Month: February 2012

Awash

Nearly half a year of memories wash over me. Five months of following a fleet of setters across the hills and fields. Five long months of birds before the gun on some days, and no birds anywhere on others. These memories will keep my blood pumping in the months ahead and now the thoughts turn to other things, mountains to climb, rivers to float, fish to catch, horses to ride. But at this moment, there is memory.

Awaiting the burst.

Opening day in the rain and snow of September, following all four bird dogs onto a wet carpet at the foot of the Madison Range. Pushing up through tall wet grass and soaked only a few hundred yards from the truck. Slogging through the foliage still green in summer’s last gasp, chilled but thrilled. And a flurry of grouse before the gun, off points and backs that are etched deeply into recollection.

Windblown days on high Montana prairie and rooster pheasants peeling across the sky with a jet-stream tail wind and the shotgun barking. A rattlesnake in mid-October buzzing up out of the grass and hitting Duke only inches from his eye and then a frantic rush to the vet’s office. Ruffed grouse from the home coulee. Blue grouse from the high ridge down by Idaho where a slap of October snow has turned the high peaks ivory. Eating lunch on a high rock in the Nevada desert. And a last hunt in young February with an old friend whose best dog drew her last breath after one last hunt. A hot springs soak after a long day of hunting.

And there are the shots too, the sight picture good, the chukar mask at your bead and the pull of the trigger and crumple of feather. Same sight picture, a miss, leaving you wondering if you are getting feeble. Other times connecting well and never seeming to miss, but then back to missing. Streaky. It’s part of it. Part of the memory of the months behind.

I do an inventory of these days past and take stock of what lies ahead. A shotgun that needs cleaning badly. A right knee–hyper-extended in a badger hole in early September–that needs a good long rest but belongs to an impatient leg. A truck that needs to have a transfusion of all liquids and a tail-light bulb replaced. A dog herd that is aging too quickly; Ike, 11, has hunted his last chukar cliff. Sage will be 10 in May and Duke 9. Even Echo is 6. How does this happen? How can it happen that such a flock is suddenly so old? I’ve got a deposit down on a 2013 female, but the anticipation of that event is hardly solace to a batch of veteran pals who are past their best days and who I will some day have to bury at the base of some lonely cliff somewhere. Too soon. Five months can fly by, but ten years somehow go even faster. But I will not think of that now, for there are four great bird dogs and another season up ahead before a recalcitrant pup joins the gang.

Ahead now is spring and summer and then another fall. I will pray for rains at the right time, for snakes that go into hibernation early, for cooperative pheasants for the old dog, for good hunting companions and for a shotgun that swings as smoothly as the prettiest girl in the dancehalll. Until then, we wait.

Knowing It’s There

I could go on about how the season came and went too quickly, although now that I think about it, a lot has come and gone since it began last September. I could lament not having gotten out more, though I think I did pretty well this year. I could allow myself to be reminded, every time I look at the dog, of regret at not letting him revel in what he is bred for, every second and every day that he is legally allowed to do so. But then again, neither am I, and that’s life.

Instead of giving in to remorse, I opt to wander through the ever-expanding topo map of places I’ve hunted which lives in my head. I think of fields full of sharptail, warm and yellow and glowing on an October afternoon, now harsh and iced over and windswept. But still, these tough birds reside. I think about new chukar land I walked this past year. About how dry it was – even for that country; about how those birds of the Eurasian steppe are surviving in their adopted basin and range. Blue grouse now burrowed into snow, and a lone wolverine, high above tree line on a February morning, trying to sniff them out. Huns, normally spread out and elusive for much of the year, now coalesced into a large covey that has moved into the undeveloped sage scrub near my house to wait for the days to grow long again.

Somewhere deep in the big empty.

Maybe my drive is evolving. Walking country for days, with nothing in the game bag to show for it, doesn’t feel so much like “failure” anymore. While sitting down to a meal of chukar enchiladas, or pheasant pot pie, is a yearning I hope never to quench, it’s more important simply to know that the country is there. That the birds are there. That I know these things irrevocably, because I’ve personally been cold, dirty and hungry in such places, and it’s left its mark on me. I’ll wake up hungry again tomorrow, no matter how amazing the meal was. But these intimate connections to wild country are a longer-lasting feast. Either way, you are what you eat.

One more round

January wilts and the wind whips. It is cold and dry and barren as an old cow. No winter really, or no snow that is. Doug fir pops in the wood stove and piles of gear lie around the shop, waiting to be stowed. A wall tent, last used a month ago in chukar country, hangs loose in the barn, as if putting it away for the winter is too much, too painful. Or perhaps it is just laziness, nothing more. No special or secret meaning to a tent un-stashed. But it is there and it will stay there for a while longer.

There is one more ahead. One last trip south. The runs there this year have been a thin broth–birds few and scattered wide. Land there as dry and parched as this cold Montana range. But the season is open a few precious days in February and then it’s done. After that point it will be time to stow and clean and repair. Time to give the right knee a break, to run patches through the auto-loader, to let the dogs rest and sleep and gain weight. But there is one more hunt. A meeting with a friend you’ve hunted with hundreds of times, a person who knows your moves and pace as you know his. It is a reunion of friendships, with some drinking, some cigars, lots of laughter. Some new country too, and some old. Good dogs and big hikes. Muscles hard at season’s end and fishing season still off there so far you can’t even imagine it.

Tomorrow and the next day you load the truck and then the next day, you will turn south with 12 hours in front of the hood and then five days of hiking talus and scree, smelling the sage on the dry high desert wind, the big open. Five days. Five last days and then that’s it. There will be time enough ahead for all that other stuff. But now, one more round. And that’s it.