Grouse Camp

     We were lucky and spent the whole month of August up at our place in grouse country. We did a lot of hiking and found some new bird cover. You can never spend too much time in the woods.

     Now we’re back home and the days are getting noticeably shorter and the air has a little nip to it. Fall is knocking on our door.

Pointing a woodcock

     So I sit and look at the calendar, trying to figure out how to get the most hunting out of the pitifully short seasons we have. The biggest priority is days up grouse country. I’m trying to block out two weeks, but not sure if the bank account can stand it.

     I’d like to catch a little of the early duck season here at home, but that’s a low priority. Some years it is spectacular and other years…well forget about it.

     I’ll be up north for opening day, I know that, and within the next few days I’ll have to decide when I’ll go again, probably late October and maybe into November.

     This working for a living just gets in the way of fun!

Bear?

     We were about twelve miles in the woods, two from where we parked the truck, trying to find our way to a particular lake using old logging roads and snowmobile trails. The three dogs were with us, Chara, the oldest German wirehaired pointer not far ahead, Colby, our youngster GWP maybe a hundred yards ahead, and Bella, our crazy Vizsla somewhere between the two. The dogs knew we weren’t hunting but hiking, so mostly they stayed on the trail and only made short forays into the trees.

     After walking almost an hour over a ridge on hot sunny logging roads, we had dropped down into a valley, following a narrow trail through thick hardwoods with a lot of dense understory. Near a stream, Chara trotted off to the left and stopped twenty feet from the path, so I stopped too, thinking grouse.

     Bella noticed Chara stopped, and her usual routine is to bolt toward Chara but then to circle around to pin the bird between the two of them. But instead she stopped almost beside Chara, with the two of them staring into the woods, not in what I would call a bird dog’s point, but with heads held high as if trying to see.

     And then about thirty feet beyond the dogs the bushes shook and something large moved. My first thought was “deer”, because that is what it would have been back home. But I didn’t see a deer and the critter only moved a few feet, what I did catch a glimpse of was something dark, and then I lost sight of it among the leaves. Whatever it was, it had stopped only fifty feet from our dogs.

     Both Sally and I could hear something like an infant moaning not far away. The two dogs never moved. Colby came trotting back and I stopped her with a “whoa”. 

Calling the dogs to come with us, we hurried on our way. 

     My best guess is a bear with a young one. 

Hot Weather and Dogs

    We are lucky to spend our time in Northern New England in an area where drinking water for the dogs is rarely a concern. Streams are almost everywhere and finding dry footing is a much more common problem. Overheated dogs can die a miserable death, and the weather really doesn’t have to be that hot for it to happen. Staying out of the hottest parts of the day and ample drinking water are their best defense.

    Yesterday the temperatures were only in the upper seventies in the shade, but the sun was very hot. During the morning we hiked up a small mountain north of our place, and the unusually dry weather had dried up all the wet places. In a normal summer, the trail looked like it would be impossible to do without waterproof boots, but instead we tread on hard damp mud.

    The dogs were a concern, particularly after they pointed a partridge and went into hunting overdrive. Tongues were hanging. We calmed them down, but you know how that goes. In one wet spot a moose had walked through and fortunately the footprints had all filled with water. If it hadn’t have been for that spot, which we passed both going and coming, there wouldn’t have been any water for the dogs, except near where our truck was parked.

    The next time we hike where we are not certain of water, we’ll carry them some. 

July Rabbits

Pointing rabbits early last spring

     My dogs are German wirehaired pointers, and we also have a Vizsla in the house, and in Europe they are all breed to hunt furred as well as feathered game. In North America, the hunting of furred game is usually discouraged, and that is what I have done.

     But come July, when hunting is a distant memory in the dog’s mind, and the year’s new crop has bunnies everywhere around our home, I let them have some fun with the rabbits.

     On our morning and afternoon walks they always find one to point, sometimes a whole bunch to point. I walk in and then shout “okay”, which causes the dogs to dash after the rabbit. The dogs have learned to hunt as a team, with one usually trying to come around to cut off any escape route. They seem to have great fun and it causes me to laugh. Only a couple of times have they actually caught the rabbits.

     If they start to point when I’m in a hurry to be going, I shout “leave it”, and they do, but appear to do so with great reluctance. In bird season they would have to be dragged by a bulldozer to get them off a bird they are pointing. They know when it’s serious business.

     Dogs sure are fun. 

Grouse Camp is Open

    Last Friday Sally and I made the trek up to our North Country camp to open the place for the summer. Back in March, we opened the place up for a weekend, but it was too early then to leave the water on.  Now the place is ready for use.

Bear damage to camp

    Since our last visit, a bear in a sour mood decided to take a swipe at our place, removing a couple of saucer sized chunks out of the siding on back of the place and then biting a hunk out of the corner boards.  He was a tall sucker, because the bite on the corner is well over the top of my head.

    Right off the dogs bumped a family of grouse at the edge of the back yard.  The young were about the size of adults and flew easily up into the trees. For a few minutes it seemed there were grouse everywhere, which is a very good thing!

    My daughter, Tami, was visiting with her boyfriend, Chris, so we did some hiking to get ourselves in shape, as well as the dogs.  The dogs have been around long enough to know hiking from hunting, so they mostly pay attention to us rather than search for birds, but they still found a few grouse along the trails.

At the falls

    One day we did a two mile hike to falls in the nearby river, where we ate lunch on the granite ledges, soaked up some sun, and I bothered a few fish. The terrain was rugged enough, both coming and going, to wear us all down a bit, including the dogs, who I’m sure went three times as far as the rest of us. Did I mention they found a few grouse along the way?

    Below our camp, on the last day of our stay, I fished the stream that forms the west boundary of our property.  A dry spring made for low water, and the winter runoff had moved the streams course, eliminating one of my favorite fishing spots, but creating a long run under a grassy bank.

    The brook trout were suckers for a green wooly bugger fished along that run and in the pockets behind some submerged logs, and one even fell for one of my red tag coachman dries. Two of the largest trout came home for breakfast.

    So after trout and eggs the next morning, we packed things up, I put Thompson’s Water-seal on the deck, and then we left. On the way, we stopped a few miles to the south to visit for a short while with a longtime bird hunter, whose days in the woods are unfortunately all behind him now. One of the first things he asked was if we had seen any young birds.   

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.

Between Seasons

Photo by Dennis Swett

     It’s raining up north. I watch the weather forecasts for up there as closely as where we live, maybe more so. At least the young grouse and woodcock of the year should be big enough to generate their own body heat and have honest-to-goodness feathers, rather than just down. Hopefully, almost all of them will survive.

     Often, I find myself looking at USGS Aerial images on my Android phone, and none of them are of where we live, but rather the country I’ll hunt come fall. I’d love to be up there right now trout fishing, so I could listen for the drumming birds, but my work has me trapped down here in the flat lands.  Life could be much worse though, there are two bird dogs sleeping in the den with me, both dreaming with their legs twitching. I wish they could tell me about their dreams later.

     Periodically, I open the gun safe and take out my favorite double, shoulder it a few times, remind myself to go shooting more often, and then put it away. I dig out the list of things to bring hunting, just to double check it, maybe add or subtract something, and then put it away. The new little trout and bird knife that I got for Christmas will get a few strokes on an Arkansas stone. It’s always good to be ready ahead of time.

Drumming grouse,
photo by Dennis Swett

     Daily I walk the dogs. I find it easier to stay in shape than to get in shape. The dogs enjoy it as much as I do, and I love to watch them work the fields and woods. Every once in a while they point a turkey, which always creates a good story and usually a laugh. Maybe once or twice a year they’ll find a woodcock out back, but sadly there are no ruffed grouse here.

     How many days did you say it was until bird season?

During the off season…

     I find myself daydreaming a lot this time of the year, counting the days until October.  Not too long ago I discovered a great app for my smart phone.  My phone is a Android, but I’m sure it’s available for iPhones too, and there’s probably other apps that do similar things.  It’s called BackCountry Navigator, and it basically turns your phone into a standalone GPS.  No phone coverage is needed, so it works out in the middle of nowhere, which is one of my favorite places to be.

My girls, showing off again.

     USGS type topographical maps are available from MyTopo.com, or, better yet, USGS Color Aerials are available too.  Downloading them on the phone is painless and takes almost no time.  Now, whenever I find myself waiting, whether it’s for an oil change or lunch at the diner, I go to my favorite coverts in the palm of my hand. Or better yet, I search the color aerial photos looking for likely new coverts. Technology, you have to love it.

     It’s not a free app and I don’t remember what I paid, but, being a New England Yankee, you can be sure it wasn’t too much.  Whatever it was, it certainly was worth every penny for all the hours it has entertained 

My older wirehair, when she was just a pup.

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.

Back from Grouse Country

     We just returned from a few days up north.  It’s been one of the mildest winters ever, with little snow cover or precipitation of any kind, so what usually would have been a weekend of snowshoeing turned out to be a weekend of hiking.  That’s fine.

In the woods there was snow

     Everywhere we hiked, we found ruffed grouse, or rather the dogs did.  Usually the birds were in clusters of two or three, and mostly along the edge of softwoods.  We did see three sitting up in a poplar right on Route…oh yes, I like to keep where I hunt secret!

     So it looks like a healthy number of grouse survived the winter.  Now comes the big wait, where we chew our nails and watch the weather.  When the young of the year hatch, we hope for dry weather until they get their feathers.  If the hatch is good this year, after the bumper crop of birds last year, this could be the year of a lifetime.

Colby on bird scent.

     Let us hope.

The Nostalgia Run

Every year I do it, make the big circle from our grouse house, traveling back through time and country into memories.  The trip is always made alone with just the dogs to accompany me, often the day after hunting buddies have left for the year.  It somehow seems right then.

     About an hour south is the alder patch by the river.  It used to be behind an old dump, but the dump has long since been capped, and where there used to be a field to cross it is now a stand of softwood trees so thick that to walk under it is like stepping into night.

     There may not be any woodcock out on that peninsula in the river, and if there are it’s usually only one or two, but the majestic silver maples still stand with limbs joyously reaching up to the heavens.  Longer ago than seems possible, my first bird dog hunted there and I can still see him beneath those trees, poking through ferns and under the alders.  His first water retrieve came from that river.  We made quite a team.

     Not twenty minutes away by truck, I’ll walk in an old tote road to a three acre field with a small weathered camp in it.  Almost four decades ago, when I worked as a logger in that country, I met a spry wisp of a woman who lived in that camp without electricity for four months of every year.  At seventy-three years of age, she seemed to be in perpetual motion and went hiking in the White Mountains two or three times a week.  Her daughter and son-in-law now use the place, but are always gone by the time bird season comes around. 

     I have their permission to hunt the old apple trees in the pasture.  Except for that field, much of that country has changed since I first hunted it, both by loggers and a major ice storm, but usually we’ll find grouse or maybe even a woodcock if the weather is warm.

     From there we’ll drive up along the river, which is the route I used to commute to the logging camp, and that brings in another set of memories.  If the weather is nice I’ll probably eat my lunch somewhere along the way, letting the dogs sleep under the truck or swim.  Another twenty or so minutes north we’ll park beside what used to be the biggest alder patch I’d even seen.  Poplars are poking above the alders now, and someday the alders will give way to the taller trees.

     There are always woodcock there, both resident and transient, until the snow drives them south.  On a bad day we’ll find six, on a good day many times that.  Around the edges will be grouse, sometimes one or two, sometimes a half dozen.  We can hunt an hour or an afternoon there.   

     On the way home I’ll stop at the local sporting goods store, not because I need anything, but because I like poking around among guns, fly rods, wool clothing, and a cliental that I can relate to.

      Back at our camp, I’ll clean the birds, then the gun, feed my girls, and then pour a little golden liquid into a tumbler.  With my boots off and feet up, I’ll re-live the day, as I will again the next year.

Big Rock

We walked in about a mile along an old logging road, poking through some likely looking cover on the low side.  That country always holds some grouse, woodcock too, but we hadn’t seen much more than a couple of sparrows.  The dogs kept bounding along with enthusiasm, hunting with heart, never discouraged.  We should strive to emulate them. 

     The weather didn’t feel right, too warm or something.  Some days feel birdy and that one hadn’t up to that point.  We stopped to admire the view from an enormous abandoned logging yard.  To the north a green valley, complete with old farms, a distant one-room schoolhouse shining white in the morning sun, and a winding stream, disappeared into the hills of the northern forest.  Far down below us, the highway’s winding asphalt snaked up a different valley, following the river. 

     From the highest point in the yard we could look over most of the tree tops on the low side.  Chara, my German wirehaired pointer, poked around a thicket on the opposite side of the clearing.  My friend made some comment about the boulder at the edge of the forest, almost round and completely on top of the soil, and about as tall as a bus.  That’s when I noticed the ruffed grouse strutting nervously along our side of the rock.

“Bird,” I said, taking a step that direction. 

     My friend followed and about two steps later the grouse took off low.  I fired my two shots and so did he, but the bird never flinched.  Neither did the second one that followed the first when, but of course our guns were empty then.

     We followed them down the hill, into a thicket of pin cherry trees not as big as my wrist.  Some greater power had mixed in a healthy dose of raspberries, just to make it really memorable.  In no time we both perspired profusely.  Chara, sometimes as close as twenty feet, remained invisible, but we could hear her bell.  One bird burst away unseen, then another.  We cursed and swore a bit.  A little further a third took off.

     When the land started to level out a bit, spruce and fir trees provided a break from the brambles and pin cherry.  Among the softwoods two grouse played cat and mouse with us, only letting us catch quick glimpses before disappearing into the green boughs. 

Walking into the softwood stand and then out the other side was like walking in the front door of a house and then out the back, about that far.  On the other side we found another logging road and stopped to cool off for a bit.  The dog found a stream, and stretched out in the cool water for a minute before resuming the hunt. 

     We followed, staying mostly in the gravel road, enjoying the easier walking.  Through the softwood trees on our right we could see the river close enough to throw a stone in, and on our left clusters of young spruce and fir broke up the small hardwood trees crowding together.  The dog worked through all the birdy looking cover, but kept coming up empty. 

     Finally, among mixed softwood and poplars on the river side, Chara went on point.  As we approached, the bird flushed wild, offering only a lousy shot.

     Where the road started to climb away from the river we pushed through raspberries to hunt a mixed stand of poplars and alders, with enough young spruce and fir added in to provide dense cover for our quarry.  It looked like perfect grouse cover, but we only found a few woodcock and finally scratched one down.  They certainly don’t add much heft to a game bag, but it felt better than nothing.

     Further up the logging road, well after it had turned and headed us back toward the truck, Chara went on point beneath tall leggy spruce.  We walked in, but found nothing.  After coaxing her on, she pointed again, then hunted ahead to the right, locked up about solid, but then went to relocate about the time the bird flushed a couple of hundred feet ahead of her.

The road is a steady uphill climb and we trudged on.  No matter what you wear upland hunting on a day like that it feels too warm.  And then again the dog started to get birdy next to the road.  A bird flushed far up the hill.

     We walked on, but then I stopped and said, “See what’s in the road ahead?”

     “A bird?”

     “Looks like two partridge to me,” I said.

     We walked on slowly, the dog at heel.  The birds seemed oblivious.  About fifty yards from the birds I stopped and stayed with Chara, while my friend continued on.  When he was about thirty yards from the birds their heads went up and they started walking toward the side of the road.  With weapon at arms and walking briskly, he approached.  As the birds took to flight, raised the gun and fired twice.

     I think it is impossible to kill a bird that way.  The next time we’ll let them walk into the woods and have the dog point them.  This was suggested by my dog, who watched the whole event.

     The remaining trudge up the hill to the truck was only memorable for the effort involved.  I keep reminding myself that if any of this was easy we would all get bored.
 

    

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.