December 2012 – Mouthful of Feathers

A first

I could hear birds flushing ahead and though I couldn’t see her, I knew the young setter was gleefully chasing them off the edge of the abandoned road and watching them glide out over the 500-foot drop off to our right.

If I slowed to a walk and looked through the trees, I could probably have seen a few of the big bomber blues that hang out on this ledge nearing the end of their downhill glide.

This is part of it. Young setters will flush birds, by accident and on purpose; unintentionally and without remorse. I have learned to accept this season as a learning experience, one where I will possibly not shoot a single bird behind this dog.

So it came as a quite a surprise when I rounded the corner and found her holding an unsure point.

I stumbled up the hill to my left and when a big blue got up, it surprised up both.

I scratched it down at 15 feet, a shot so close it wouldn’t have been a stretch for me to whiff it.

The young setter raced to the bird and pounced, excited and confused. She wouldn’t pick it up, but when I put it in my vest she simply stayed with me.

We turned for the truck, my gun broken open over my shoulder, my young setter dancing along behind, wanting nothing more than another look at her first bird.

Snow

In front, the snow is a clean white page, waiting for the words to be written.

Behind, a story of a man afoot begins to unfold.

The springer quarters ahead and when I cross her track I stop to look at the prints pressed into the powder, marred around the edges when her warm furry foot pulled at the edges of the cotton-candy snow.

I move on to clean snow, a new page.

Rooster tracks emerge from the sage, their edges sharp and intact as they race along a parallel story line to intersect with the quartering tracks of a springer.

I look up from the page and quicken my pace.

Dog, snow flying, shaking sage, a whir, a cackle, a long tail streams out behind mad wing beats.

A gun shot, a shout, a retrieve, an ending.

A crimson and blue bird lies on pure white snow, a single drop of blood colors the snow near a jumble of tracks from man and beast.

I pick up the bird and we move forward.

Behind, a story written in snow.

In front, a clean white page.

The inmate needs constant supervision

During her evening yard walk, she must be shackled or watched by an armed guard.

Around the cell block, they whisper about her, “Her dad was a badger,” they claim when she’s out of ear shot. “No,” another says, “the sire was a setter, the dam was a beaver.”

One of the things that got her here in the first place was stealing stuffed animals from children and then mauling the stuffing out of said stuffed animals.

On more than one occasion, she has literally taken candy from a baby. As you would expect, she found it rather easy.

She’s jumped bail so many times that she doesn’t even have another parole hearing for a month.

Still, it doesn’t faze her much.

Even now – the tail end of a bird-dog summer – she lives life like a tethered rocket. You can shorten the rope but she’ll just run faster laps.

And time in the box can’t break her spirit.

Not that she hasn’t been there often enough for violations like digging, chewing, chasing, destroying and insolence.

Given even a moment of freedom, she will dig a crater-sized hole, remove whatever plant material that previously resided there and mulch it.

It happens so quickly that the guard often pleas on behalf of the inmate, sure that he has not fallen asleep on watch.

“It couldn’t have been her,” the guard says, not quite meeting the glare of the warden while hanging his head in shame.

He begins his protest anew, then glances at the inmate and sees the white paws covered in dirt.

So he turns away and goes to get a shovel.

He takes the inmate with him.

The iPhone 5 aint got nothin’ on this

It’s not bullshit after all.

They do actually point.

The crazy part is, you don’t even have to teach them to do it.

They just know.

After all those flushing dogs, it’s hard to fathom.

When I paid the deposit, my bird-dog mentor told me, “It’s simple, just show them a lot of birds and try not to screw them up.”

A 10-week-old pup, chubby and mostly confused, sometimes unable to run across the mowed grass without tripping, freezes solid, pointing a pigeon wing hidden in the grass a few feet away.

All the technology in the known universe can’t replicate this.

Ground sluice ’em?

This brings new meaning to the phrase “ground sluicing.”

Not that I haven’t been there. Particularly this year on chukar, where the dog can point them, but I can’t seem to close the gap before they flush.
This video, however, takes it to a new level.
The dog is on point, you can see a few skylined birds and he takes a knee?
Folds out the bipod?
And snipes them?
What planet is this filmed on?