Upland Hunting – Mouthful of Feathers

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.

The experienced hand

mabel

Of course the setter sits in the middle. That way she doesn’t have to drive and she doesn’t have to open the gate…

Six Months

In my stronger moments, I tell myself it’s going to be okay. That it has been a good run and she has been loved. That she’s been my bird dog and I’d like to think, somehow, that this life I lead is a kind of version of canine heaven. Especially for gun dogs.

But I have weaker moments. Sometimes, they come in daylight while she lies in her dog bed beside my desk. Sometimes they come in darkness when I lie awake and listen to the sound of her breathing, a sound not unlike the crackling of plastic wrap in a fist.

I’m home this week early, a trip to Oregon’s coastal rivers of steelhead cut short. I don’t mind. I want to be here, not there.

It started a month or so ago, the huffing cough like a throat-tickle that can’t be cleared, and in a thirteen year old dog, I didn’t think much of it. But the kennel where I boarded her when we went on holiday vacation is owned by my veterinarian, and she, being an alert practitioner of the medical arts, asked. Have you noticed a cough?

So we shot a film and drew some blood and tried a dose of antibiotics, thinking, perhaps, that the shadow in her chest was an abscess from an inhaled grass seed, a common affliction of dogs who drink the wind that brushes bird. A month later, the coughing still there—sounding wetter—and another film. This time a gloom in her lungs like boiled smoke from a slash pile that had jumped the dozer line, metastasized and blown up into a wild fire. Even before a layman’s eyes.

There will be no chemotherapy. I will not make her final months any sicker than an old bird dog at thirteen can stand.

Six months. In six months, it will be bird season again. Another September.

There have been other old dogs. But this one has owned my heart more than any other. This is the one that inspired my friends to buy their own pointing dogs. She has been a spectacular finder of wild birds, a retriever whose retrieves are as memorable as the vision of the Comet Hale Bopp (and only slightly less rare), and never-fail backer of other dogs’ points. She has made so many stunning bird finds that they are lost to my memory just like living at the base of the Tetons makes one forget about the staggering scenery on the horizon.

The other old dogs went out of my life without a clock ticking. One day they were old and I could see the dwindle in them and then they were gone. There was no egg timer to the whole thing. So we have six months until bird season. Maybe longer, maybe shorter. Six months of riding in the pickup cab with me, six months of jerky treats, six months of canned dog food and pretty much any damned thing she wants. Six months when I will try to be here rather than somewhere else.

Six months and one day, perhaps with September painting the grouse woods and grasshoppers rattling along North Willow Creek where I will do the sad work with sharp spade, I will know.

I will know that the countdown to the end of the dog has ended.

—TR

Possibility

Click. The truck door closes and cold, crisp sage hits the nose…

Click.
The truck door closes and cold, crisp sage hits the nose.

Zip.
The shotgun slides out of its case, warm and familiar.

Kathunk.
The tailgate drops and an explosion of black and white and various shades of brown erupts, bursting with yelps of excitement and unbridled instinct. For a moment, it all borders on chaos until direction is given. You watch all that energy channeled into a force that shoots across the landscape, bending vegetation in its path like the winds that continually pummel this place.

Crunch.
Boots break thin surface ice is as you leave the road and start heading up the hill. You look up to see the top of the mountain shrouded in falling snow. You aim for it, even as it descends to meet you halfway.

This moment, full of anticipation and possibility, defines it all. Does it really matter what else the day brings? Have you ever felt more in-the-moment alive than now?

The Book

A project we’ve been kicking around for some time is finally happening, and frankly, we’re damn excited about it. In early December of 2013, Mouthful of Feathers: Upland Hunting in the West will be released…

A project we’ve been kicking around for some time is finally happening, and frankly, we’re damn excited about it. In early December of 2013, Mouthful of Feathers: Upland Hunting in the West will be released, featuring a collection of original, full-length essays by:

Tosh Brown
Reid Bryant
Michael Gracie
Chad Love
Greg McReynolds
Tom Reed
Bruce Smithhammer
Bob White

With an introduction by Miles Nolte.

The book will be published by Pulp Fly, Ltd. and available on Amazon, iTunes and Barnes & Noble for Kindle, Nook and iPad platforms.

More to come soon – please stay tuned. And if you haven’t done so already, the best way to stay tuned is by signing up as a follower of this blog, which you can do on the menu on the right side of this page, and by “liking” our Facebook page. Thanks.

Rethinking the Relationship

We had completed a fairly thorough loop for one guy and one big running dog to do through the field, and were on our way back to the truck. Downwind. The dog absolutely hates hunting downwind, and will do everything he can to veer from it, since for him, hunting downwind is dumb, and because for him, the hunting doesn’t end when you’ve made the decision to head back to the truck and are returning via ground that you already covered on the way out. No, it doesn’t end for him until we’re at the tailgate. He’s taught me the value of this lesson many times before, but my hard-headed human brain tends to forget.

So when he veers off at a 90 degree angle to the wind, and the direction to the truck, I don’t think much of it, but then I forget how quickly he can cover ground when he wants to. I let him range because I tell myself that we’ve already covered this, and the day is done and truth be told, I’m fantasizing about dinner. I probably should have noted that he wasn’t just meandering, but heading in a pretty specific direction.

There is a common adage in the bird dog world that, “you must teach the dog to hunt for you.” I used to firmly believe this was the case, with no room for interpretation. After all, the only other option is an out-of-control dog, right? In some cases, that’s certainly true. But I’d like to think I’m growing and learning as a bird hunter (and hopefully always will be), and have come to realize that too much stubborn control over everything your dog does can betray a lack of trust in your dogs’ inherent, amazing abilities, not to mention impacting what ends up in the game bag.

The reality of the relationship – if it’s a good one – is a far more nuanced, “give and take” than that; an interdependent push-and-pull across the landscape. At least in the situations I most often find myself hunting in. This isn’t a quaint, 2-acre patch of errant apple orchard, but a wide open, hilly field 20 times that in size, and it wouldn’t even be considered “big” country by our western standards. I need a dog that has no shortage of initiative, not one that is going to be plodding along dutifully right in front of me. And in these scenarios, the reality is that we have learned to hunt for each other. Just as he is obliged to find birds for me in a vast and sometimes daunting landscape, I’m obliged to trust that he knows what he’s doing; that his desire to find birds is unwavering (the occasional rabbit or deer scent aside…) and at least as great as mine. Trusting this arrangement means that in general, he needs to go where I want him to, but it also means that it’s a good idea for me to pay attention when he clearly wants to head in a certain direction. Knowing a good bird dog well means trusting that he probably has his reasons.

I watch a couple skittish sharpies bust wild a hundred and some yards away, as he is quartering toward them, nose held high, before he has a chance to lock them down and point them. His sudden, 90 deg. detour now becomes clear – he somehow knew they were over there, even from that distance. I mark where they go down on the hillside, not far away. It could be tempting to raise my blood pressure regarding my “out of control dog” upon seeing this, but the truth is that he’s doing exactly what he should be doing, and the mistakes are honestly mine. Instead, I call him in, and as a team, we double back and move in together and get them. Birds we wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, if it had been left up to me. Another lesson has been reinforced. Luckily, my dog is a forgiving and patient teacher.

Postscript: The following day, the little bastard ran all over hell and back, ignoring commands, whistles and every setting on the e-collar. I accidentally left the laptop open the previous night, and I’m now convinced he must have read this post.

A Bird Hunter’s Table

A Bird Hunter’s Table is about cooking, eating, and sharing friendship. It is also about gundogs, gamebirds, and getting outside to enjoy the land. Featuring contributions by MOF’s Tom Reed and Greg McReynolds, among other notables…

A new, “highly recommended” addition to the upland hunter’s bookshelf has just been released – A Bird Hunter’s Table by Sarah Davies.

A Bird Hunter’s Table is about cooking, eating, and sharing friendship. It is also about gundogs, gamebirds, and getting outside to enjoy the land. Featuring contributions by MOF’s Tom Reed and Greg McReynolds, among other notables.

A Bird Hunter’s Table includes over 130 recipes, stories from the field, and a smattering of natural history. To learn more, see a sample of the book, or to purchase, visit www.birdhunterstable.com or contact the author at birdhunterstable@gmail.com. Trust us – this one is worthy, friends.

The Reunification of the Clan

I don’t know about you, but I have friends who I rarely spend time with outside of bird season. It has nothing to do with the quality of those friendships; in fact, some of them are the most highly esteemed friends I have. But the intensity of our common love for dogs and big country cause our orbits to overlap around this time, and then the rest of the year life has a way of absorbing us in different directions. We occasionally keep in touch, but rarely do we cross paths until guns come out of the closet and the dogs are more antsy than usual and the sound of a bird busting from cover comes to dominate our thoughts.

It is that time again, and phone calls are made and e-mails traded and the mutual bonds re-energized as plans are made. But a nagging thought keeps clawing at the back recesses of my hat rack – another year has somehow gone by. It hardly seems real, but I haven’t shot the shit with “___,” I think to myself, since we were walking across that errant CRP field last October, game bags full of sharpies, my dog limping on a raw pad after a long day, a snow storm scudding our direction across the tops of the Big Holes… Jeezus – that was a year ago. A job I couldn’t stand was kicked to the curb where it belonged, new opportunities were created, new friendships, some old ones strained only to be strengthened again, others strained past the point of recovery, too little time spent with family, hopefully a little more perspective on what matters and what’s worth putting energy into… A YEAR.

I do the only thing one can do when such thoughts threaten to steal you from the present – I wipe the late September drip from my cold nose, drop a couple shells in the barrels, and join a friend as we head off toward the horizon, with much to talk about and little that needs to be said.

Chukar Dunketts

A serving of homegrown footage courtesy of our buddy, Brian Huskey. Pour a couple fingers of brown liquor, kick back and enjoy a little off-season succor. Er, chukar, that is…