Blaine Peetso

Remedy.

Are you having trouble laying off wild flushes? Are bumped birds hitting the ground? Is a limit your only measure of success? Still considering ground sluicing a few?

Don’t despair.

There is a cure.

Get out on the road for a few weeks, ensure you have limited cooler space and big lonely distances between amenities. When ice is hard to find, the reality will set in quickly that you can only eat so many birds in a day. You will soon be giving bumped birds a pass, wild flushes will only warrant a glance and quality will transcend quantity.

Side effects may include a steadier dog and the self-satisfaction that comes from leaving a few birds in the field for the future.

(Disclaimer: this method is only effective when healthy bird populations are present. This prescription is NOT recommended if birds are scarce, as it is highly ineffective when facing the fourth night of vegetarian fare for supper.)

Cowboy Logic

Call me pretentious or a purist, or worse if you must, but some things are just inherently better than others. Dry-fly fishing and homemade bread, film photography and pasta from scratch, wing-shooting wild birds and archery elk all hold intangibles that make them superior to their analogues. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with Wonderbread or bobber-fishing, they just lack the same charm that stems from the countless hours spent developing a specific set of skills to accomplish what is, in essence, a more difficult and less efficient task. To do anything in such a way, to sacrifice our most precious commodities of time and effort, can only mean that we truly care about it. Not just in the end result, but also in the process of getting there.

Working cattle with horses and heelers certainly falls into this category and there are places out there where cowboys still cowboy. Where they still sort cows on horseback and drag calves to the fire come branding time. Where a hat and a slicker aren’t cosplay but still tools of a trade mostly done in unwelcoming weather.

Places like Battle Creek, SK , Broadus, MT and Kaycee, WY

As well as Longview, AB where I happened to find myself at a table with just such a gentleman. Bill sat there all crow’s feet creases and taciturn manner, nursing a Kokanee while his nephew Jake and I talked bird dogs.

I was there, back in my wife’s hometown this past summer for the occasion of her mother’s wedding, a marriage between a couple widowers well into their 70s. I was letting the dog out of the camper for a leak and some fresh air when Jake came up to me with a question I get fairly often.

“What breed is that?”

“He’s a Small Munsterlander.”

“I’ve never seen one. Knew it couldn’t be a mutt though, he’s just too well put together. You hunt him?”

This was all we needed to spend most of our evening drinking too many beers and conversing about all things out of doors, while the grandkids did the “Juicy Wiggle” and everyone else did their best to politely decline the groom’s homebrew.

Jake ran Springers, preferred to hunt pheasants and had recently converted to a hardcore lake fisherman because the rivers had gotten too damn busy for his liking. Jake and I talked of places and people we both knew, while Bill didn’t say a whole lot of anything. His only tangible contribution to the conversation was to offer a quiet correction when I got a piece of local knowledge mixed up. Bill’s family had a ranched “out West” for four generations and had land with a certain creek running through it that I would dearly love to get access to. Any tentative query I offered about said access, wasn’t met with much more than a shrug.

As always seems to happen with birddog folks, we ended up talking about the past exploits of our dogs, which inevitably left us just talking about dogs that have passed. Jake and I had both recently lost beloved dogs. Mine had a good run, 15 years until time finally told us “that’s enough”. His favourite springer Molly, cut down pretty much in her prime still. Jake’s wife, Susan, sat next to him holding back tears as he recounted Molly’s last days.

“There’s just something special about a bird dog.”

“There’s nothing like a good bird dog.”

We kept repeating some iteration of this phrase for lack of any way to move the conversation forward after reopening fairly fresh wounds, when another guest, Shane who’d been lingering around, took a seat at our table.

“Shit. All dogs are special” he chimed in, a few too many whiskeys deep and intent on talking before doing any of the prerequisite listening.

I’d met Shane a few times, he’s loud and brash and opinionated, not exactly a rare breed nowadays, but all in all he’s probably a pretty good guy who would be the first to stop and help if he saw you broke down on the shoulder, but reading a room ain’t his strong suit.

Jake just looked at him.

“Oh for sure, they’re all special, but there’s just something more to it when you have that bond you only get when you and a dog are working together as a team.”

Shane did a sort of half chuckle.

“You bird hunting guys make me laugh. You guys just think you’re special, is all it is. The dumbest birds. They just sit there. You can just shoot them with a .22 driving around on a side-by-side. “

Susan got up and left the table, Jake and I looked at each other.

Anyone who has ever hunted behind a birddog knows about the beauty and magic and value in doing so, and the only reason we personally feel special about it at all is because we got to witness it. I was about to get up on the soapbox and launch into a longwinded soliloquy stating just that, when the old timer in the Stetson to my left finally spoke in earnest.

“Sorry son, I didn’t catch your name.”

“Shane.”

“Shane. Nice to meet you. I’m Bill. You, uh, seem like the type of fella that would rather fuck five twos instead of make love to one ten.”

I suppose that’s one way of putting it.

Maybe not as eloquent as I was hoping to have said it, but then again I don’t spend most of my time speaking to a herd of Herefords.

Cram

His high school report card read:

“ . . . Easily distracted and perpetually absent, even in the rare event that he is marked down as ‘present’. Shows considerable potential but is content to float along near failure, with the hope that cramming for a final test or essay will deliver a passable grade.”

Twenty odd years later and not much has changed.

Two weeks until opening day and he’s planting live pigeons in the mornings and shooting clay ones in the afternoons.

Attempting to put in the work he’s been putting off for 243 days.

Winter On

December at this latitude is cold and dark, the days all start late and every glimpse of the fleeting sun is considered a minor miracle. The skies are grey and low, night comes quick and the northern wind sneaks a bit of it’s bitterness into everyone.

Outside our window we watch the snow fall and drift and swirl and we dream of heading south, but even a long drive in that direction still leaves us pretty far north.

The birds, like the rest of us, head into a little seasonal depression after the first honest cold snap. They hunker down in the spruce boughs, just as we curl up with the dogs in front of the great flickering game. All of us, content to choose warmth above all else.

But eventually we come to the realization that winter marches forward and we dig out our long johns, double up our socks, dose our vitamin D and get back to our daily lives.

The birds start moving around again and so do we.

For Those Who Know

It’s stubborn dogs and disappointed spouses, pigeon shit and pissed off neighbours. It’s early morning training sessions and an ever-growing to-do list. It’s puppy blues and terrible twos, pocket kibble and “it gets better” promises. It’s failure and frustration, two steps forward and four steps back. It’s ecollars and kennels, bells and beepers, leashes, launchers and leads. It’s living on good credit and bad coffee, staring out the windshield with half-lidded eyes. It’s out of date maps and middle of nowhere flats, busted ball joints, bent rims and blown fan belts. It’s scraped skid plates and gas price laments, dusty dead ends and permission denied. It’s heatstroke under an all-conquering sun or frostbitten fingers and sideways sleet sting. It’s thistles and thorns and slivers, sand and grit, mud and blood and sweat and tears. It’s rattlesnakes and forgotten snares, badger holes, barbed wire and “Are they bluffing?” bears. It’s tailgate trauma centres, porcupine quills and vet bills. It’s the ghost of gone dogs and all the heartbreak you can handle.

All for a few fleeting moments here at the confluence of nose and scent, where lead just might meet wing and time holds in brief suspension before the blur beckons and begins again.

And if you can’t find the beauty in that . . .

Well, you wouldn’t be here would you?

Best Days

On our best days we are dog whisperers, shotgun wizards, cartographers of broken country. We move with poise and purpose, up steep chukar slopes, through thick grouse woods, out and over the windswept plains. On our best days we worship at the church of the wild bird and we leave our offerings out on the sagebrush sea, there in the chokecherry thicket, and just near the muskeg’s edge. We dance to the western wind and the ringing of the dog’s bell. On our best days we are tailgate raconteurs and field lunch gourmands, holding a secret knowledge of backroads. We drink from the well of wild and open place and we surrender to the present, wholly at ease with this world and our place in it. On our best days we come back home wind-burnt and worn, tired and thirsty. But we return home, generous at the tavern, gentle with our children, gracious with our partners.

On most days however, we are just funny folks in silly clothes, chasing impractical dogs. Staring down the tyranny of efficiency, forever searching for both birds and empty space.

Hoping for just enough breeze, so the dogs can lead us back, somewhere closer towards grace.