Walking In The Woods With A Dog

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116 – July, 2025

By Chris Robinson

I’ve always loved walking in the woods with my dogs, preferably with a shotgun nestled in the crook of my arm. But, even when it’s not hunting season and the shotgun remains behind the door of the gun cabinet, a walk in the woods with a dog is a very pleasurable experience.

One of the reasons I live where I do is because living on a farm provides the close proximity I have and need to nature and the woods. In fact, I don’t have to go far to find a woods in which to walk. Our farmstead is protected by two spruce and white pine shelterbelts, planted some 60-70 years ago by my dad and renovated regularly by my brother. If I can manage to keep the area between the rows of trees clear of dead or overgrown branches, either shelterbelt makes for a suitable woods walk, and the dogs never seem to get bored even though we travel what is pretty much the same path every day. Although the dogs and I seem to be by ourselves on these walks, we aren’t alone–at least not really.

Although the shelterbelts are close to the buildings, we come across a wide variety of wildlife every day and my dogs have always found something interesting to sniff. The one west of the buildings borders on a large conservation reserve program (CRP) field covered with a variety of grasses and wildflowers, which always seems to harbor a pheasant or two, and some days an entire flock of Hungarian partridge, which really sends a gun dog’s prey drive into warp speed. Almost every spring, wild turkey hens nest either in the shelterbelt itself, generally in the low brush of caragana, or Siberian peashrub, as caragana is sometimes known, and the lilac shrubs that form the outer rim of the belt, serving as snow catchers in winter, or on the edge of the CRP.

Click here to read the complete article
116 – July, 2025

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