Project Upland

If you haven't stumbled onto it yet, this a site worth checking out:

www.projectupland.com

A partnership between the Ruffed Grouse Society and Dangerous Cow Publishing (I know, strange name but talent often comes wrapped like that), this series of films shot in grouse and woodcock coverts really gives the flavor of hunting these birds. 

While fishing films abound, good videos about bird hunting are rare. This is no collection of staged shots by guys clad in brand new gear. The subjects wear flannel and hoodies and their gear is often as worn as yours and mine. And they love to hunt birds.

I'd really recommend watching "Why Project Upland - Behind the Scenes" first, then moving on to the others. It gives a pretty good background and sets the tone for what you're about to see.

One last post for 2014

The ink well has been running a little dry lately but through the wonder that is Craigslist I managed to pick up another media tool recently - a decent Canon dSLR that I've been having a little fun with. Photos below are from two recent excursions with the dog, one carrying a gun and another without.

We're not allowed to hunt in the national forest on Sundays, something I did for years until I learned about the rule. I always wondered why I never ran into anyone else. There's no rule against taking your dog for a walk, though.

Figures we'd stumble into a covey when I didn't have a gun on me. This photo tells the tale of just how fickle scent can be. When I rounded the corner and saw Wyatt on point, he was looking to the left, not the right as he is below. His head was gently drifting from side to side so I knew he didn't have the birds locked, but he wasn't coming off the point either. I stepped off the road toward him and the covey blew up about 3 yards off his tail, leaving him with the look below as they flew off.

I checked the wind and sure enough it was blowing left to right. My guess is the birds were feeding (it was about 4pm) and had just been in the area to the left. A few minutes after the flush the wind had shifted 180 degrees, so there's no telling what his nose picked up. I was extremely impressed he held point for as long as he did under those conditions.

This time of year you can occasionally find a few woodcock in the right places. They love the river bottoms and cane breaks and the shooting is usually pretty easy down there.

Woodcock like this...

...and love this

Well, we hunted the best spots and didn't move any so we eased on to higher ground to look for quail. It wasn't long before Wyatt went on point, at least I thought he was on point because he wasn't moving although I couldn't see him through the mess of young pine trees and saplings and briars and vines. I'm of the mind that unless it's dangerous you should always, always try to get to a dog on point. It just sends the wrong message if you wait for him to break or, God forbid, call him off.

A machete would have been highly useful as I pushed and clawed and bled my way through and after a few minutes I heard it, the chirp of a timberdoodle taking flight, and looked up just in time to see it float over the tops of the pines. Gun behind me, a shot was not a remote possibility. This routine repeated on a second bird. Eventually we escaped from the wooded prison and got two more flushes, the last of which actually presented a shot but the bird would have dropped right back in the middle of the trees and vines so I watched it sail off. Woodcock hunting.

Working the edge late in the day

Not all views are bad

Fungi

Apparently they're not too concerned about the rider.
I didn't see either of them.

Maybe this way..

End of the day

Gettin' ready

Bird season (the kind you hunt with pointing dogs) opens in just about three weeks.  Hard to believe it's been eight months since that unusually warm February day when we closed the book on last season.  Well, actually, there were a few days when it seemed it would never get here but we'll leave the past in the past.

I've been taking Wyatt out to run at a public dove field near my house to get us both conditioned and, truthfully, because pretending is the next best thing when you can't really hunt.  We're in between dove seasons so we have zero company - just the way I like it - and the convenience outweighs the reality that there is little chance of finding something to point.  It's not an ideal situation, bird contact being the best preparation for bird contact, but there's this obstacle to getting a dog on wild birds this time of year called the white-tailed deer. You see, there are LOTS of deer hunters in the south.  It vies with college football for most popular sport in the fall.  It vies with beer for biggest contributor to the state's revenues.  And it vies with me for use of public hunting grounds.

Don't get me wrong.  I enjoy sitting in a deer stand from time to time.  I take about one deer a year, never a trophy buck, usually a doe, and have everything but the tenderloin ground since that's the way my family will eat it.  It's just that those Realtree warriors are everywhere.  It's not like this is South Dakota or Montana or some other spot with a surplus of public land.  And very few whitetails.  Good wild bird land is at a premium here, and those boys with bows are Bogarting it.  The public land harboring wild birds is overrun with guys in treestands, a good many of whom wouldn't think twice about shooting a dog that runs through "their" food plot.

Our state hasn't yet placed a good bird dog's life on par with a human's, although I could make a case for the former being worth multiples of the latter in quite a few cases.  Still, I'm not so obsessed with right vs wrong that I'll risk my dog to prove a point.

Once the bird season opens the schedule allows us equal time with the bow boys.  In the meantime we get out and stretch our legs in a spot without the risk of fatality, plenty of room to run, plenty of space to work on things like patterning and handling and I don't have to drive an hour to get to it.  There's a nature trail not much further down the road that weaves along a river bottom, a perfect spot for woodcock and we'll be there once the flights arrive.  Looking at the weather in the northeast it may be sooner than usual.  No hunting allowed, but a fine place to give a nose a workout.  The hell with those deer hunters - I'll  get my pre-season work in one way or another.  Anyone who says pre-season doesn't count probably never had a winning season.

Hope

Regardless of which brand you choose to practice, religion is a very personal thing.  You tend to get out of it what you need most, or whichever need led you to it in the first place.  In an age where people are losing jobs and homes, where random acts of violence proliferate, where the future sometimes holds more troubles than joys, possibly more than any other thing religion provides a source of comfort in a world of uncertainty, a sense of hope that good will prevail.

Hope offers a reason to keep going, to put troubles in perspective or at least aside long enough to let them fade.  Hope is the promise of tomorrow, and bird hunters know a thing or two about it.  Every puppy, day in the field, hedgerow and shotgun shell is hope.  Putting on a vest, easing up on a point, squeezing the trigger - every little action is pinned to hope.  In it you'll find optimism, reassurance, relief, contentment and a dozen other emotions shifting the burden of worry aside.

Not every Christmas present comes wrapped in paper under a tree.  Whatever your religion, find the hope that it offers and embrace it.


Merry Christmas....

Please Don't Call Me Bogsucker

Not even a mother could love a name like that. You gotta really hate something to call it a bogsucker. My guess is that somewhere along the way a guy came home with an empty bag after flushing a dozen or so and in a sour-grape fit of frustration coined the term. Of course anyone who's hunted them knows that the little devils can be deceptively hard to bring down and I'd be comfortable taking the over on the number of non-flattering names that didn't stick.

Poor bird was behind from the get go, what with a bill more suited to a shorebird, a brain in the back seat and an appetite for things that live in the dirt, not above it.  Prefers to hang out in the less scenic coverts.  Lately people have been posting pictures online of deformities in the species.  They don't do that to quail, do they?

I guess I'm bringing all this up because I failed to get even one opportunity to hunt them this year.  A cold wave moves through, freezes the ground and BAM, the season is gone before it even started.  The birds keep on truckin south, leaving us wishing and cursing and calling them names and complaining in general that it's not supposed to get this cold for this long in South Carolina.  A higher power with a greater purpose is responsible, I suppose.  Probably ought to shoot an email to Al Gore and let him know his work here is done.

In spite of all the weirdness attached to this bird  I still have a soft spot for it.  I've had lot of fun following a dog through thickets and cane breaks and creek banks, waiting for the bell to go quiet, putting a few in the bag from time to time.  And contrary to what a lot of folks will tell you, they do taste pretty good....if they're prepared right.  Don't ever freeze one, though.  Still, no reason to go calling them names.  If I'm gonna call them anything other than woodcock, I think I'll stick with timberdoodle.  Bottom line is you can't suck bog when the bog is frozen.