Mouthful of Feathers

Green arrives more suddenly than brown, I have decided. A month ago, I was in southwestern Missouri buying fast-walking horses that will keep up with my bird dogs this fall. One day it rained, the kind of rain that pounds the land like an old shower-head in a flea-bag motel stings your skin after a long day afield.
The next morning, it was spring. Green. The horses ate at the young grass as if they were starving. And green was on the land. We loaded our new horses into the trailer and headed out, watching the green fade from the land as we chased longitude westward, into the flat platter that is western Kansas and southeastern Colorado. The diesel out-ran the green, but still it came, as steadily and as consistently as a truly-talented young bird dog figures it out in his second year.
And so the green is here and yet I think about when it will leave. It will be more subtle, more of a fade than a swell of color, more of a wither than a burst. It will wane slowly in this country starting in late summer, when hoppers ratchet from baked fields.
I walk these fields now and see the green coming and watch the new horses talk to the resident horses in that ear-back style of equine language. I walk these fields and think about wilt and my heart swells with the thought of it–a juxtaposition of emotions. Celebrate coming spring, sure, but pray for rain at just the right time, for wetness that encourages tender shoots of grass for young chicks, for a sun that pops insects from the ground for bird protein. Make it a good year, with good moisture and young birds hatching and following their mamas. So we can shoot them. This is a weird sport.

I can’t believe my luck. I came up to the bar for one drink–a gin and tonic, naturally–and left with $2,000 damage to my car.
The Pony Bar. The world famous Pony Bar, Pony, Montana. My bar. Three miles up the road from the ranch. “Come on up for one drink,” a neighbor texted. It was a Thursday night and my other neighbor was slinging swill at the bar. What the hell, I thought.
When I got there the bar was full of cowboys and ranchers. Neighbors. They were well in. Shots and beers. Then they all piled into their pickups. I was mid-sentence in some lame story: Crunch!!!
My car, parked across the street, met the rear bumper of a ranch pickup.
And the biggest landowner in Madison County met the biggest bird hunter in Madison County. If I’m not the luckiest son of a gun in Montana, I don’t know who is. Good luck in Pony, Montucky.

Next season: “Um, hey Bob, this is Tom. Do you mind if I take my setters out for a spin on that chunk of ground up behind my house? I’ve seen some huns up there.”

Damn, if I’m not the luckiest guy in the whole bird hunting world.

They were waiting for the rain, but the rains came late.
Instead of wetting the ground and bringing shoots and bugs and cover that just hatched quail so badly need, the monsoon came when the chicks were on the ground.

The rain came in a torrent, mixed in equal parts with hail and sleet, hammering down on the desert. While the succulents drank it in, the quail were victims of its fury. Innocents swept away by the very thing they so badly needed. Add in years of drought, exacerbated by overgrazing and it’s tough times for New Mexico’s uplands.
Low survival rates mean few birds, scattered widely across the desert in small bunches. These are not the easy birds of wet years. There are no lay ups now.
These birds have been hunted, by man and beast.
At the flush, they go low and fast. Bird, tree, bird, nothing.
No shot, just a quiet curse for myself. On a day like this one, in a year like this one, the opportunities are few and far between.
The dog is exuberant and I laugh at how much energy she regains from her success at finding a single.
“Go on,” I shout at the scalie, rocketing downhill out of sight. That bird is a survivor. A worthy sire for another year’s covey.
It’s been three months of quail hunters, hawks, coyotes, bobcats, skunks and foxes.
Now the season is done.
The men and dogs are gone from the fields.
Time to dodge the raptors and predators and wait for the rain.
The dog and will I settle in and wait for Nov. 15.
For them, it’s merely another chapter in a long dry spell.
They wait for the rain.