August 2012 – Mouthful of Feathers

They don their breeks and sporting coats and jaunty caps, as the hired help clean and polish their Purdeys, their Grullas, their Krieghoffs.

They pay upwards of $6000 a week to re-enact a pantomine of hunting; what it has sadly become a continent away in a place that lost its wild places centuries ago, lost the bulk of its public opportunities to hunt and fish, and was left with this ritualized costume party, for the select who could afford it.

And now, in a western state that is over 60% public land, where fantastic wild bird hunting opportunities abound for anyone willing to do a little homework and put one foot in front of the other, they are paying top dollar to do this, behind a fence, for pen-raised birds instead.

The birds pile up in the hundreds, considered little more than clays with wings. But no matter – many more are released. And some, I’d like to think the smart ones, high-tail it for the property boundary, where a free and wild life await on the other side. Those that make it quickly become wily survivors, constant predation being the price they pay for freedom.

I walk a field a few hundred yards away. I hear laughter coming from the expansive porch of the lodge, carried on the breeze. My jeans mostly muddy, a trusty 16ga. pump in my hand. The shorthair locks. Spins and repositions. Locks again, amber eyes ablaze. There’s a rooster in there, on this free, CRP land, adjoining exclusivity. I can’t help but laugh my ass off. Sometimes trickle down economics actually work.

– Smithhammer

August falls away now, slowly, browned to crunch, fading, dying. A long hot summer clings but this morning, cool and smelling of hay put up and chlorophyll draining from leaf. Too cool for coffee on the front deck before sunrise. Even in a sweatshirt. Too chilly, but you sit out there for a bit anyway, forcing yourself to toughen up, newspaper at hand, coffee steaming and warming your mitts and all four bird dogs squirming, panting. One probably is too old for this season, now only three weeks away. He lies on the deck now licking balls that are no longer there. He barks at nothing and dreams pheasant dreams.

August fades and slips. The next-to-best-month next to the best month. The month you want to go and stay. The month of 31 days too long and too short. Hoppers and hot afternoons, fish with lock-jaw and deep in the last holes that have been left to them. Cool mornings and PMDs scattered. Baby everything coming on, growing. Whitetail bucks with velveted antlers so large you think they are trophies . . . until you think of the mass of velvet. Frantic bow shooting, tuning. Pinching fat at your flanks, wondering if you are in shape to heft a hindquarter onto your back or at least onto a horse’s. And the dogs, barking, bored, ready. The old boy will stay home but there’ are three others. The youngest is lame, a sprain of some sort. Fine time. Wood lies in long blocks at the mouth of the wood shed, ready for saw and axe. Ten tons of hay in the barn. A list of chores too long and a vow to have them done before September One. Won’t happen.
Cool this morning and your thoughts . . . . A week ago, a young herd of pheasants on the road to Willow Creek Cafe. Reports of baby Huns barely able to fly up on the bench road. Yesterday’s grouse on the trail up Specimen. Cool this morning. Cool.
Get here already.