The Bells Of Autumn
By Chris Robinson
One crisp fall morning a few years ago, hunting upland birds on my late partner’s conservation reserve program land in central Nebraska, I was tuned in to the tinkling of the melodious Swiss sheep bell on my Brittany. The bell was a necessity because the cover in a field of switchgrass was so thick you could not see more than three feet in either direction. Without the bell, the dog could have been “birdy” only a few yards away and I’d never have known it. Furthermore, when she finally pinned the bird and froze on point, I’d have been totally in the dark about that as well, along with having no clue as to where she might be standing on point.
Aside from the fact that failure to detect a point meant missing an opportunity for a bird, my first master hunter Brit was an imperious sort who firmly believed that it was my job to do her bidding in the field, not vice versa. She was also convinced that the MH behind her name stood not for master hunter but rather for “(I)Mperial Highness.” When she found and pointed a bird, she expected me or someone else toting a shotgun to arrive on the scene immediately, perhaps sooner. If we were a tad slow and the bird had taken advantage of the delay to move, she would fix the nearest hunter with a disgusted we-are-not-amused glare before she flounced off to relocate the bird. If it happened too many times in a day’s hunt, like more than twice, she would simply abandon us and go hunt for herself usually at distances that would have required the use of the 16-inch guns on a battleship in order for the birds she found to be in range. So it didn’t pay to irritate her and it was important to keep track of where she was at all times and what she was doing. Besides, necessary or not, I loved the sound of her bell.
With one of the Brits, there was a strong temptation to use a GPS-based tracking unit, such was the amount of ground she covered and the speed at which she covered it.
I first became acquainted with Swiss sheep bells a few years prior to that hunt on a trip to Switzerland that was part of the “booty” for a national award-winning story I had done. Strolling around a Swiss farm early on a morning that was marked by a misty ground fog that had settled about four feet above the ground, the harmony produced by several differently-pitched bells seemed to ripple across the pillowy top of the fog. Later, when the fog had burned off, I saw the bells around the necks of the farmer’s flock of sheep and it dawned on me that those bells definitely had another use back in the U.S. come fall. They would enable me to keep better track of the location of my upland bird dogs, none of which were what is derisively known among upland bird hunters as “boot polishers.”
If anything, my dogs tended to run too big to easily keep track of their whereabouts and, quite frankly, I found the clang of the miniature cowbells, popular at that time among pointing breed folks, to be annoying. The gentle melody of the bells dangling from the necks of the sheep seemed to be a perfect solution. As a result, packed in my return-home luggage were a dozen Swiss sheep bells, something which caused a considerable amount of eyebrow-lifting and askance-looking by the U.S. Customs inspector who let me back into the country. In fact, he was not altogether certain that a dozen Swiss sheep bells didn’t somehow constitute contraband.
From time to time, in the Nebraska switchgrass field, the Brit would pop into view and my hunting partners and I would catch a flash of her orange and white coloring as she worked her way through the dense cover. The tinkling of the bell reflected her movement in an ever-changing rhythm. For me, hunting any bird, upland or waterfowl is unthinkable without a dog and a dog on the ground hunting pheasants or quail is equally unthinkable without a bell because, well, because I love listening to the music of the bells. For one thing, their tinkling melody serves as a wonderful reminder that beautiful days still remain before we are enveloped in the starkness, silence and frigidity of winter.
The bells should show years of use with their surface dulled by age and the weather conditions encountered in those years of hunting. They should be dinged and dented and hang from collars that are old and well-oiled, their orange collar sleeves bleached and frayed, with nameplates tarnished by age, marked by cuts and scratches, all constituting a record of sorts of both the collar’s and the bell’s time in the field.
These days, there are almost as many tracking devices that take the place of the traditional bell as there are sporting breeds to wear them. Most of them do a reasonably good job of letting you know at least the vicinity where your dog is working and, thankfully, most of them no longer sound like the local garbage truck backing up. In the early days of these homing devices, I was convinced the noise itself was causing the pheasants to run. Now, some of them are such sophisticated gadgets that they tell you where your dogs are and what they are doing plus providing a great deal more information that you’re not even sure you need to know. But none of them make the kind of music that an old-fashioned Swiss sheep bell does. Of course, I’m talking aesthetics here, not utility. I eventually went to a locator that was silent until the dog went on point. That enabled me to listen to the bell but also provided a direction-finder when my big-running Brits found a bird. It also, incidentally, served as a cue to one of my retrievers that one of the Brits had found a bird and if he quickly homed in on the beeper, he could flush it out from under her nose, something that did not sit at all well with Her Royal Highness, the Brit. With one of my Brits, I was even tempted to use a GPS-based tracking unit, such was the amount of ground she covered and the speed at which she covered it.
Frankly, dogs traveling at roughly mach 1 with miles of prairie ahead of them make bells pretty much a useless appendage. But, in heavy cover, like the switch grass field or in woody draws where quail coveys frequently lurk, where the action is close and sound isn’t obliterated by distance, bells have a purpose. Perhaps that purpose does not have the same practicality as the new tracking systems but what bells lack in function, they more than make up in sheer artistry and tradition.
To make the picture complete, the bells should show years of use with their surface dulled by age and the weather conditions encountered in those years of hunting. They should be dinged and dented and hang from collars that are old and well-oiled, their orange collar sleeves bleached and frayed, with nameplates tarnished by age, marked by cuts and scratches, all constituting a record of sorts of both the collar’s and the bell’s time in the field.
Dogs traveling at roughly mach 1 with miles of prairie ahead of them make bells pretty much a useless appendage.
On beautiful autumn days with multi-colored leaves gently floating down around me and a soft breeze touching the back of my blaze-orange vest, I want a perfectly balanced over/under shotgun on my shoulder and be following a bright-hued orange and white dog with a smooth-toned bell on its neck, the soft whistle of bobwhites or the raucous challenge of some pheasant rooster in the distance in harmony with the music of the bell. That, to me, is the ultimate picture of fall north of the 40th parallel.
In the 1945 movie, “The Bells of St. Mary’s,” Bing Crosby sings the lyrics, “The Bells of St. Mary’s, we always will love you.” I’ve never had any difficulty being able to relate to that song and not just because of Crosby’s elegant voice. No, just as Father O’Malley and the nuns of St. Mary’s professed their love for the bells so, too, do I love the bells of autumn.
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Posted by subschron
on Jan 10 2013. Filed under Current Articles, Uncategorized.
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