grouse there.  That logged over lot just over the town line had tons of birds in late October, so I’ll have to see if there’s still a few hanging around.  And late one day we’ll have to check the clearcut by the apple trees and old field, that place from where a guy can walk for thirty miles to the east before he runs into another paved road.  I just like the thought of that. 

     The one thing that I am sure of is that time is going to pass way too fast. 

I Like Old Things, But…

     Deer season opened here, not something to get particularly excited about, but I do get out for a bit.  I dug my bright orange coat out, knowing that all the paraphernalia that I like to take with me would still be in the pockets from the last time I wore it, almost a year ago now.  Just to make sure everything was as it should be, I dumped out the pockets to double check.

     There’s the short rope, a ZipLoc bag with paper towel in it, a length of string, a plastic case that hold shells so they won’t rattle, and a compass that has guided me to lots of wild places. 

     But the compass’s needle wouldn’t move.  That’s the second old compass that I’ve dug out this fall with the needle stuck.  Both of the compasses are about the same vintage, bought back around 1970, and made by one of the big-name companies.

     I doubt it’s planned obsolescence on the manufacturers part.  The guy running the company when those two compasses were made is probably dead by now.

      So I guess I better check more of my favorite old stuff to make sure it is still working as it should.   

Wandering Walter Woodcock

     The young woodcock, Walter, looked around and tried to catch his breath.  Everything looked just as he hoped and dinner should be easy to find.  A short while before, as he flew down the valley with the wind backing around to the southwest, he started to look for a place to wait out a fair breeze.  Off to the east he noticed alders and young poplars on a gentle south-facing slope.  The place certainly looked inviting.

     Waddling along the hillside, heading neither uphill nor down, he took in the new surroundings.  The same varieties of fern grew there as in his home turf back in Canada, and the moss covering the rocks looked familiar.  The gray alders were pretty much bare, but the golden leaves on the young poplars glowed in the morning sun.  A lone apple tree, crowded on all sides by alders and poplar, defiantly remained green.

    Cocking his head he listened.  Sure enough, the worms weren’t particularly deep and pickings would be easy.  Plunging his bill into the soil the tip felt the soft flesh of Lumbricus terrestris, his favorite meal and a welcome treat.  Extracting the worm from the soil he held it aloft, admired the tasty morsel, then swallowed the protesting critter.  Life certainly couldn’t get much better.

    Foraging along the hillside, he came to a thicket of twisted thorny vines, which he didn’t recognize without their black raspberries.  They certainly would provide protection from overhead, but if he ever had to escape up through them it might prove impossible.  Deciding to not take a chance, he detoured slightly up the hill toward a second old apple tree.

    The slightly damper ground beneath the ancient twisted tree proved rich with worms and he fed with abandon, until an apple dropped to the ground and startled him.  Looking up he noticed a ruffed grouse sitting among the branches.

     The grouse pecked at the soft flesh of another apple, oblivious to Walter’s presence. 

     What snotty birds those grouse are, thought Walter.  They think they are the king of game birds.  Where do they get off with that idea?

     Walter hated the way those ostentatious showoffs took flight, with wings thundering and making such a raucous.  Why couldn’t they learn a little class, creating music as they took to the air, like a civilized woodcock does?

     Walter took two steps to the side, in case the second apple fell, and then yelled, “Hey!  Don’t you see me down here?”

     The grouse glanced his way and then went back to picking at the apple.

     Snob, thought Walter, and he waddled on.  I hope some goshawk makes dinner of that snot.

     After passing under a cluster of ferns Walter stepped out into an open area beneath poplar trees about the same diameter as he.

    “Wow!” he said.  And immediately wished he hadn’t vocalized the thought. 

     There, in the middle of the opening, sat a large female woodcock.

     “Excuse me,” he apologized.  “I didn’t expect to find anyone here.”

     He admired her big round body, and the way her bill stuck way out in front.  And that sexy eye, only one faced in his direction.  And her colors…such beautiful colors that blended perfectly with the surrounding soil.  She was certainly something.

     She looked his way, but didn’t smile.

     “My name is Walter.  Are you new around here?”

     The female woodcock turn away, jammed her bill into the soil, and yanked a white grub out of the ground, which she promptly swallowed.

     After giving her head a little shake, she said, “No, just passing through.”

Her aloof attitude put Walter off a bit, but he wasn’t about to give up.  “Me too,” he said.  He scuffed a foot on the ground and summoned his courage.  “Maybe we could travel together.”

     “No.  We’re doing a girls-night-out sort of thing tonight, or whenever the wind changes direction.”

     If Walter had shoulders they would have sagged.  “Okay, well nice to meet you.”

     As he wandered on he realized she never even offered her name.  Oh well, the next best thing to a new girlfriend was going hunting.  Oh heck, he thought, hunting is a lot more fun than some of the aggravating girls he had met.

     Where might there be more worms?