Hunting Without a Dog is Like Playing Air Guitar

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296 – The Annual, 2019-20

By Chris Robinson

     There are actually people in this country who don’t hunt birds with a dog. I have to confess that I’ll never understand those folks. What possible pleasure can they derive from hunting which, reduced to its barest essentials of aching limbs and joints, flesh torn by briars until it resembles an urban street map, exposure to cold so brutal it’s impossible to understand what anyone is saying as words mumbled through frozen lips abetted by bodily tremors that would register on the Richter Scale lack coherence and skin as chafed as that of a Navy SEAL-in-training during Hell Week from walking all day in wet hunting pants, is simply an exercise in masochism? That is, of course, unless the pain is combined with being part of the sheer joie de vivre of a dog doing what he or she was intended to do as that mitigates even the most unpleasant aspects of hunting. To people like me and all those like me who hunt with their dogs, there are three absolutes in bird hunting–hunter, dog and bird. Certainly you can hunt birds without a dog but it’s a lot like Samuel Langhorne Clemens’ definition of golf: “A good walk spoiled.” Hunting without a dog is as empty an experience as playing air guitar or as meaningless as an air kiss. You’re going through the motions but it’s not very satisfying.

     Yes, those misguided folks who hunt birds without dogs have the pleasure of dining on the end products of bird hunting which are tasty indeed, but these days most meat markets worthy of the name stock everything from quail to geese. What’s more, these meat market birds come all cleaned, neatly wrapped in plastic and pose none of the risk of a costly trip to the dentist as a result of biting down on an unyielding pellet of steel shot. So why slog through marsh muck tenacious enough to suck off the most tightly secured rubber boot and set your quadriceps to screaming, fight through tangled grasses tough enough to trip a ballet dancer or briars with thorns fierce enough to flay the hide of an elephant–plum thickets, wild roses, prickly ash, blackberries, buckthorn, the names sound like a recitation of sins on Judgment Day–simply to get a bird which could be purchased without any of these issues? For a lot of us, the answer to this question is simply, “For the dog.”

Click here to read the complete article
296 – The Annual, 2019-20

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Posted by AnthonyA on Dec 27 2020. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.