Playing chicken with the grim reaper

His back legs can't quite carry the load like they used to, bending under the weight of standing still and dragging toenails on the ground when he walks. He wobbles a bit, too. He's mostly deaf and his head droops much of the time. Episodes that are best classified as some sort of canine dementia carry him into a corner where he'll stand for long stretches until you tap him and he snaps out of it.

But his health is generally good, he never seems to be in pain, and at times (usually around meal time) he gets some spring in his step again. Hard to say for certain what a dog considers good quality of life, but being able to get around on your own, eat, drink, and sleep probably cover the basics.

Sometime on Monday he wandered through the electric fence and didn't make it back by supper time. I walked around the neighborhood looking without luck in places an old dog might wander. With temps in the 40s he wouldn't have any trouble surviving the night as long as coyotes didn't find him but several days without food would weaken an already frail body to the point that he wouldn't be able to get around. By the end of the week there'd be little chance of finding him alive.

Shortly before bedtime I came to grips with the fairly good chance that we might not see him again and I wasn't overly upset. Sixteen years is a long time and he does require more effort and upkeep than the younger dogs. We'd all be a little sad but wouldn't feel cheated in the least. Not knowing would be the only difficult part.

I came home at lunch on Tuesday to see if he'd turned up anywhere. No sign of him in the yard. No messages on the phone.  On an impulse I pulled in the driveway across the street to see if he'd strayed into their backyard like he'd done once or twice before. Having checked on Monday evening there really wasn't any reason to go back but unseen forces, maybe animal spirits at work, will pull you or push you to do things that aren't entirely logical.

He wasn't in the backyard and I walked to the edge of the woods, looking down a hill toward the muddy wetland that borders the creek. A white spot in the distance turned out to be a five gallon bucket.  A second white spot had some brown patches toward one end and turned out to be my dog, stuck chest-deep in the quagmire. A few more hours and this would have been a recovery operation. He could barely keep his nose out of the muck when I arrived.

In the two decades I've owned dogs I have never, ever seen one this muddy. Hell, I've never seen a pig this muddy. He looked like he'd been dipped in chocolate and left to soak. It took the better part of an hour and some unimpressive work with scissors to get him reasonably clean again. He was so exhausted he went to sleep while I was bathing him.

If I had gone on back to the office instead of taking one look behind the neighbor's house, if I hadn't looked exactly where he was mired, if I'd just waited to see if he turned up....the story changes completely. It's humbling that just one split-second impulsive decision can be the fence between life and death.

There's no question life around here would be easier if he were gone. Old dogs, like old people and old cars are high maintenance. But we get attached to all of them. Maybe that attachment is the unseen force making you do things that aren't entirely logical.

Somewhere is a line beyond which you stop doing whatever is necessary to keep an old dog alive. I guess I haven't quite crossed it yet.

Time warp

Seems like barely yesterday that the leaves were changing colors and the nights brought a chill with them. Every day held thoughts of guns and dogs and birds and every weekend took shape around the hunt.

Then the leaves were gone and the annual weight gain otherwise known as the holiday season rolled into town. Turkey, family, football, holly, Santa, empty boxes and wrapping paper and then all of that was gone too. Still, it was bird season and soon there would be no competing for the woods with the deer hunters.

Now, staring at the last two weeks of the season it doesn't seem possible that the next eight months will ever pass, nor does it seem possible that the last four months are gone. In truth they pass more quickly every year, same as the right-hand digits of my age, and remain utterly indifferent to all efforts designed to slow or stretch them.

There are still a few fires left to burn but most of the wood in the rack will get to simmer over the summer before it gets a turn, patiently waiting for the time when 50 degrees will be reason to break out a pullover instead of a welcome warm spell. Were it not for the certainty that autumn returns every year this would be a most depressing time.

Empty

Nobody leaves the house expecting to strike out. Expecting to not move a single bird all day. Expecting to walk for hours as if it were a conditioning exercise. That's not the reason you go.

People talk about how they just like watching the dogs work or being outside. These aren't outright lies but they aren't entirely true either. If they were, there would be no such thing as eight months of aching for the season opener.

Bird populations aren't what they used to be in many places and we're all big boys about it. We don't expect limits or even to find birds every single time. But striking out for days on end is a seed of doubt. You start to question your ability, whether you've been kidding yourself all these years about how good you are at finding game.

Finding birds and watching the dog bust through them is one thing. A bronzed point followed by a missed shot carries its own bite but at least you got up to the plate.

Two days in a place where you know there are birds, two days of putting in 3 or 4 or more hours and most of the time you'll have stories to tell. When the warden at the gate tells you about the party that had 18 points, well, there's no way of knowing if that was fabricated, but it still ain't what you wanted to hear. Day two brings more of the same.  You run into some guy who's never even hunted here before and he found a bird. That's one more than you for anyone keeping score.

Yeah, this sucks. Don't let anybody kid you. It leaves a scar, a scratch on the psyche that lacks the character of one on a stock. Gun, dog, hunter and bird are four parts of a whole and removing one doesn't diminish the others so much as it leaves them deprived.

That's why it stings when you come up empty.

Bull Durham goes hunting

Two things I've learned in the time since I turned 40:

1. They can't accurately predict the weather more than a few days in advance.
2. Windows of opportunity open less frequently than they used to.

If the 10 day outlook says it's gonna rain next Saturday, it's a pretty good bet the sun will be shining.  Unless that's the only day you can hunt, in which case it will be dead on, right down to the hour.

It's pretty bad when you resort to checking the hourly forecast to see if it's worth getting out of bed.  It's equally bad when the season is three weeks old and you've been hunting once. With kids.

The radar looks clear for at least a few more hours. Roll the dice.

Dodge showers all the way to the game management property. Watch it rain harder as you pull through the gate. Check the radar again, only there's no cell service, and so you have no idea when it may let up. Or if. There are these days, days when you don't want to win the lottery, you just want a break, a really small, inconsequential in the grand scheme of things break. Literal and meteorological.

Almost simultaneously, you get a case of the fuckits and the rain does indeed subside. Six feet on the ground and you're committed. And if you're really, really lucky, you get that break.

And you're not the only one who's happy.

Oh yeah, one other thing I've learned: There's no such thing as completely waterproof boots.

To quote Ebby Calvin Laloosh (quoting Skip), "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains."

Norman

One of the farms where I shoot dove is owned by a friend who's not a farmer. He always has some kind of arrangement with a real farmer to plow and plant and cut hay and such. Among these guys was an old timer named Norman who must have been at least 70 and could have kicked my ass on his lunch break.

He had white hair and a nose that was long and looked like a ridgeline running down the center of his face. He was big, the kind of big that comes from farming for a long, long time. I think he could juggle hay bales.

I never could figure out if Norman was way smarter than me or had a death grip on his last few brain cells. Something about the way he'd look at you left the impression that he knew lots of things you didn't.  Then he'd start talking and you'd be forced to reconsider. Every time I saw him he'd stop mid-way through our conversation and say, "Now what was your name again?" Not that being bad with names is an early indicator of intelligence.

This is the disc harrow Norman used on our sunflower field. Norman's dead now.

Poaching as a way of life

Earlier today I came across this article in the Idaho State Journal. It tells the utterly sad and yet completely believable story of a serial poacher and his latest bout with the law.  From the story:

"The charges against Pierce stated that he had illegally killed a number of ducks and geese with a .22 caliber rifle both during the legal take season and after the waterfowl season closure.... Some of the geese recovered at Pierce’s residence were extremely rare, naturally occurring only once in tens of thousands of birds."

His penalty?  Loss of hunting privileges for 15 years.  While this sounds severe to people like you and me, my guess is that it amounts to doing him a favor. This is a guy who takes game out of season, with an unapproved weapon, with a history of game violations dating back to 1998 when he was 15 years old.  Is he really going to let something like the lack of a license deter him?  All they've done is save him the $60 each year that he paid for it. It would've served the state better to make him buy the license but arrest him if he was caught using it.

Wait, they did fine him $1175. Yeah. He could find enough crap in his garage to pawn and pay that by Monday.

My prediction? They'll end up catching him again, maybe he'll go to jail for a month and then get out with a stern "Next time you're caught you'll do the full term, I promise," and then he'll pick up and move to another state and do it all over again. The most pathetic aspect of this tale is that after 15 years he still sucks at it. Yes, he will get caught again.

Here's the line that really got me:

"The system worked in this case exactly as it should have..."

The word they left out was finally. A well-functioning system wouldn't have let it get this far.

Ok, it's easy for me to sit here and armchair quarterback a judge I've never met without offering any suggestions, so I'll throw out what I feel is an appropriate penalty for a serial poacher:  make him live in Manhattan (New York, not Kansas) for 15 years. And tell him that rat season is only open on July 4.

Enough with the rain already

The forecast said 50-70% chance of showers and thunderstorms.  It started on Saturday afternoon and did not stop, not even for a few minutes, until sometime in the wee hours of Monday morning.  Never worse than a pale yellow on the radar, it persisted like a four year old asking for dessert.

Rain and cooler temps can be a lethal mixture for a clutch of bobwhite chicks.  Fortunately we're probably still incubating any early breeders, at least the ones that didn't float away.

Ever Google "blueprints for an ark"?

The Urban Hunter

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

from the Fresno Bee:

          Tuesday, Mar. 19, 2013 | 08:07 AM

An urban hunter was detained by police early Tuesday in central Fresno after alarmed residents reported a man was firing a shotgun.

Officers arrived at an alley near Van Ness and Mildreda avenues shortly after 7 a.m. and found a man armed with a pellet gun. The man said he was hunting doves.

Dove season doesn't begin until Sept. 1. And while dove hunting is allowed in some areas of Fresno County bordering city limits, the city of Fresno is excluded from areas where hunting is allowed.

Here's the link to the story, complete with photo and a string of educated comments...

Urban bird hunter alarms central Fresno residents

Morrissey who?

Various media outlets are reporting this morning that former Smiths frontman Morrissey has backed out of an appearance on tonite's Jimmy Kimmel Live because he doesn't want to share the stage with the cast of Duck Dynasty.

Morrissey, in the midst of a tour that is receiving somewhat less publicity than that of the Rolling Stones, said, "As far as my reputation is concerned, I can't take the risk of being on a show alongside people who, in effect, amount to animal serial killers."  We're left to wonder exactly what reputation he's so concerned about.  After all, he sells tickets by the thousands hundreds to people who, in effect, amount to animal cannibals.

As is the current fashion in the performing arts, he's managed to take his animal rights crusade a bit too far. One report mentioned he recently suffered from a bleeding ulcer.  So how's that vegan diet working, anyway?

I'll confess, I listened to some Smiths in college, but as far as my reputation is concerned I should note that at the time Morrissey was only a fledgling douchebag.  Such was the case with many singers of the era. Others were just weird and still are.

So far no comment from the Duck Dynasty camp and Jimmy Kimmel quickly filled the vacancy with the band Churchill, who obviously has different priorities in the reputation department. Suspicions of a hidden agenda on Morrissey's part linger.  After digging up this old photo of the performer I'm wondering if he wasn't a bit concerned that Si might mistake his 'do for the ass end of a duck.

The only good coyote....

With only two weekends left in the season I don't see a whole lot of downside in trying some new spots, the old spots being marginally productive and becoming a bit too familiar.  I pulled into the turnaround area on some national forest land this morning, cup full of coffee and optimism based on some positive reports from early in the season, and stepped out of the truck to this:

After a little scrounging around I found the missing pieces:

I'm not 100% on the ID but I'm pretty sure it's a coyote.  And this is the form I like to see them in.  A little more scrounging revealed some duplicate parts, pointing to at least a second casualty in the vicinity.

Only question is did someone drop the carcasses here in a display of pride or did some creature drag them here for a pagan feast?  Odd karma oozes from either possibility.  

Oh, and lest you think I'm a complete and total lesser canid bigot, there is one example of the species I hope never completely dies.  Since the beginning of time this earth has not seen a creature with more mechanical ambition and misguided persistence and as a guy with an engineering degree who is trying to bring back bobwhite populations, well....let's just say I know where he's coming from.

It's the 'other' season

The woods are a lot more quiet than they were a week ago.  Deer season is over.  Sunday through Saturday is now fair game for me and the dog on dozens of properties that previously required scheduling, coordinating, or were just plain off-limits.

There's a piece of private land, extremely convenient in that it's only twenty minutes from the house, that I only have access to after the deer lease ends.  I was there at daylight yesterday and put about four or five miles on my boots before lunchtime, finding one covey in the process. Beautiful, mild morning, easy walking on comfortable roads.  I should have felt fortunate given the relative scarcity of birds this close to home.  But noooooo, I wanted more.  More birds, more points, more shots, more in the bag.  That seems like an awful way to start a new year. When did I become such a greedy, ungrateful wretch?

It's not the first time I've found myself wishing every day could be an eight or ten covey day with plenty of shooting, plenty of contact for the dog, and maybe even a chance at a limit of quail, something that's been a pipe dream as far as wild birds go in these parts.  Granted wishes have a curious habit of never being enough, though.  If every day was a ten covey day, I'd wish the dog worked better.  Or worse, I'd pick out the one covey he didn't handle so well and dwell on it, brooding for hours at the lack of perfection. As if I never miss a shot. Hey, there's something else to be pissed about.  Give me an Elhew pointer and a brand new shotgun and then I'd be happy.


Or I could complain about not having a wider variety of birds in our state.  I'd sure like to have pheasant or huns or sharptails to shoot and not have to drive so far to get into the grouse woods.  New England and South Dakota have it so much better.

I read once that happiness is not having what you want, it's wanting what you have.  That's an odd proposal, odd in that we'd all like to be happier but where would we be as a civilization if somebody at some point hadn't wanted more?  Still living in caves, building fires for light and warmth, and.....yep, going hunting every day.  Man, those cavemen had it so much better.

So I guess it's human nature for satisfaction to be a temporary thing.  What would happen if every day were the perfect day?  What if I could never, ever find something wrong with a day in the field?  I'd bitch about being rained out, like today.

What do you 'spose Freud would say about this?

Last night or early this morning, sometime between the second and fifth trip my son made into our bedroom, I dreamed that my bird dog could no longer smell quail.  Ran right through coveys just as happy as could be.  Pointed grouse, woodcock, chukar, pheasant, field mice and even children, but never once slowed down for a quail.  For me dreams of thirty bird coveys are not uncommon.  Dreams of them flying up all around me as the dog trots through them are.

What's a guy to make of this?  If dreams reveal unconscious desires has something gone very, very wrong in my kitchen?

Is this avocation I've been so passionate about for years just a sham?   Would I rather be pruning daisies or needlepointing pillows?

Or is it a harbinger of things to come?  A few years ago I had a dream about an old friend I hadn't seen since high school, very vivid and there was a man in it named Crumb.  Out of the blue the friend emailed me the next day.  We got to talking, I told him about the dream and he said his daughter's bus driver was named Crumb.  Kinda spooky.  Worse still is the chance that my dream last night might be a look into the season ahead.

I've read in various places that dreams are just a dumping ground for your brain, a place where the mass of thoughts that accumulate during the day are purged to avoid overload.  In the process they're combined in seemingly random patterns on their way down the chute.  Given the choice I'd take this option over the others and discount the whole episode.  Maybe I should stop by Sister Rosario's and have my palm read this afternoon...

Somebody give me another push

Hard to complain about a warm Easter Sunday without a cloud in the sky.  Got the yardwork done yesterday so I'd have the afternoon to pursue less punishing activities.  I settled into the hammock with a copy of The Sound and The Fury and minutes slid into hours.

The call of a pissed off squirrel is unmistakable, a muted screech lacking rhythm but not persistence (sorry for the derailment of any train of thought, but did I mention I was reading Faulkner?).  I peered through the branches of a sweetgum next to the tree that anchored the hammock until I saw a bushy tail waving like an old woman's handkerchief.  He was sitting on the lowest branch, cursing and taunting my dog lying on the ground fifteen feet away.  For some reason the dog only lifted his head to watch this rodent's rant.

Eventually the squirrel made his way into the maple at the foot of the hammock and through the leaves I saw something red in his mouth.  A flower?  Nothing red in bloom in our yard right now.  A strawberry?  Maybe, but where would he have gotten it?  One of the kids' toys?  Possibly, but why would he want that?  As he scrambled overhead I could make out red holly berries still attached to a branch with glossy green leaves.  This looked like something stolen off of the mantel at Christmas.  And he was still screeching.  And by now the dog had pressed his jaw back down to the ground, eyes closed as if these last few minutes never happened.

The prey tormenting the predator, a token from a different season in his mouth, the predator indifferent to his attempts. Had I fallen asleep and become suddenly conscious in the middle of a dream?  Somehow it really didn't seem out of place with a critically acclaimed novel that the author is still chuckling about in his grave, knowing another poor soul is trying to figure out just what the hell he's talking about.  I suppose life is like that some days.

Death in the short grass

It is undeniable.  You can tempt it, you can cheat it, you can curse it, mourn it, or brood over it yet it remains indifferent to actions and emotions, unswerving in its task.  The human world builds rituals around the end of life culminating with the planting of remains in cemeteries, the gardens of the dead.  The animal world has no such rite. They don't bury each other in unmarked graves either, Disney as that notion may be.  And despite a certain amount of evidence to the contrary they don't all seek asphalt in the end.  Given this and the vast number of animals in the wild it seems an average hunter would stumble upon a few more carcasses in the woods and fields.

Sure, quite a few creatures end up as links in the food chain and are digested to the point that only the most fastidious eye would detect the parts amid twigs and leaves.  For the rest the framework lands in plain view, picked clean, nature's near-perfect efficiency in action.  In plain view of something, but what?

If you believe in higher powers and predestination and those sorts of things it would make sense that each living creature, or at least the sum of its physical parts, ends up exactly where it's supposed to.  That fact is no closer to unlocking the answer but does provide a measure of comfort that there is some order to this end of the universe.  Known science suggests it's possible that the disguises that protect so well during life serve the same purpose afterward, but at that point what is the purpose?

It's also possible that this is one of those questions that Mother Nature never wants answered.  Logical, orderly, mathematical minds have trouble with such things.  Einstein-be-damned, maybe some things can't be reduced to an equation.

Things that make you go hmmmm..

Been driving past this on and off for the last nine years and still haven't figured it out.

I suppose it's some kind of art, and given the broad definition of art these days who could argue?  Or maybe it's a memorial, some sort of "they don't make 'em like they used to" statement.  Either way it begs a few questions:

• Where do you get this many red with a white top 2 door LTD Broughams?
• What's with the one way out back?  Some sort of missing man formation?
• Are there Druids in the midwest?

This lies on the outskirts of Clark, SD, if you're ever in the neighborhood.  It doesn't have a damn thing to do with wingshooting but it's on the way to a place I hunt and for obvious reasons it's just hard to ignore.