Such a Deal

This book is one of my favorites and a great classic, and when I went searching for a copy years ago I had trouble finding any for less than a hundred dollars. I know that in the free market system prices fluctuate, but this is such a deal. 

If you’ve thought about buying a copy of New England Grouse Shooting, by William Harnden Foster, now is the time.  I just checked the prices on of used copies on Amazon.com and I’ve never seen them lower.

Check it out at http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0684124130/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used

There's a bird in there somewhere....

Waiting

It is raining outside. A long stretch of unbearably hot weather has come to an end. I truly hope summer’s backbone is broken.

The rain has been steady, not the rumbling downpour of a summer thunderstorm, but rather the light steady rain that often comes in the fall. My German wirehairs are asleep at my feet, they must notice the change in the weather. I put on long pants after cleaning up from work, the first time in weeks.

Sometime during every day I think about bird hunting. The dogs are always under my feet and come to hang out in my cabinet shop most days, so they are a constant reminder. On our morning and evening walks they point rabbits and then watch them run away as I approach. One of these days, as we get into fall, it might be a woodcock rising and then I will be very excited too.

Another Rabbit!

    For now I sit in my office and watch the rain, surrounded by books. The gun safe is open, so the doubles can keep me company.  I’ll have to count the days again until October first.

Manners

Shared grouse country is a treasure.

It was something that I read in Gene Hill’s Shotgunner’s Handbook that got me to thinking about bird hunting manners. It is seldom spoken about, unless introducing a youngster to the sport, or even an oldster I guess, but manners are extremely important.

Gun safety is at the top of the list, keeping track of where that muzzle is pointed. The way grouse explode into the air and reflexes take over, it is easy to imagine horrible things happening.  Most of my hunting used to be done alone, and much still is, which eliminates that concern.

Game hogs can’t be tolerated, but with the wily grouse of today it is almost impossible to be a game hog. I guess it is more of an attitude thing. Hunting is about a lot more than the number of birds killed.

Guests hunting with me are always encouraged to take most of the shots. I’m not sure if that is me being gracious or maybe me trying to hide my so-so shooting. Enthusiastic newcomers are fun to watch, even if the ruffed grouse is usually long gone by the time the trigger is pulled. Seasoned hunters, who actually kill birds with some regularity, are like watching magicians.

Woodcock pinned

Most of us could not imagine hunting without a dog, and I’m sure our opinions of our own dogs are like those of our children, a bit tainted. Never ever should a hunter make a negative comment about someone else’s dog, and please leave the directing of the dog to its owner. If you are not sure of the proper protocol around another person’s dog, ask.

On occasion, in a large alder flat or grouse thicket and when we’ve been gunning over two dogs or more, I’ll tell the trusted friend to split off and take my older dog along. The oldest girl is what I call bullet-proof, with good habits so well ingrained that I know she’ll be fine, no matter what is said to her. Besides, she’s basically a whore and will hunt for anybody.

Training together

I love dogs and enjoy the pandemonium of hunting over multiples. I’m sure a lot of people think this is insane, and I don’t claim that it puts more birds in the bag. I guarantee it is never boring though and what person’s heart doesn’t flutter at the sight of three or more dogs pointing simultaneously.

In the field most of them seem to get along and tend to business, but it certainly is more fun if they all honor each other’s points. Occasionally, some dogs, often who’ve spent their lives hunting in preserves, are clueless out in the big northern forests. Most will put it all together in short order though, particularly if they are hunting alongside experienced dogs, but, if after a day or two they still haven’t, I don’t know if they ever will.

The right friend can add a lot of pleasure
to a day afield.

And definitely, to avoid the biggest faux pas of all, you must assume that when someone takes you to one of their favorite coverts it is not yours to share unless the privilege is specifically granted. And, quite frankly, I’ve never heard of that happening. Productive grouse cover is just too precious and hard to come by to casually spread around. Sleeping with another’s spouse will get you into no more trouble than stealing their coverts—it is that serious.

So a gun shot a little too close to me or my dogs, a frantic attitude about bagging birds, an unruly dog, or a shotgun’s muzzle that wanders casually all over the place—any one of those can take the fun out of my day and you need not be hunting with me again.

Hot Weather

It has been really hot, so hot that when I am outside there seems to be bacon sizzling somewhere. At least my mind hears it, if only my nose could find the aroma.

Early morning walks, out back behind the house, are still possible, but by eight o’clock the woodland strolls are out of the question. They are not fun for me and the dogs suffer in the heat. Back at the house the dogs dig for cool soil to lay on, and I can’t blame them, but we try very hard to discourage it. Parts of the yard are starting to look like the No Man’s Land of World War I, all pot holes and bones. Taking the dogs down to one of the ponds is tempting and sometimes we get there, but other times the dogs and I just hunker down.

If I can avoid the persistent chores on the “to-do list” I’ll read, which is easily my favorite pastime in hot weather. Find me shade and a good book and I’m quite content while I wait for fall.

I just re-read Gene Hill’s book Shotgunner’s Notebook and enjoyed it immensely. I’m not sure if I learned anything new, but it brought a lot of things back that maybe had been filed in the foggy recesses of my brain. Some of the reviews of that book haven’t been the kindest because it was different than his other books, but you can still hear Gene’s voice and read his humor, plus learn something along the way.

I’ll have to rout around my bookshelves now to find something else to read. Or, while it’s really hot, it might be a good time to take my guns out, haul them down to my workbench in the cool basement, and give them a good cleaning, at least until the sun goes down.

Tween Seasons

It is between seasons, bird seasons that is. At some point, during every single day, thoughts of bird hunting slip through my head. They have to, living with bird dogs in the house and surrounded by books and photos on the subject.

Daily I walk, always with the dogs, to keep in shape. Nothing is more necessary to an upland bird hunter than a good pair of walking legs, and come October the dogs will ready to run too.

Colby and Chara, my two German wirehair pointers

In the mornings, before my workday starts, we trek through the fields and woods out behind the house. They love it almost as much as hunting and I do too. We have no upland game birds here on our island, except possibly a few woodcock that stay to nest somewhere. During the spring and fall those vagabonds migrate through and on more than one occasion my girls have pointed them, but finding a woodcock in the summer is rare. Quail, once abundant, are rare.

There are rabbits galore, and some days the dogs will point one or two and possibly give chase on my command, yet other days they show no interest in them at all. It’s the same with turkeys, who’s numbers are expanding and soon they will become a pest, just like our deer.

Morning sun on the field out back

From the grasses of the field out back we sometimes roust a deer. Two nights ago three decent-sized bucks, with their antlers in velvet, stood like statues in the tall grass at twilight, watching my dogs and I walk along the edge of the field. The dogs never pay much attention to the deer, there are so many of them that I think the dogs get bored with their scent. Oh, if they bump one out of its bed they may give chase for a hundred yards or so, but the dogs always come right back.

Under the oaks of the woods blueberries and huckleberries grow waist high, and, if they are not wet with dew, I’ll often push through them just to work my muscles harder. The dogs bound through them, leaping to see with every stride, their ears flapping like insufficient wings.

Some mornings I seek the sunny sides of the fields for warmth, others the shelter of the trees to break the winds. Lately the crickets have been murmuring in the mornings, but not as loud as later in the day. Turkeys gargle noisily. Crows seem to be everywhere and sometimes I swing my hand like a shotgun, pretending to fire when the lead feels right.

For a week or two a young skunk would turn up along our walk. The dogs would wind it and give it a wide berth, but the little bugger actually would actually charge at a human. I’m sure it made him feel powerful to watch the tall creature flee. With his absence the last couple of mornings I have been wondering if an owl might have had him for dinner.

Soon it will be July, and then comes August, when we can say “Bird season is the month after next….”

Another rabbit.

A New Pup

Our wirehairs, Chara with Colby the pup.

     We are down to two dogs in the house. After living with three for so long the place feels sort of empty. This past spring we had to put our high strung Vizsla down. The hole that she left behind is larger than her diminutive size. She may have been the runt of the litter, but she rose to be queen of the castle here.

     Sally, my virtual wife, has always had a soft spot for German shorthaired pointers, and, seeing that I picked the last dog, a German wirehair, it is her turn. She did a lot of research and has picked a kennel, one with a hunting background because that is important to us. We want a dog that will be at home in the rugged terrain of northern New England, and that is where this pup will be born.

     

Georgia, a friend's GSP at five months on point.

So now the mom has been bred and the wait begins.

  

The Hill

     The hill has an odd name. It is named after the same man as the town it is in, but that is all I’m going to tell you. Years ago it was out in the middle of nowhere and I hunted deer there and birds too. A memory sticks of walking out of the woods, after shooting time had passed, and seeing a monster buck ghost across the woods road ahead of me.

     What made the hill special were the old farms. Up on the top there were two, both long abandoned, but marked with sagging homes settling into old stone foundations. In the fields game had trampled paths between the scraggly apple trees and the cedar swamp down below. Old tote roads crisscrossed the upper wooded slopes, and every single one of them seemed to lead exactly where you wanted to go. It was that kind of magical place. In a field halfway down the eastern side stood a box-like camp where an old woman lived by herself during the summers. I wish I could remember her name.

     Somehow, two decades slipped by without visiting that hill, but finally I went back with my young German wirehaired pointer named Chara and my Parker shotgun that had turned a hundred years old that year.

     Unbeknownst to me a horrific ice storm had flattened the trees a few years earlier, obliterating most of the landmarks. Up on the top of the hill two homes had been built near the ancient fallen ones and the old fields there were posted. Travel through what had once been woods was impossible, with trees broken and lying in a tangled mess. The claws of chest high raspberries flourished in the new sunlight.

     We found that little camp in the field halfway down the hill. Someone had been there recently and it looked much like I remembered it. Above the house a pool had been re-dug next to a spring and firewood was stacked on the far side of the porch.

     Where an old footpath came down the hill into the field, I tried to pick my way between the raspberries’ thorns. A fallen maple trunk blocked the way, and then another. And then Chara flushed a grouse.

     She went into overdrive, pushing under or jumping over obstacles and oblivious to the vicious briars. Several more grouse exploded into the sky. I sat on a log and watched, knowing she would be back eventually and was learning a lesson along the way---dogs can’t catch grouse.

     Her tongue looked a foot long when she came back panting. We found that spring fed pool and she stretched right out in the icy water to drink her fill. Sauntering out the old tote road toward the truck, I carried my old Parker shotgun broken open and draped over my shoulder. It had been quite a day.

     And of course a lone grouse dropped out of a busted-off old spruce and flew straight away down the road, offering one of the easiest shots a man could ever hope to see.

Georgia

     Georgia is staying at our house while her owners are away. In case you missed the earlier posts, she’s a young German shorthaired pointer who will be two in May and belongs to friends of ours. Georgia is intense, almost constantly in motion, ever hunting, but she is very well mannered, I will give her that.

     I’m lucky and make a living as a cabinetmaker with a shop only a few feet from our home. Most days our two German wirehaired pointers hang out in the shop, and this past week Georgia has been there too. While the wires sleep, Georgia searches for mice.

     On Monday I had to install cabinets at a customer’s summer home out in the middle of nowhere, so I brought the dogs along to let them poke around the yard and swim in the pond. In the afternoon I didn’t see Georgia around, so I peeked into the backyard. There she was, munching down a rabbit that she had just caught. By the time I got it away from her the hind end was devoured.

     The next day was unusually warm, so I had the big doors to my shop open. My wirehairs stretched out in the sun and slept. I found Georgia underneath my truck with her head stuck inside a box of dog biscuits, which had been almost full earlier in the day.

    We left her in the house this morning, and when I went inside for lunch the placemats on the dining table were either on the floor or askew. Somebody had obviously been table surfing. No damage was done

     I love Georgia’s constant inquisitiveness and that drive to hunt. Last fall her abilities in the field were outstanding, especially considering how little formal hunting training she had. How many young dogs do you know that can handle ruffed grouse on a regular basis?

     Her motions are measured, as if she wants to make certain that she can run all day. And she’s a real sweetie, always comes when called and wants to give you a lick when she arrives. In the woods she keeps track of her handler and never seems to tire. She’s just pretty to look at and a joy to watch. 

     But the best thing about Georgia is that she makes my wirehairs appear so well mannered.

Snow in April

          Up north there is a winter storm warning in place, with three to six inches of wet frozen slop predicted. I worry about the woodcock. Many must have arrived up there by now and probably many are sitting on nests. Let’s hope they survive the snow.

          The ruffed grouse, being larger birds and maybe nesting a tad later, usually aren’t bothered by a late snow. But an April snow can raise havoc with the local woodcock population. The last time one blanketed the land it took two or three years for the woodcock population to recover.

          So I worry.

Grouse Country, March

     We drove up to grouse camp last week, arriving along with a foot of fluffy new snow. It didn’t look like much snow had been in the woods before that last foot fell, and the new stuff was almost a pleasure to shovel, it was so light.

    Our usual routine is to hike with the dogs, so that is what we did, finding places that were plowed or packed. In some places the snow in the woods was deep enough that the dogs only made short forays into the pucker brush, but in others they hunted as if it were for real. Twice while we were out we spied grouse sitting in poplar trees to feed.

     Back at the house the books called to me. There are still several by George Bird Evans that remain unread. Last fall I lucked into a half dozen of his books from an old friend, so I savored two of them along with a daub or two of single malt. Then I re-read Guy De LA Valdene’s Making Game: An Essay on Woodcock. What a fascinating character he is. Old Shooting Sportsman and Gray’s Sporting Journal magazines are piled all over the place, so they constantly distracted me. One afternoon Nick Karas book Brook Trout held my attention for hours, so it isn’t always about bird hunting. I even thought about tying trout flies at one point, but thinking about it was as far as I got.
     The last afternoon I snuck out with the dogs to walk down to the stream below the house. It’s decent grouse country, and deer sometimes yard in the softwoods along the stream if the snow is deep. The snow wasn’t deep though and the dogs thought it was a treat to hunt. Stream banks softened with bright-white rounded snow banks are always beautiful and the water sounded the same as in the summertime. On the way back we worked closer to the hill and the hardwoods, and the younger wirehair worked herself into a frenzy over scent. And then a grouse exploded out of the upper limbs of a craggy old white cedar. Both dogs stopped to watch her leave, and then went back to hunting with their hind ends in overdrive.

     All too soon it was time to head back home to where life’s mundane tasks waited. Driving down through the mountains and trying to do the math in my head, I came up with 191 days until grouse season.

 
 

Waiting For Woodcock

      Doesn’t that sound like a movie—Waiting For Woodcock? It would probably be about an odd older guy living in a rural area, who frequented swampy areas and whose only understanding friend was a dog.

     The middle of this past week the weather felt like spring, and, on a morning walk out back with the dogs, I wondered when the first woodcock might show up. February is the only month I have never seen a woodcock in New England.

     Snow fell that night, about three inches of fluffy white stuff, and, when I walked the next morning, I decided that it would be a while before the woodcock showed up.

     The day turned out warm with the temperatures in the forties and by the middle of the afternoon most of the new snow had disappeared. A friend, Tom Flaherty, called to tell that he had run his Brittany pup in the next town over and she found three woodcock in some poplar near a gravel pit. 

Do you see him in there?

     Imagine that, woodcock in February. 

Not My Favorite, but…

     There is this place that I hunt because it is close to home, not because it is the best hunting. It’s state owned land, complete with stocked pheasants and feeble pen-raised quail and lots of hunters, but the memories go way back, well over forty years, to my earliest days with a dog and a gun.

Colby in the early morning haze

     Even in the off season I stop there to walk the dog sometimes. Often I’ve told myself that I really haven’t hunted that property all that much, not wanting to really admit how often I’ve been there. But when I get out in the woods and walk into the first field I always recall where the pheasant hid in that corner on the last day of a season and can even still see it burst upward through the limbs of the oaks again. Or there’s that thicket, just north of the old sand pit, where the other hunter’s dogs had just passed through, and then mine locked up solid on a sulking pheasant. And as I pass by that old blow down that fell over four or five years ago, I see again the covey of quail that exploded in every direction, making my head spin and the dog go crazy.

     That particular blow down is near the corner of a field where my first bird dog, a young Brittany male, who at that time knew more about bird hunting than me, located his first covey of quail. I can still see his eyeballs doing circles in their sockets as about two dozen quail huddled together six feet from his trembling pink nose.

There's a quail hiding in there

     And then there’s the place under the power lines where my oldest German wirehair, well over a decade ago, back when she was only five months of age, pointed her very first quail. When I shut my eyes the pup still stands at the edge of the weeds. I remember how nervous I felt, not wanting to miss when that bird flushed, but I can still see it fall and her hurried grab.

     All three of my wirehairs have hunted there. My youngest retrieved the first bird shot over her only three seasons ago. It happened in a logged-over area and I can still see her prancing back with that bird in her mouth, looking ever so very proud.

     There have been a few golden moments too, like the occasional woodcock twisting up from under my feet, and even points that produced exploding ruffed grouse, although I never would shoot one there with their numbers so low in that neck of the woods.

Chara pointing and Colby honoring

     Every fall the same faces are there in the parking lot, people who I barely know, but we hunt together and our dogs back each other’s and we share laughs and stories and watch each other miss. It’s a camaraderie that predates modern man.

     Around every turn and over every knoll are places that remind me of good times. I guess forty plus years multiplied times a couple of times a year adds up to a whole lot of…pretty good fun.

Christmas Time

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

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

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

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

     We truly have a lot to be thankful for. 

The Country Road

     You know those places, spots that are so familiar that you hardly notice them. I had driven by that logging road a hundred times.  It goes down to somebody’s camp, maybe a mile or so down, and then dead ends against a stand of softwoods. Somewhere beyond, in the thick dark stuff, a good sized trout stream tumbles to the north. The country is pretty wild there and you’re about ten miles from the nearest asphalt.

     In a Google Earth image I had noticed that a large clearcut bordered the uphill side of the road and that softwoods remained throughout it in scattered clusters. The place had all the makings for good grouse country and easy walking to boot, if I stayed along the road. I’d been looking for some easy terrain to hunt for when a few of my older friends visited.

     So I drove down to that road to investigate, and before I’d driven a hundred yards a grouse jumped off an old bulldozed-up hump and flew across the road into the clearcut on the high side. In the first flat spot that looked hard and dry, I pulled the truck over and parked.

     All three dogs had seen the bird, so it was pointless to suggest one or two stay behind. Besides, I love the pandemonium of hunting over multiple dogs. So I let them all out and then gathered my gun and gear while the dogs searched the road’s edges with their tails all a blur.

     Less than a hundred yards from the truck, the young German shorthair, Georgia, bumped two birds that had been sitting on a mound next to the low side. They sailed down through tall hardwoods with the pup in hot pursuit, disappearing toward a distant softwood edge. We could hunt that line on the way back later and maybe find them. I waited for the young dog to return.

     Further down the road, Chara, the older German wirehair, started to get very birdy up on the banking of the road’s high side. Colby, the three-year-old wirehair disappeared up into the woods behind her. A mixture of hardwoods with young softwoods created great cover for birds, but if any flew in there just seeing them would be almost impossible.

     I pushed in, trying to follow Chara who had her nose to the ground, obviously tracking foot scent. She looked convinced that the bird had walked ahead of us along the banking as we came down the road. Shooting at anything looked to be tough though.

     Chara pointed, relocated, pointed again, then trotted ahead into a dense stand of wrist-sized fir trees. I detoured around. Her bell fell silent, so I hurried. Colby’s bell rang further ahead. George still worked the low side of the road.

      With a whir the bird came back at me.

      Reflexes caused me to duck as it passed low overhead and I shot as it went away, missing as it ducked to the right to sail out over the road and vanish on the low side.

Back out on the road, where a man could walk in a proper fashion without ducking or stepping over or around something with every third step, we continued on. Both of the wirehairs were tightly wound by then and hunted hard.

      Chara pointed from the road and Colby honored about thirty feet further away. Georgia stopped behind Colby. Boy do I love that. The three of them indicated that the bird hid somewhere among little firs on the high side of the road. Before I even stepped off the road the bird flushed out of sight. Georgia took off after it as if she’d been shot in the backside with a missile.

     I continued on down the road.

     Nobody was at the camp, but we made a wide detour around it and into the cutting behind it. Someone had tagged a path with ribbons, probably a deer hunter marking the way to a stand. Following a softwood edge, we circled uphill and around, heading back into the direction we had come. Twice grouse flushed wild ahead of the dogs, both times out of sight, but the thunder of their wings let us know they were there.

     The sound of birds really put Georgia into overdrive and she rocketed through the woods, way too excited and almost in a frenzy. I knew the chances of her stopping to point were small, but you have to give credit for enthusiasm. On a year when the grouse numbers were low it might have been extremely annoying, but with the abundant birds of the past fall I knew we would find more. Patiently, I let her blow off steam, hoping that she learned something with every bird she bumped.

     In a stand of softwoods the size of fence posts Georgia rocketed through and bumped three or more grouse, while the wirehairs methodically searched the cutting beyond.

Colby pointed a grouse and I hurried ahead, but it flushed wild before I could get close enough for a shot. Ignoring Georgia, I hunted behind the wirehairs, finding one more bird.

      By the time we reached the logging road again, my legs were protesting and all three dogs looked tired. Well, maybe not the young rocket-dog Georgia, who still wanted to hunt. The exact number of birds moved in that cutting remains something of a blur, but I was smiling.

      Down through the hardwoods on the low side of the road the softwood edge beckoned, but my legs said no, so we trekked back up to my truck, calling it a day. We would definitely be back though.

Georgia

     I’ve always started working with my bird dog pups the day that I brought them home from the breeder. It is never too early to expose them to feathers and birds, as long as you don’t scare the pup and keep it fun, that’s the way I feel anyway. By the time they are a few months old they are always pointing quail or pigeons and well on their way to becoming bird dogs. Without birds you can’t have a bird dog—I think we’ve all heard that.

     So this story is about a dog that friends of ours, who are non-hunters, acquired about a year and a half ago, a German shorthair pointer named Georgia. This couple has always had shorthairs, and I think this was their third. The idea of their dogs doing what it was been bred to do has always appealed to them, and one day two summers ago I asked how old the pup would be come last October. It would be six months old that fall they said and I jokingly mentioned I’d love to take her up hunting with me. Luckily for me, they thought the idea of the dog traveling up to bird country sounded like a great idea.

     Or maybe they just needed a break from the pup’s energy!

     Georgia had been well taught her basic manners, came when called, sat, stayed, and was a pleasure to be around. Of course there was lots of energy there, and keeping her sitting or staying sometimes became an issue, but, all in all, she was great for a young dog. Her manners around other dogs were impeccable, never once trying to force things to have her own way.

     So we headed up to the big woods for a couple of weeks, with Chara, my oldest German wirehair, and Colby, the young wire who was having hind leg issues that year. Georgia loved it up there, bumped some partridge right of the bat, and explored the new woods with its new and wild scents. The other dogs tolerated her or ignored her, often acting as if she were invisible. Sometimes Georgia stayed in the kennel in the back of the truck so the other dogs could hunt without her bumping the birds.

Georgia on an early woodcock.

     And then we went to the biggest alder patch that I know, where woodcock always are present and sometimes very abundant. Right off the bat Colby pointed a woodcock with Chara and Georgia both honoring. Georgia bumped a couple, and then pointed one. I made very sure that I killed that one on the flush. She was starting to see how things are supposed to work.

     The day turned out to be sort of controlled craziness, with dogs pointing and honoring and bumped birds flying all over the place, but Georgia learned a lot and learned it fast. I don’t know how many woodcock we moved, but there certainly were dozens.

     This past fall we headed north again, Chara another year older and starting to show it, Colby a year wiser and in better physical shape than the year before, and Georgia, anxious to go hunting, but with no additional real training on birds.

Grouse country.

     And what a year! Grouse seemed to be just about everywhere and I lost count of how  many were pointed. Georgia would lock up like a statue though and then take off like a rocket, determined to catch the birds. The other dogs ignored her bad manners and when they pointed I tried to hurry in before Georgia would notice them. When she spotted another dog pointing she would honor for a moment before storming in with the predictable and disastrous results. On woodcock she did fine, but those nervous grouse were just too tantalizing to not chase. Each of the dogs spent time in the kennel, and Georgia was forced to sit out some great grouse cover.

     And then one day, when all three of the three dogs and I worked down through a clear cut that I had never hunted before, it all clicked in. While Chara tried to relocate a grouse that had flushed off to my right, Georgia locked up solid on another bird ahead and stayed that way. What a sight!

Yeah, that's what it is all about!

     It happened in a thicket that all but swallowed up the dogs, where their bells went silent and I could barely catch a glimpse of Colby’s rump as she honored Georgia’s point ahead of her. Georgia, with her darker color, was almost impossible to see. The bird flashed up through the fir boughs and I fired as it disappeared. Both dogs vanished into the foliage and I feared a miss, but then Colby came pushing out of the greenery carrying the bird with Georgia following close behind.

     I took some time to praise them both, which they definitely deserved. They each looked cocky as hell and anxious to hunt more.

Georgia looking proud.

     After that Georgia pointed nearly as many grouse as either of the older dogs. Most of what she knows is in her genes and not from anybody’s training, so it’s kudos to the breeder, Hedgehog Hill Shorthairs in Belmont, Vermont. Of course she is smart too, which lets her figure things out quickly, like how to grab that unattended last half of a sandwich from the tailgate of the truck.

     I’ll hunt over that dog anytime. I keep finding myself singing that Ray Charles song…Georgia on my mind.

   

A Morning Duck Hunt

    Duck season opened this morning. I took the two dogs, even though there is no sane reason to have two dogs. We toted our gear over to a tiny pond on a peninsula that juts out into a salt pond and tossed out a couple of decoys. Then I improvised a blind in the reeds and made myself comfortable.

    The ocean beyond the salt pond and barrier beach roared. As I sipped coffee, the waves seemed loud enough to be headed my way, and I wondered about the likelihood of a tsunami. A cynical person might have thought the ocean sounded like a freeway, but I decided that cars on a freeway sounded sort of like the ocean.

    At four minutes to gunning time I looked at my watch. Birds chirped all around us and ducks and geese made a racket far from sight.  The rumble of the waves against the beach let up and then grew louder again. Three crows flying to the east cawed about something and then disappeared. I poured more coffee. Something in the weeds to our left repeated a low chirping sound over and over, causing the dogs to growl.  I looked at my watch, and it was still four minutes to gunning time.

    Two minutes after legal shooting time passed I realized it was time to pay attention. We waited. The younger dog, Colby, kept moving about, sitting and then standing, and then lying down until she stood again.

    Two mallards fell out of the sky and landed so close on the other side of the weeds that I couldn’t see them. Colby bolted through the growth like a rocket and the ducks took off low over the water, as if knowing that I’d hardly be able to see them. I never fired a shot, but Colby was a tempting target for a moment.

    We listened to those geese, nervous and sounding about to take off. They were behind us somewhere out on the pond, but we never did see them. I looked at the way the morning light filtered around the edges of the weeds, creating a white fuzzy line around the shapes. A faint breeze tickled my left cheek, but barely moved the dried grasses in front of me. The ocean seemed to growl less as the sun painted pink streaks across the clouds.

    Colby was into it by then, and sat like a statue. Chara, the older German wirehair, had this duck hunting stuff down pat, and sat patiently. Both of them waited and trembled, eyes to the sky.

    Two mallards came in downwind from my left and made a wide circle, then dropped down over the decoys. I stood to shoot and the birds flared. It looked further than I liked, but I pulled the right trigger, immediately wishing I’d pulled the left and the tighter barrel. Wings flapped furiously and the ducks never missed a beat. I am sure I shot under the one that I had picked.

    Cursing at myself, I relocated my stool and the dogs closer to the edge of the weeds and the decoys.  My watch said the sun was up, but the gray clouds hid it. It was going to be a bluebird day, so maybe the gunning was already over. To the east ducks clattered periodically, but the geese behind us were silent. I wondered where the pink streaks in the sky had gone. The dogs sat like quaking statues.

    I decided to hunt until an hour after the season had started, which gave us fourteen more minutes, after all, it was a work day. More crows flew across the sky, The sky changed from shades of gray to dull muted purples, and then three puddle ducks, probably mallards, lifted into the sky far away and traced the southern horizon, never coming in our direction.

    I poured more coffee. That didn’t work, no ducks came. I dug out my camera and snapped a few pictures. Still no ducks. I figured that with a camera in my hand the ducks would storm in. Was I going to have to get up to pee to make ducks come?

    Two male mallards came in, rocketing downwind and from the left, passing directly overhead, and then they made a wide circle in front of us, dark shapes against the sky. As they came around to pass straight over my head again, I stood to shoot.

    I should have shot the second bird before he got to me, rather than trying to shoot straight up at the first duck. I almost fell over backwards into the mud, and the ducks flew safely away.

    An hour into the first day of the season, as the sky turned bright blue and the sun changed the grasses to shades of aged bronze, I gathered up the decoys.

     We would try it again the next day.

Prospecting

     The gang had left and I was out prospecting for grouse. Every year I do a lot of that, usually after my friends have left. There is no use dragging them all around the wilds to places that may or may not hold birds. Sometimes the going gets mighty rough. Grouse cover goes from prime to thin-pickens in about ten years, so it always pays to be on the lookout for new country.

     I had spotted this cleat cut on Google Earth and it was back up in a section of country that’s been full of grouse the last few years. The cut covered probably two hundred acres, but hid behind a stand of softwood trees so it wasn’t readably visible from the logging road. The location is back in about fourteen miles from the nearest asphalt in some mighty rugged terrain.

     A skid trail turned snowmobile road led the dogs and I up into the cutting. It seemed to run on forever up the slope, finally stopping up high at mature hardwoods.  The view back across the valley was worth the trek.

     The cutting probably was two years old with relatively easy walking. When the loggers cut it, they took away all of the tree tops, leaving the ground fairly clean. Wet spots were covered with grass and moose tracks. Sprouts shot up from the stumps, but most weren’t shoulder height. Wild raspberries were everywhere.

     We hunted along the top of the cutting and then down the west side.  It didn’t look too encouraging, with no softwoods to offer shelter for the birds, but ahead and about halfway down the slope I could see softwood trees left behind by the logging operation.

     As we approached them I noticed a small knoll covered with softwoods. I love knolls, because grouse love knolls. What better place to sit and collect morning sunshine and survey the surroundings. No matter which way danger approached, the grouse had a downhill escape route that leaves them out of sight on the far side of the mound.

     About then I wished my friends hadn’t all left for those flat lands to the south. Approaching the hump the dogs got birdy and their bells were ringing, and then I could hear the birds accelerating off the far side. There were at least four. If only someone could have been standing on the far side, it would have been like one of those European driven hunts.

     On the other side of the little hill the cutting opened up, with scattered softwood clumps left behind by the loggers. Stopping for a moment, I tried to guess where I would go if I were a grouse, and picked an open alley that led downhill into a softwood swamp.

    Going into the spruce and fir thicket, Chara, my oldest German wirehair, locked up on point, almost completely hidden by bushy little fir trees not quite waist high. A bird busted out wild and I shot, missing, and as I opened the gun to reload, a second bird followed the first.

     I encouraged the dogs on and Colby, my youngest wirehair, pointed one sitting up in a leaning yellow birch about twelve feet off the ground.  It flew as I approached and I missed again. Those birds coming out of trees are always devilishly hard to hit.

    The woods got thicker, with blown down fir trees and clusters of young ones. The going got real tough. All three dogs were birdy, dashing about, pushing under the stuff I was climbing over, each trying to be the first to find the birds.

     I couldn’t locate Georgia, the young German shorthair, but then spotted her frozen about eight feet in front of Colby, who was honoring. Both of them were almost buried in the green fir boughs. Before I could get within twenty yards of the dogs the grouse rumbled upward and a reflex made me fire. It was a prayer shot, but then I thought a bird’s wing fluttered, possibly the dead bird caught up in a fir branch. Then a dog’s tail wagged and I guessed that was what I’d seen.

     And then Colby came pushing through the brush with the bird in her mouth. What a great sight.

    We hunted down the hill, moving three more grouse, but killing none. Coming out of the swamp into the more open clearcut, Chara pointed and a woodcock flew up, twisting among the branches of two fir trees, and quickly escaped.

    We’ll go back there again next year, me and my friends. I wish all my prospecting trips turned out that successful.