Perfect Days

332 – May, 2013

By Chris Robinson

Most people who hunt with dogs don’t go into the field to shoot a bunch of birds or bunnies or whatever they happen to be hunting. Much, if not most, of the experience is watching the dogs in action. Shooting is just a necessary incidental. Dog work is so important to many hunters that it defines the sport. Going hunting without the dogs is a totally empty experience, like playing air guitar.

I doubt that the dogs take even a smidgen of pride in anything I do right in the field. But they are quick to express their feelings when I mess up. For something that is unable to speak a formal language, dogs, especially hunting dogs and that includes all breeds that hunt anything from tiny rodents to giant Canada geese, are incredibly good at communicating disdain and disgust. If you doubt that statement, try missing an easy shot on some game bird or animal that your dog has found for you. But, I digress. Anyway, I don’t think dogs care much about what you do in the field other than missing easy shots. What they do care about is whether you take them along with you. Their excitement is boundless when you, dressed in camo or blaze orange, pick up the shotgun and say, “C’mon, let’s go.”

I’ve shared thousands of hours in the field with my dogs and every trip was special in some way. I can recall days when one of the dogs performed so brilliantly it brought tears to my eyes. There have been others where I have called down curses on the dogs so vile they would require a full scale exorcism to be cancelled, when I’ve had to explain to them in “dogspeak” what I wanted done. “Dogspeak” for those of you who have never taken your sporting dog, hound, terrier or Poodle into the field, is deep, deep blue and delivered at such high volume that even the most obtuse creature, when subjected to it, gets the point.

“After outwitting an old pheasant rooster, the two Brittanies closed out a perfect day with a point and back on a pair of quail.”

But, every now and then you have one of those absolutely perfect days. I have to confess that most of my perfect days have occurred hunting waterfowl but that’s primarily due to the fact that I spend about three times as many hours in the marsh or in stubble fields as I do chasing upland birds. All this means is that my perfect days have occurred during autumn. A friend of mine who has Basset Hounds and hunts bunnies with them says his perfect days have all been during the winter when he could stand and listen to the hounds’ music as they pursued bunny scent, with their melodious baying unimpeded by leaves and grass and with the sun sparkling on new snow. In his view, that’s as close as a person can get to heaven while still firmly anchored on earth. I have another friend who does a lot of rodent hunting with her Fox Terriers. Her perfect days have been during the late spring and summer when chipmunks, a particular favorite of her dogs, are plentiful and hers and her neighbors’ backyards, which harbor several brushpiles, are overrun with the little critters.

In any case, I’ve been lucky because I’ve had many really good days in the field. There have even been a few occasions when my skill with a shotgun approached my dogs’ abilities to find birds and fetch them. I know people who shoot their limit of birds on a regular basis or at least say they do. But, for me shooting a limit is something that only occurs in books I read that were written by people a century ago who went afield wearing jodhpurs, riding boots, neckties and tweed jackets.

“When you are smart enough to put the whistles back in your pocket and let these really marvelous animals do the job they were bred to do, it really doesn’t get much better than that for a dog person.”

For some reason, on those days when my shooting has been “on” and I’ve made some shots that my hunting partners, who have watched me miss targets as enormous as a goose seemingly hanging suspended in the air with both flaps and gear down for landing and less than 25 yards away, cannot believe, are frequently the days when the dogs are also “on.” Perhaps when the dogs are at their performing best, it prompts their owner to bear down and focus a bit tighter on accurate shooting because it would be a shame to let the dogs down by missing shots when they are doing such a good job. Guilt is a powerful motivator, as anyone raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition can tell you, even when that guilt is self-inflicted as a result of disappointing your dogs. Although the “guilt” is not always self-inflicted. Many times my unsympathetic hunting partners have said things like, “After all the work the dog did to find that bird, you ought to be ashamed for missing it.” It’s one of the reasons my Basset-owning pal hunts alone. While he may feel a need to apologize to his hounds when he misses a bunny they have found and chased into range of his rifle, by hunting solo, he doesn’t have to suffer additional censure from his hunting partners.

“Dog work is so important to many hunters that it defines the sport. Going hunting without the dogs is a totally empty experience, like playing air guitar.”

On those occasions when everything comes together, the hunting experience can go from a mere workmanlike session to something that approaches artistry. It’s been my privilege to witness a number of those wonderful days although I admit that on most of them, the dogs had to remind me, in their inimitable way, that they didn’t appreciate being micromanaged and that I needed to remember the old axiom that applies whenever a dog is doing a job they are hardwired to do, “Trust your dog!” There have been more occasions than I care to recall when I have insisted to the dogs that a bird was down in a certain spot only to have the dogs finally just blow me off completely, go twenty or thirty yards to the right or left of where I said the bird was and come out in triumph with the bird. I don’t know which is more difficult to bear when that occurs–the hoots of derision from my hunting partners or the self-satisfied smirk on the dogs’ faces and, trust me, they definitely do smirk.

One particular time I vividly recall because, for one thing, it happened in front of a considerable audience of critics–four of my long-time hunting partners–and because I was so adamantly wrong. I had shot a duck as it came over a dike and while it had been a long and fairly difficult shot, I absolutely knew where the bird had fallen and I also absolutely knew it fell dead. It had fallen just inside a line of weeds directly across the marsh from me and even when I sent the dog, I hadn’t taken my eyes off that spot so there could be no mistake as to the location of the bird. But, the dog had also clearly marked the fall and he kept stubbornly drifting left off the line I’d given him to the bird while I, just as stubbornly, kept trying to force him back onto that line. When he reached the weed line, I hit him with a particularly strong blast of my whistle and gave him a really hard right hand “over” delivered at decibel levels usually associated with jet aircraft.

“Most people who hunt with dogs don’t go into the field to shoot a bunch of birds or bunnies or whatever they happen to be hunting. Much, if not most, of the experience is watching the dogs in action.”

The look on his face, even with considerable distance separating us, was one of total incredulousness. Everything about him said, “Look stupid, unlike you, I actually know where this bird is located. Not only are my bird instincts better than yours but I have a nose full of duck scent.” So, instead of acquiescing to my demand that he turn right, he made a 90 degree turn left, swam just inside the first layer of reeds and kept swimming to the left while I stood on the dike screaming curses at him. He kept moving left going deeper and deeper into the reeds totally ignoring my mounting fury at his disobedience. Just about the time I was getting ready to head across the dike to physically accost him, he came swimming out of the reeds with the still very much alive duck in his mouth. The hoots of laughter from my hunting partners were bad enough, made all the worse by the fact that at dinner the previous evening, I had pontificated, at length, about how the dog’s instincts were so much better than any human’s, but the look on the dog’s face as he swam back across the marsh was absolutely priceless to my pals on the dike. Even though I was praising him to the stars, when he delivered the bird to me, his look of disgust was obvious to everyone and despite extensive pats, praise and contrite promises that he could have half of the meatloaf sandwiches in my lunch pack, he not only refused to look at me but deliberately turned his back on me. Properly chastened, I never again attempted to dissuade that dog when he clearly indicated he knew where a bird was even if his view didn’t coincide with what I had observed.

But, there have been other days, when the dog did not see any part of the fall, when we have been a wonderful team, meaning the human half of the pair was not a hindrance but a help, with the dog stopping on every whistle and taking every cast like he was on a string pinpointing the fall. Or, on those occasions when I have been smart enough to put the whistles back in my pocket and let these really marvelous animals do the job they were bred to do. When these things occur, well, it really doesn’t get much better than that for a dog person.

There have been some perfect days hunting upland birds also. For one thing, the weather has usually been much less cross when we’ve been hunting pheasants and quail than it has been on many waterfowl hunts. I particularly recall one really gloriously bright and crisp autumn afternoon hunting on federal land along the Republican River in southern Nebraska with Bill Baxter, the assistant chief of wildlife for the state at that time and my long-time hunting partner who left us much too young as a result of a lifetime addiction to cigarettes. On that day, his Brittany, Amy, and my Brit, Sparky, put on the finest demonstration of teamwork I’ve ever witnessed on a running pheasant rooster. These two dogs, who hated each other when they were in the vicinity of the truck and would fight each other given the slightest provocation by one or the other, provided the greatest example of cooperation on that ornery old rooster that anyone can imagine.

As we headed south along a grassy strip, one of the dogs made bird but she apparently wasn’t sure because she wasn’t really locked up on point. The other immediately broke off and made a wide cast until she, too, came on point some distance away. The initial dog on point then broke her point and also made a wide cast, in an attempt to cut the bird off. This went on for nearly twenty minutes—one dog on point, the other making a wide circle in an effort to cut off the bird’s escape route. Finally, both dogs were facing each other locked on point in a beautiful tableau which meant they had the bird cornered between them. As I walked up to take the shot, Baxter said, “You damn well better not miss this one!” and I didn’t. I even resisted the temptation to pull the trigger the second the bird broke cover and let him ride out a bit before I dropped him. Neither dog moved through the flush, the shot, the fall or the retrieve which was completed by my big red dog, who had been patiently walking at heel during the Brits’ performance, adding even more pleasure to the moment. The fact that the length of his spurs and tail feathers showed that this was a wise old bird made the experience just that much sweeter.

As we walked back toward the truck in what the photographers for the National Geographic call the magic hour, that last hour of daylight when everything is golden, Sparky froze in a perfect point with Amy in an equally perfect back of that point. Expecting another pheasant I was startled instead when a pair of Bobwhites exploded out of the grass but nonetheless recovered in time to swing the shotgun on both and see both feather and tumble. Expecting, at most, a bit of incredulous laughter from Baxter that I’d actually successfully executed a double on quail, instead in his rich baritone I heard, “And that’s why we hunt,” putting a perfect coda on a perfect day.

“And that’s why we hunt.”

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Posted by subschron on May 17 2013. Filed under Current Articles, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.