Category: Talegate

Our camp is at the base of one of those short mountain ranges that are so much a part of this part of the desert. Sky islands, they call them, where points of pine and even spruce wring snowfall from a dry Southwestern sky on a December night and a good walker can move through a quarter dozen life zones on a big day.

For the dog man, the islands offer much promise. The deep grass toe of the island—the beaches—whisper to you of scaled, or blue, quail. The catclaw-choked canyon mouths farther up the island’s flanks, speak of Gambel quail. Higher still, up in the oak savannah, that most treasured of quail—the pointing dog’s quail—Mearns, Montezuma, harlequin.

My companion on this month of adventure is a mentor, a best friend, a life-long personal legend. He’s 83 and he carries a good Belgian Browning 20 that he picked up in a Denver pawn shop more than a half century ago. Jim has one dog, a young female setter. I have three, but only the streak called Mabel is functional. The other two are old timers, males whose saddles have a lot of leather worn off the tree. They are along for the ride, and because I didn’t have the heart to leave them in wintery Montana. I pay for my softness with periodic visits to the truck in the middle of the night so they can get out to empty. I lift them down to the ground and when they are done, I lift them back up to the tailgate beneath a star-splattered sky. They groan with the miles. They have given their everything to me. A lifetime of everything and the least I can do is get up in the middle of the night to let an old dog piss.

I did all the driving and do all the driving. Often, Jim stays at camp while I climb out of the trailer, load up my water and Mabel’s, thumb shells into my vest, pack lunch, load the gun, turn on the e-collar.

Sometimes, I come down off the mountain tired, my game bag heavy with a half limit. At night, we cook quail and vegetables in a Dutch oven over mesquite coals, accompany the meal with New Mexico chilies.

In the mornings, I do it all over again. The days are as I want them to be. On some, I get in the truck and drive the two-tracks north along the island’s run, looking for new canyons and new coveys. One evening, I come back to a few fingers of good bourbon and show Jim a license plate from 1954 that I found on a rusted truck bumper out in the middle of nowhere, pinned against the thick tough trunk of a mesquite by a flash flood long dead.

It’s the same year I bought that Browning, says Jim.

We climbed, this morning, on a rising bench from camp. The dog and I. We. We is just her and I.

I followed her into the tall grass and the coming sunlight, sometimes seeing her bounce through, then gone again. Pushing past Spanish dagger and catclaw, hoping for desert quail, heading toward a distant patch of oak up the mountain. The ache of two days of hard driving, of nights spent in a cold trailer on the side of a road, of more road, and more ‘truck butt’ and a diet of spitters and Mountain Dew is not even really a memory. Or an ache. It is winter and I am wearing a t-shirt and worrying about the heat on a dog that is used to Montana late pheasants.
Now, with two Mearns in the bag, we are above the bench and several miles from camp. The morning produced no desert quail and no points. Two quail shot off wild flushes, two “training birds.”

We sit for a time, me to slow pulse, her just because I make her. She waits. Doesn’t want to. She leaps to her feet every time I shift. And I make her sit down again.  And finally I rise for good, and we work down off the mountain, trying for new country, new cover.
At the base, down from the oak savannah, we hit the century plants and mesquite of a different life zone, and work past the remnants of an old mine. The shell of a Model A Ford rusts away in a dry climate, intact save being shot full of number eights from what no doubt was a frustrated quail hunter.
I whistle her in again, calling her close as we head toward a water hole where I’m hoping she can cool off. The heat is rising now, full sun and pushing up into the 60s, maybe even the 70s. Coming up.

She has only a moment to lap muddy water when a covey of Gambel quail burst from the other side of the arroyo and fly one hundred or so yards. I mark them down, call the dog in, keep her close, and move in, knowing they probably won’t be there when we get there. Nevertheless.

We drop into the leavings of the most recent flash flood, then scramble out, moving closer to the place the covey went down. Thirty birds, maybe? I talk to her softly now, keeping her close, trying to walk light on soil that is more granite crumble than dirt.

She flanks left, then slams to a stop, tail up. Point. Point! By God.

Three birds burst from the cover.

The first bird up is a harlequin male, whirring a bit behind, left to right and going fast. The gun is up, swinging, leading, barking. The bird is down. Just because. Just because this is what we are after. Not a tweety. Not a meadowlark. Not a kangaroo rat. Quail. Mearns.

She is on it now, picking it up, spitting it out. Setter-style. This is what we are after.
The “making of birds” had been a furious tail wag, but the human translation of canine language saw it little different than mousing or tweety-birding. No offer of pointing. Making birds, yes. But hunting birds? Not even. But the male Mearns is down and dead and I’m squeaking happy noises and she’s grinning and jumping up on my belt and I’m good-girling in an excited voice. Oh, this is what we are after.

The next bird is the same, frantic wagging, but the bird out wild before she can point. Shooting this one too and she is sprinting and sniffing at it again.
There have been Huns and roosters and grouse and chukar.

These are the first quail.

—TR

You can tell it’s a good bird year because everyone would rather hunt than write. Still, it’s been unusually quiet around here, so I thought I’d let everyone know that MOF is alive and well and give you status reports from a couple of the writers here.

• Tom – Bought a new truck, loaded his herd of dogs in the back and threw his computer in the river. When January rolls around he’ll either be back with a ton of new MOF material or we will have to turn MOF into a fundraiser to free Tom and his pack of setters from a Mexican prison.
• Bruce – I think he’s out hunting recovering from a bike accident, but it must be a super secret spot. I checked all his usual secret spots and didn’t see him, so I hunted them just a tiny bit…
• Chad  – AWOL. I’ve heard that bird populations in the southwest are exceptional this year and that may have something to do with it. Chad said, “Tell everyone bird hunting sucks in Oklahoma and Kansas.”
• Greg – Went old school and had another baby. Look for late-season MOF posts with baby in tow. The good news is, his shooting can’t get any worse if he carries a baby instead of a gun.

In this life of dogs and birds and the march of boots across the uplands, we are often struck by the unfortunate irony of losing a good dog after only a dozen years. It is unfair, we dog lovers think, that we humans are awarded with such long lives and such a wonderful animal as the canine is cheated with a short one. This past April, I put another good dog into the soil after a baker’s dozen years on this blue marble and I thought to myself, “that was the dog.” One good dog, one good woman, one good horse, one man once said.

Twenty years ago, on a hot June day, I put a good dog into the sand at the base of a chukar cliff in the middle of nowhere and as the sweat ran into my eyes and the tears ran out, I thought to myself, “that was the dog.”

And while it is true there will never be another Hank or another Sage, that old maxim of “one good and that’s all you get” is as false as the twinkle of pyrite in a prospector’s pan. The truth of this comes home to me this season as I try to rein in another amazing soul that has come into my life. She is fire and charge and zip and zing. She is faster than I can remember any of the others before her. She is smarter than them too. Or at least as I remember them. And therein is the secret: memory is a trickster. And another truth: there will be another one; it won’t be the same, but it will be different in some ways, better in some ways, and a gift. A true gift.

From the dog’s perspective, perhaps a dozen years is a cheat. But on this day in deep autumn in the full throat of another season of following the perfume of the uplands, I vow to myself to make her years varied and spectacular. I promise to grind the tires off my pickup and the soles from my boots in pursuit of her ultimate joy. And mine. There will be more moments of spectacular glory and pure puppy chaos and I will walk on, shotgun in hand, thinking about what a fortunate man I am, have been, and will be.

—TR

It’s only 8 months (242 days) until October 1.

It would be, by all measures including wallet width and vacation time, the last hunt.

As if to commemorate the occasion, a blue storm swept out of Saskatchewan, carrying that thin, cruel snow that comes only with subzero weather. Too cold for big flakes. Mean little ones.

Six hours on the road turned into seven and then we were finally there, at the bar, beers before us. Minus twelve outside. Tomorrow, into it. Minus twelve boosted down to minus thirty-two courtesy of our northern wind. Thank you.

I looked at her, sipped my beer, and grinned. “Tomorrow,” I said, “we get even.”
She looked at me as if I were crazy. No, check that. Not as if.

At seven the next morning, coffeed-up, cafed-up, we were at the first cover, snow screaming beneath our boots. The dog paddled out into it, stopping to chew clumps of snow from his toes, but pushing on, collecting burrs as he went, but eager. Minus thirty two with the wind. What the hell? I couldn’t stop grinning and then a rooster went up. Close, cackling and the auto loader was at my shoulder, barking once, twice, and the bird was down and the dog on him and then the bird in hand. Getting even.

Getting even for all of those wild flushes two hundred yards from the gun even after you’ve been careful with the truck doors. Even after you’ve whispered to the dog, heeled him tight until ready. There they go, a whole fucking field full of those bastards, all at once all in the air, all gone before you even have time to piss, zip up, and load the gun. Motherfuckers. I do not apologize for foul language and feral fowl. Pheasants. Or chukar, too, for that matter. Neither are a gentleman’s bird.

The blood in our veins flows like a slow river of lava into a cold ocean. We turn, move back to the truck a mile away, frozen, fingers tight. The dog chews more chunks of ice. Thank god for wool everything. Fingers and toes cold. The tip of the nose. But we are getting even with the bastards.

Drive to a new cover, trying to warm in the old Dodge, the heater going full blast and the temp gauge still not up to normal, despite an hour of idling. Dog out again and then we are in the chokecherries and another big gaudy sonofabitch gets up and swings out overhead and the gun barks and then jams solidly in the cold, doesn’t feed the second shell, but no matter because the bird is down and and the bird is dead.

We move on. The dog makes birds again and another big rooster gets up tight and close and I swing and shoot and the gun jams again. Too damned cold. But the bird is dead and by the time we get back to the truck and gut both of them out, they are cool and stiff and going frozen. But we’ve gotten even. For one day. A limit of roosters. Makes the vengeful heart happy.

Coffee handed out from the gal at the kiosk, a big smile and a shake of the head for anyone out hunting pheasants in twelve below. No one understands. It’s late season. It’s pheasants. It’s revenge.

The next day, out in it again. Up to minus twenty-two now. Wind chill. Still air, if there were such a thing, minus ten. A heat wave. Plugged the truck in at the motel last night. Good move.

Different dog this time. Same technique. Close, quiet, slow but before we’ve had to a chance to enter the good stuff, birds start going out, threes and fours and fives, some cackling. One hundred yards away. Not our fault. The doors were shut quietly, the dog close. Different day. More out wild and I get one quick shot, freezing and slow and a miss. Hit well yesterday. Missed first shot today. That’s all. We try to hunt up the singles, the pairs, but they go out wild before we can even crunch over there, frost in my beard, frost in my lady’s long hair, making her look prematurely gray. It’s a good look, I’ve got to say. A harbinger.

Different cover, another dog and the same result, birds out wild before we’ve even straddled the barbwire. Not the dog’s fault. Not the doors. Cursing.

We move up and even the hens are wild, going out in twos and threes, the dog working close and well, a veteran dog. Chewing snow and ice from pads. Too cold for more than one good run with one dog and then trade off. Finally, at the end of the quarter section, he goes on point, fairly close, a solid-something-is-right-here point and a big old gaudy cockbastard goes up and I swing up. And fumble the safety with my gloves in the subzero. That’s my excuse. And the bird is off and away and I shoot little more than a send off shot. A wide miss that I know is a whiff before the sound even comes to my ear. The day is an empty bag.

Not getting even at all.

—TR