Two forward, one back

Sometimes we regress.

After steady points and shot birds, I suddenly had a second flushing dog – a long-range flushing dog.

As a remedy we cruised the roads and looked for coveys of huns to point in roadside ditches on a check cord.

So when I saw a dozen roosters run from a tilled field into a 100 foot circle of CRP, I held out little hope.

But I knocked anyway and with permission granted I unhooked the check cord.

And watched her go on point.

My little setter every bit Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde nowhere in sight, I walked in, flushed and shot the first rooster she had ever seen dead on the ground.

So we went a little further and she pointed again. This time a hen, no shot.

The next bird was a rooster that she didn’t point but flushed by pushing too hard. I knew I was pushing my luck, but before I could think about it too much, she went on point again. When I walked past her I noticed the tip of her tail pointing up at the sky and hoped for a shootable bird.

He got up further away than I expected, and I wondered if she pointed him from so far away or if he had been on the move.

It was an old bird and there was no cackle. He swung right and I pushed the barrels and squeezed the trigger.

He landed on his back in the tilled field and when I walked up my little setter was trying in vain to pick him up but getting nothing but a mouthful of feathers.

We’d come only halfway around this piece of cover and I knew there are more birds, but we’d pushed our luck far enough.

We headed for the truck, for once, moving forward.