hunting relationship because I was selfish
enough to want my own dog. I was being small-minded, even childish;
I understand that now. No matter how much it hurts me to do it,
in the interest of our long partnership, I'm going to put my
personal needs on the back burner. I'll think about a dog some
other time.
"What do you say we have another round," he said, smile
intact, "and talk about something else."
---------------------------------
Chapter 19
Anything But Ordinary
ordinary hunting versus ruffed grouse hunting
There are two kinds of hunting:" wrote Aldo Leopold in
his classic book, A Sand County Almanac, "ordinary hunting
and ruffed grouse hunting."
Leopold's famous line is another way of saying that ruffed grouse
require thought. Indeed, everything about them demands attention.
They are not casual birds and, likewise, they are not for casual
hunters. Nor are they for shooters. Doves are the birds for those
who like to pull triggers; grouse are not. Mostly, what we do
with a grouse gun is load it, carry it, and unload it. Grouse
hunting is measured by the mile and by the hour, while grouse
shooting, when it occurs, is a matter of yards and pieces of
seconds.
The hunting of grouse involves more wit and perception than
luck, more motion than productivity, more reaction than action,
more life than death.
Grouse are birds of the mind -wild birds not only of the edge
but on the edge. Their hair-trigger attitudes are laced with
paranoia, a deep suspicion of every motion and |
noise not of their own making. All of which
means that grouse hunting is a tactical exercise comprising much
more than occasional upland ramblings on clean and weightless
October days. But, from another angle, those hunts under a perfect
sun that glistens the webs of spiders and eases the passage of
browning ferns are also very much a part of it. Grouse make you
consider where you walk and what you see.
Proper grouse hunting is done with a dog. Always. To do otherwise
is to lose the magic of the bird, of how and where it lives.
A covert with birds, a hunter, and a gun - but no dog - is incomplete,
a formula lacking a critical component. But, just any dog won't
do.
Aldo Leopold's defining statement on grouse hunting has a corollary
in gun dogs. Few who know this bird would deny that there are
also two kinds of dogs: ordinary dogs and ruffed-grouse dogs.
Grouse demand at least as much from dogs as they do from hunters,
and they usually demand much more. Which is the very reason why
acceptable grouse dogs are uncommon, and consistently fine performers
are rare. Given the bird, that seems appropriate.
Serious grouse hunters are perfectionists at the top of their
game.  The best are individuals who pursue
the bird for the detailed quality of the hunt, which translates
into the beauty of bird and dog performance without concern for
a death at the end. Nowhere in the grouse hunter's code of personal
conduct afield is it written that gaining this beauty requires
dead birds.
Grouse hunters and grouse dogs will never have their fire for
the chase dampened by domestication and tameness. Their bird
is - and will remain-forever wild. And, come autumn, the quest
for this |
wildness is a better reason than most to
get up in the morning and watch a dawn break, then cut loose
a grouse dog for an anything-but-ordinary hunt.
* * *
Sunlight streamed through the birches at a sharp, early - morning
angle. It danced on limbs and trunks before ricocheting off snowy
bark and dropping earthward to puddle on fallen leaves. The air
was clear and still and soft enough for motes of dust to hang
as free as bird songs in the beams of sun.
At the edge of the birch stand, the creamy whiteness was thinned
by upright lines of aspen gray and scattered triangles of pine
green that, in turn, faded downward into a rich purple sprawl
of blackberries. Here, a soft breeze rustled in harmony with
the sliding murmur of a creek threading its way toward a shallow
backwater that ballooned from a river. A great blue heron stood
in the shallows, tethered by the leg to his own reflection.
The bird turned his head at a quickening of the downsloping air,
listened, then cut his bond with the water and lifted across
the river to the safety of the opposite bank. The heron made
his ungainly landing at the same moment the setter broke from
the woods on the far side of the backwater. Patches of hunter-orange
vest showed through the trees not far behind the dog. The man
emerged from the trees and sat on a rock at the water's edge,
waiting for the dog to drink and soak himself cool.
Droplets of water and tiny, sunbeamed prisms of mist filled the
air around the setter as violent shakes ran the length of its
white and black-dappled coat. Then the leggy dog trotted to the
hunter's side. "We'll go in a minute," the man said,
stroking |
