We’re coming for you

I packed the dry box already.
A month from now, the bottom will be filled with empty hulls, spilled dog food and an indiscernible assortment of shotgun shells, granola bars, trash, mud, blood and feathers.
Now though, it’s neatly packed with organized boxes of labeled shells and dog supplies.
Meanwhile, the dog and I are aching to hunt. We took a walk early this morning. We jumped a fork-horn bull and saw the remains of a fox-killed ruffie. We savored the cool air of early morning, pretending that it wouldn’t hit 98 as the sun fell from its apex.
On the walk back to the truck, the dew fall glistened on the still-green grass in the high country. The promise of a flush and a fleeting shot against an aspen-filled backdrop are no longer idle thoughts of summer, they are valid mental exercises.
Before leaving, I turned back and looked across the hillside.
For the first time in an equinox, it wasn’t a look of longing.
I loaded the dog in her box and said softly to the unseen birds, “We’re coming for you.”

Here’s to the . . .

. . . warm motel rooms

. . . home-cooked meals

. . . local watering holes

. . . rural day-spas

. . . comrades in arms

. . . the scent of the quarry

. . . the thrills

. . . the cool refreshing beverages

. . . the tipsy-taxi cabs

. . . the hunting camp love

. . . the Mouths-Full-Of-Feathers

. . . and the hunt itself. Bring it!

The Purge.

There are those that are diligent about cleaning their gear at the end of the season, putting it all away properly. Truth be told, with the exception of guns, I’m not one of those.

My bird vest usually gets tossed in the closet shortly after chukar ends around the first week of February, and doesn’t emerge again ’till…well, right about now – a few days before the next season starts.

Empty purple and yellow shells clink together in the pockets as I take the vest off the hook.

A granola bar wrapper is still in there, which I ate the contents of atop Nunya Peak, as the increasing wind ushered in a black wall of storm in the distance, and the birds called each other into the safety of the cliffs below me. We proceeded to take a few stragglers from the base of that cliff; birds that didn’t heed the call to safety. It was snowing sideways on the way out, and it took a while to find the truck, even longer to regain the feeling in my hands.

There is still a smorgasbord of remnant feathers all mixed together in the back of the vest, representing a rough stratigraphic timeline from early season ruffies at the base, through the solid mid-layer of sharpies and roosters and the occasional Hun, topped off with a dusting of chuks. Dirt, dried grass and twigs hold it all together.

There is that small hole that should probably have been mended (but likely never will be), from where I took a break against a fence post that hid a rusty old square nail, somewhere in southern Montana.

A small projectile point made of chert that I almost stepped on walking the canyon country of Nevada. I stood there for a while after I picked it up, sliding the cool smoothness of it between my thumb and forefinger, taking in a view that extended far, far into the distance.

Drops of dried blood remain on the lining of the game bag, reminding me that this isn’t just a game.

In some weird way, purging my vest of all these things is almost as difficult as accepting the end of another season. I put the vest back in the closet. There are still a few more days before this really needs to be done.

A hunting song

There aren’t a hell of a lot of hunting themed songs out there. Even in the catalogs of the less-than-famous troubadours of rural America that I prefer, hunting is a topic not often broached.

One of my favorite fall disks is Adam Carroll’s Lookin Out the Screen Door.

There’s a tune on that disk that might just be the best bird-hunting song I’ve ever heard. Of course, it’s not really about bird hunting at all. But I like it anyway.

It’s called Errol’s Song and it’s one of my favorite pieces of musical poetry.

Selected lyrics from Errol’s Song, by Adam Carroll

There’s coffee and biscuits on the stove in the kitchen
There’s a crack in the ceiling and a screened in front door
And as the fog starts to settle on the banks of Lake Arthur
I can still taste the whiskey from the night just before
It’s the Crown Royal whiskey from the night just before

And it’s hard to get up at five in the morning
Put your guns, put your shells, put your wine in a sack
We look like some militia in our boots and our camo
With a bird dog named Milo, he’s asleep in the back

He held my hand when my boots got too heavy
With the mud from the rice fields coming to my behind
We set out the decoys in the dark on the levy
And we walked through the graveyard of the rusted combines

Of course, there are other hunting songs. Ted Nugent has written more than a few, but personally I think Ted Nugent is a douchebag and a poser who’s bad for hunting. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to Damn Yankees (it was the 80’s after all.) But the fact remains, Nugent hunts over bait and inside high fences.

As far as I’m concerned that makes him an asshole of the highest order, not fit to talk about hunting much less sing about it.

We could use a musical ambassador for hunting, I nominate Adam Carroll solely on the basis of Errol’s Song, but I’m willing to consider others if you got ’em.

Cleanliness is far from Dogliness.

I was looking back through some of last season’s pics the other day, and came across this one:

I stared at this pic for a while, remembering that fine fall day with a good friend in Montana. But more than anything, the sheer unbridled, unashamed joy of a dog covered in mud brought the smile to my face. It was a great day to be alive, for both of us. And at the end of the day, whether the game bag is full or empty, what more can you ask for?

Get here already

It was cool this morning when I walked the dogs down by the creek. Cool enough for a fleece, cool enough to fire the engine in anticipation of another season.

On this, the last best month of summer, I find my thoughts drifting. Drifting to the next month, the best shortest month of the year. Screw February. February needs to be short. September needs to be twice as long.

I walk these mornings with steaming mug in one hand and watch the herd swing out into yellowing grass and I pause at the bridge over the crick and peer into clear water for little brown trout scattering from shadow. I walk out and talk to the horses and the dogs dig mice and point sparrows and then I walk back to the house and go to work. But my thoughts drift again.

Drift to elk bugling from black timber. Drift to blues rising before the gun, thundering from chokecherry and alder. Drift to grasshoppers–real and imitation–bobbing on current, right next to the bank. Drift to perfect precision cast, drift to the list of things to do yet, before that bright day on the first of the shortest best month of the year.

Most of my winter’s firewood is still up in the hills, baking in August heat, waiting to be felled and blocked and hefted into the old F250. Most of my fishing is here in these few wilting weeks of the best month of summer. Why, I ask myself, do I wait to get firewood in August? Panic sets in and I run to the hills in the evenings with a chainsaw. Why didn’t I do this in June? It was raining then, I guess. So I sweat through it, itchy with wood chip and bug bite. Sweat now while I must, for in only a few weeks, there cannot be work to do when a shotgun needs exercise.

During my lunch hour now, I shoot my bow. A dozen shots. Then I go back inside to the computer. In the mornings, after the walk, I unload last night’s firewood haul before the sitting at the computer for the day. During the day, I take breaks and unload some more and by quitting time, the old truck is empty and I can drive up to the mountains and haul out another load. Repeat. Routines.

Tonight, I’ll take an evening off and float a stretch of the river with a good friend and a box of hoppers. The imitation kind, not the Nick Adams tobacco-juice spitting kind.

Then it will come again, the panic of a coming season and the need to be out in the woods or on the open flanks of Montana autumn with a shotgun or a bow or a rifle or a fly rod instead of up in the woods with a chainsaw and some bar oil. The goal is to have it all in, all up in the woodshed before that shining day. It is a sin of the lowest order to be working in the woods when the dogs are stuck in the kennel and the season is open, I think. Do it in August, even if that means missing some fishing. Do it now before September because when that month comes, you need to go. Do it now. These last weeks of a good summer, dwindling and too short in themselves. I waft between get-here-already and shit-not-yet.

Such it is.

–TR

Dirt road soundtrack

Dirt roads traveled in the company of bird dogs and dog-eared maps deserve their own soundtrack.

The season is still somewhere ahead, but the road begins to beckon. The first trips are for mountain grouse, so September is for driving. It’s for sunflower seeds and cold beer in the cooler, lunches in Aspen groves and beside tiny trout water that you promise to re-visit with a rod, but never do.

Much of hunting blue grouse and ruffies in the west is an arm-out the window pursuit.

Later in the season, we’ll make the long treks into the backcountry for prairie grouse and chukar, starting early from the spots we know.

The first week of September, we set the cruise at 26 mph and glance at a stack of maps printed off with intentionally cryptic notes (lest they fall into the wrong hands) as we explore old logging roads.

The windows down and the dog whining in anticipation, we’ll stop and look, hunt a spot, then back in the truck.

We’ll spin a disk of old favorites and rejoice in birds and dogs and the roads to get there.

Here’s my disk for day 1

Stay a Little Longer – Willie Nelson

Photograph – Charlie Robison

Broken Bottles – Sons Of Bill

Out here in the middle – Robert Earl Keen

Circle back – John Hiatt

Threadbare Gypsy Soul – Pat Green

Down By the Water – The Decemberists

Guitar Town – Steve Earle

Pearl Snaps – Jason Boland & The Stragglers