From The CC Vault: Oh The People You’ll Meet!

by Chris Robinson

Originally published June 2010

In an episode of the television series, “The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss,” on moving day Julian Jeremy Jaroo Jalloo was more than a bit bummed out. But The Cat in the Hat whisked him away to meet all the interesting and unusual people who could be in his future. Julian could have achieved the same experience by going into the field with his dog. For the woods (and the fields and the marshes) are full of people (and their dogs) that meet the description “unusual” and “colorful.”

Over the years, I have hunted birds, both waterfowl and upland, with a number of people and dogs, some of which have been most memorable for a variety of reasons. My late Nebraska pheasant and quail hunting partner was, in many ways, the perfect hunting companion. A decent wingshot, a great story-teller and an all-around good guy, he had only one glaring defect—his dogs. Impeccably bred, they would have been world beaters in the field with even a tiny bit of training. Instead, they were complete disasters afield mainly because they never received anything close to the most elementary training.

It was not because their owner didn’t recognize good dog work or that he didn’t know how to train dogs. He had owned several dogs in years past that were outstanding performers and he was a long-time and widely respected judge of both field trials and hunt tests. He was quick to accurately identify the strengths and weaknesses of the dogs he was judging. But, alas, those skills didn’t carry over to his own dogs. They ran through the field totally out of control without a clue as to what they were supposed to be doing while their owner extolled their work with comments like “Look how he/she’s working the wind” and “Did you see how he/she covered that fence line” when even the most novice hunter could see the dogs were merely running to hear their ears flap.

One dog, of which he was especially proud, never pointed a bird in his life to my knowledge and we hunted together a lot. The dog spent all his time looking for another dog that had already found a bird and was on point so he could back the other dog’s point. Oh, I grant you, his “backs’ were a thing of beauty but as I explained, as gently and diplomatically as possible to his owner, the objective of this game was not to back other dogs’ points but to find birds to point. I thought, for awhile, that the dog’s lack of interest in birds was because he hadn’t been exposed to them as his owner did not believe in using pen-raised birds to provide an intro to bird finding with his dogs. But, I was wrong.

On at least two occasions, after several hours of fruitless hiking behind the dog in an area where the bird populations were high—something that was obvious when a half dozen pheasants were flushed by the three hunters just walking through the field—I spotted a large covey of quail resting in a plum thicket. It was obvious there was a considerable amount of scent coming off the covey because my retriever, walking at heel so as not to interfere with the pointers, was going nuts. So I suggested that my partner’s dog be brought around to a position where he could also wind the birds. It made no difference. Despite being steadied in the same spot where my retriever had gone berserk from the bird scent, the dog didn’t indicate any interest at all. When released, he immediately ran off to look for his bracemate. Less than ten minutes later, the dog achieved his personal nirvana when, coming over a hill, he spotted one of my retrievers standing elbow-deep in a stock pond having a drink He immediately froze into a back. It was so funny I lost all sense of diplomacy and my laughter echoed off the trees around the pond. My hunting partner, on the other hand, saw absolutely nothing humorous in the dog’s actions and, in fact, was enthralled by the dog’s perfect back, albeit of a dog that was cooling his feet and relieving his thirst.

A hunting partner of mine who was a former U.S. Navy pilot and at the time also a commercial airline pilot once provided an absolutely hysterical running critique of the flying technique of the leader of a flock of snow geese. In a wicked wind, this particular “snow goose lead” and his following flock provided perhaps the most pathetic exhibition of flying ever witnessed by the pilot which culminated in the leader flying his flock straight into the ground when he attempted to make a downwind turn with not an inch of altitude to burn. The entire flock of 50 or so snow geese followed this inept leader into a mass crash that had white feathers flying all over the place. Laughing so hard at the pilot’s critique and the sheer ineptitude of the snow goose flock I didn’t realize right away that the pilot had gone silent immediately after the crash.

Stunned beyond words by the sheer incompetence of the snow goose lead, the pilot finally recovered his voice. Being an old Navy pilot, he was unable to resist a dig at his brother pilots wearing Air Force Blue. “Hmm,” he said, “The snow goose lead must have taken flying lessons from the Thunderbirds,” a reference to a horrendous crash in 1982, known as the “diamond crash” in which four members of the Air Force’s precision flying team were killed when the lead topped out a loop at an altitude below the minimum required to insure a safe recovery which caused all four aircraft in the formation to fly straight into the ground.

On another occasion, when the Captain and I were hunting ducks on a barley field, I managed to hit a duck hard enough to seriously rock it and bring down both legs but was unable to bring the bird down. In line with long-established guidelines for waterfowl hunters, I promptly attempted to ignite the remaining barley stubble in the field with the heat from a flurry of highly colorful expressions. The Captain, however, merely watched the bird fly away and then calmly observed, “Total hydraulic failure. Both systems.” And, a few seconds later he pondered, “I wonder if the crash crew at the lake has been alerted.”

I once had the misfortune, on a guided waterfowl hunt, of being paired with a totally obnoxious individual who was also a lousy shot and exceedingly careless in matters of gun safety. Making things worse, if that was possible, the guy had brought along his Labrador. While the night before the hunt he had told tales of the dog’s great prowess as a hunting dog indicating that the national field champion could not hold a candle to his dog in the field, the next day revealed that the dog had not had even the most rudimentary obedience training let alone any training for the field. The dog would have been as offensive as his owner except that it turned out the dog had one great virtue which endeared him to both the guide and I—a superb sense of timing.

At the end of a very trying day, after listening to the guy expound on every subject under the sun, in which he clearly qualified in his own mind as an expert in all respects, he reached over the bow of the boat to retrieve his thermos which he had accidentally knocked overboard during one of his interminable lectures. Just as he reached full extension leaning over the bow, his dog chose to stick his nose in the perfect spot nature provided for such action and shove hard against his owner catapulting him headfirst out of the boat into some really terrible water reeking with the refuse of years of rotting vegetation and waterfowl excretions. The dog, obviously pleased with his “cat shot,” then sat on the bow smiling and barking happily while his owner thrashed around, swore a blue streak and tried to fight his way through the marsh muck back to the boat. The guide and I held a discussion about whether we should simply hit the throttle on the motor and leave the guy in the muck or rescue him. In the end, Christian charity prevailed over poetic justice and we pulled the guy out of the water. But virtue is sometimes rewarded. The obnoxious hunter was absolutely silent through the evening meal and despite having paid for two more days of hunting, was nowhere to be found the next morning apparently departing sometime in the dead of night with his dog who shall forever be a hero to a beleaguered waterfowl hunter and a guide.

Probably the wildest character I ever encountered in the field was one of my long-time hunting partners. A former major in the United States Marine Corps, he truly fit the description of “not wrapped real tight.” To begin with, the man sang cadence songs at 4:00 a.m.! Nobody sings at that time of the day with the possible exception of my brother who once drew a stern rebuke from the rest of the members of his hunting party for singing “Buttons and Bows” at 3:00 a.m. when he couldn’t sleep thinking about the cover on the field chosen for the morning’s hunt and decided to change the camouflage on all the goose blinds from light to dark.  But, back to the Major.

We learned over the years to expect the unusual. While sandhill cranes are legal game birds in certain states and provinces of Canada, it is also well-known that cranes are considerably less than gourmet fare. Nevertheless, the Major now and then would succumb to the temptation to shoot one. While his hunting partners always hooted in derision when this occurred, the best response to these aberrant acts came from his dog.

Sent to retrieve, the dog would circle the bird and bark at it as he refused to touch it in any way, shape or form. It was obvious to everyone except the Major that the dog considered the Major’s repeated commands to “fetch it up” to be an unlawful order. The dog’s demeanor clearly communicated, “You want this thing? Then you pick it up.” When at long last convinced that unlawful order or not, he had to pick up the crane, the dog invariably would take hold of the bird’s long neck, the canine equivalent of picking the thing up between a thumb and forefinger all the while holding his nose, and drag it more or less into the vicinity of the Major. He’d never deliver it to hand. He’d always drop it some distance away and then promptly walk off, turn his back on the Major and sit down, displaying in the best way he knew how, his total contempt for the job he’d been ordered to do.

However, the Major’s greatest moment occurred one year when weather conditions created a large sheet of water in the middle of a ten-mile square ancient lake bed that is now very productive wheat fields. The geese that migrate through this area not surprisingly chose to sit on the sheet of water, within hopping distance of feed, instead of flying back and forth to the river where they usually staged.

There was just one problem. The area around the sheet of water was totally flat. The only cover was a thin, short collar of standing wheat at the edge of the water. The Major immediately began to formulate plans for the hunt only slightly less complex than those developed for Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy in World War II, and Eisenhower had the entire Combined Chiefs of Staff Planning Group working for him.

The basis of his plan was to ambush the geese as they came off the water sheet to feed on the grain fields that bordered the water. This required the hunters to creep out before dawn and hide pretty much on their bellies waiting for the geese to move and enough light so you could see to shoot.

There were two significant problems with the plan, neither of which caused much concern for the Major who, like most Marines, reveled in mud. The water was about six inches deep in the wheat collar which meant the hunters had to lay in six inches of frigid water and mud in the predawn chill in order to affect any concealment from prying goose eyes. The second drawback was that you couldn’t walk in the mud without being in real danger of losing one or both boots. The only safe way to negotiate the mud was the same way as the dogs with at least four points in contact with it. For conditions to rise to the level of miserable would have required that there be a significant improvement. Even the dogs, who don’t ordinarily mind these hardships, after the third morning in a row when they needed a bath just to get enough mud washed off so they could sleep comfortably in their crates, had had enough.

As for the hunters, they returned from the hunt each morning looking like coal miners after a day spent underground. Hunting clothes had to be cleaned, hosed and dried before the next morning or they were impossible to don. A shower after every hunt was an absolute necessity and it required a good 20 minutes after each shower to clean the shower stall enough so the next occupant wouldn’t be wading in mud. Most of the mud was simply too thick to go down the drain and had to be scooped into a bucket to be carried outside and dumped after the shower.  Boots upturned on boot dryers like so many neoprene distress signals dotted the entire farmhouse. One of the hunters in the group, a former Navy SEAL, finally commented one evening that while he had encountered conditions at least as wretched during his time as a SEAL, at least he was being paid to endure them. The Major, on the other hand, viewed the entire episode as a great lark.

All of which means that if you are looking for the company of highly colorful people, you could do worse than to start your search in the field. In the words of Theodor Seuss Geisel in the final book he did completely by himself, Oh, The Places You’ll Go, “You’ll get mixed up, of course, as you already know. You’ll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go.”

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