Welcome the wind

Posted on November 10, 2014 by Jerry Johnson
Abbey, with the morning's "one perfect bird,"and a couple other South Dakota rooster pheasants

Abbey, with the morning’s “one perfect bird,” and a couple other South Dakota rooster pheasants

So welcome the wind and the wisdom she offers
Follow her summons when she calls again
            from the song Windsong by John Denver (1943-97)

Welcome the wind

Wind provides a sweeping musical accompaniment to all my memories of pheasant hunting in South Dakota. An orchestral wind is always blowing in Dakota, occasionally a pastorale with gentle adagio tempos, but most frequently a dissonant symphony performed grandioso under the direction of a slightly mad conductor.

A dozen bird hunts in South Dakota have convinced me that the wind is always blowing. Hard. This year’s trip was typical. Three of our four days in the field we were buffeted by gale-force winds, constantly howling at 35 miles per hour with grass-flattening gusts of 40 to 45 miles per hour.

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Anticipaton

Posted on October 31, 2014 by Jerry Johnson
Enjoying the anticipation of an upcoming bird hunt can include looking over photos, licenses, maps, and other tokens of memorable hunts in the past.

Enjoying the anticipation of an upcoming bird hunt can include looking over photos, licenses, maps, and other tokens of memorable hunts in the past.

Anticipation is better than realization.
            – Traditional Folk Saying

The moment seemed endless, but it was probably only half that.
            – Steve Toltz, from his novel
A Fraction of the Whole
 

Anticipation

The best part of pheasant hunting is that moment when a big, gaudy, fully feathered, long-spurred, two-year-old rooster bursts squawking and flapping madly from the grass in front of your dog, lifting off from the launch pad with an apparent trail of smoke and fire, as if his two-foot-long tail was a Saturn rocket booster.

Maybe.

Or maybe it is the anticipation of that moment, the buildup of eager expectation that climaxes in the bird’s exploding flush from cover, that time of heightening drama that stretches out over the four or five minutes when your dog first catches the pheasant’s fresh scent, shows birdy, works the ground wildly with tail wagging a hundred miles per hour, locates, relocates, and locks on point.

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Thirty-seven reasons

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Jerry Johnson
Abbey inspects her first pheasant - the only bird we bagged on opening day 2014.

Abbey inspects her first pheasant – the only bird we bagged on opening day 2014.

Reason No. 25 – Even when the day ends with just one bird in my vest, the dogs still think it is a really big deal.

Thirty-seven reasons

Last year I spent thirty-seven days bird hunting with my dogs, as best I remember. Over the course of those days I subconsciously compiled a list of the virtues of bird dogs as hunting companions, especially compared to us, the less virtuous humans who accompany them and exhibit so many crude, rude, irritating and, well, human behaviors.

Presented here, in no particular order, are thirty-seven reasons why dogs are the best hunting companions – one reason for each of the days spent afield with my French spaniels Sasha and Abbey during the 2013 bird seasons. If I still hunted ducks and geese, there would probably be another dozen items on this list, Labrador and Chesapeake retrievers being a whole different sort of canine hunting buddy than the upland pointing and flushing breeds.

You probably have your own list, and I encourage you to comment on mine and add reasons I have overlooked.
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Ashes! Ashes! We all fall down!

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Jerry Johnson
Whenever I fall afield, my hat flies off in an unexpected direction, often to an impressive distance.

Whenever I fall afield, my hat flies off in an unexpected direction, often to an impressive distance.

Ring-a-round the rosie,
A pocket full of posies.
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down!

Ashes! Ashes! We all fall down!

The last thing I do is look for my hat.

When I get up from a fall in the hunting field there is an established routine. First, stretched full-length out on the ground or in the muck or water, I open the gun, take the shells out of the chambers, and look down the bores to be sure they are not plugged with mud, snow, sticks, or other debris. Then I rise to one knee and check if any body parts are broken, sprained, cut, punctured, or badly bruised.

If everything passes muster, I search my vest, shirt and pants pockets to locate all my gear. I don’t care if a few shotshells are missing, but over the course of fifty bird seasons I have lost two wristwatches, three or four pocket knives, a couple dog whistles, and at least three compasses, so I’ve learned to take inventory after each tumble afield.

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Doing penance

Posted on October 19, 2014 by Jerry Johnson
Photo challenge: Somewhere in this photo a French spaniel is on point over a woodcock. Can you see her? Could you get to her to flush the bird? Could you attempt to shoot in this tangle of aspen? This is a typical day of woodcock hunting in the Nemadji State Forest.

Photo challenge: Somewhere in this photo a French spaniel is on point over a woodcock. Can you see her? Could you get to her to flush the bird? Could you attempt to shoot in this tangle of aspen? This is a typical day of woodcock hunting in the Nemadji State Forest.

Sasha, learned years ago that my “put it up” command meant she could release from point and cautiously flush the bird. Abbey and I have not yet established this bit of teamwork. She will not break her point, so I stumble into the brush in front of her nose to flush the skulking woodcock myself, as calm and collected as if I were poking a short stick into a den of angry rattlesnakes.

Doing penance

My days spent hunting ruffed grouse and woodcock in northern Minnesota must be self-imposed penance for sins that lurk in the dark cellar of my conscience. No one would endure this physical, mental, and emotional suffering unless there was some spiritual reward or divine compensation.

To shoot grouse and woodcock, one must hunt in the birds’ “prime” habitat. In Minnesota’s Nemadji State Forest that habitat is dense stands of aspen trees and alder shrubs, usually around the edges of marshes, bogs and flowages. Tough hunting for man and dog.

And nearly impossible shooting conditions for any shotgunner.

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It’s a drag

Posted on October 9, 2014 by Jerry Johnson
Sometimes a buck hit by an arrow will stamp and snort and then go down in a place accessible by pickup truck. A doe? Never.

Sometimes a buck hit by an arrow will stamp and snort and then go down in a place accessible by pickup truck. A doe? Never.

After an hour’s labor and a gallon of sweat, I had reached a profound and intimate understanding of the roots and derivation of that oft-used phrase, “My butt is dragging.”

It’s a drag

Standing silhouetted on the edge of the hay field at the top of the bluff she was a large whitetail doe, maybe 120 pounds. By the time her run-and-slide down the face of the bluff had ended, she weighed at least 250 pounds. Field dressed.

Impossible as this instant size increase may seem, I can swear it is true, because I had to haul her carcass 200 yards, one yard at a time, back up the bluff. Through the brush. Over leaf-covered limestone scree. In the dark. On a warm night.

Sometimes, deer hunting is such a drag.

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Someday never comes

Posted on October 3, 2014 by Jerry Johnson

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAWell, I’m here to tell you now
each and every mother’s son,
You better learn it fast,
you better learn it young,
‘Cause ‘someday’ never comes.
            – Lyrics from the song
            Someday Never Comes,
            written by John Fogerty,
            lead singer of the rock band
            Creedence Clearwater Revival

Someday never comes

There is a custom-made birch wood elk hunt in our kitchen.

About 15 years ago we paid for our kitchen remodeling project with money that had been set aside for an elk hunt, dollar-by-dollar, over a period of five or six years. Before real life toppled fantasy life onto its ear, I was on fire with the desire to go on a ten-day hunt in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. There was no doubt I would go.

Someday.

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The situation in Pierre

Posted on October 1, 2014 by Jerry Johnson
SASHA - working hard all eleven years of age on what was probably her final hunt in the grasslands.

SASHA – working hard at eleven years of age on what was probably her final hunt in the grasslands.

“The prairie skies can always make you see more than what you believe.” 
            ― from the novel The Past Never Ends by Jackson Burnett

The situation in Pierre

Fort Pierre National Grassland, dead smack in the middle of South Dakota, is a hundred thousand acres of shortgrass prairie that is some of the best hunting ground anywhere for sharptail grouse and prairie chickens. But finding the feathery critters was a challenge for the Over the Hill Gang this September.

Prairie grouse are a “shoe leather bird” – you wear out a lot of shoe leather on the long treks across the grassland in search of Tympanuchus phasianellus (the sharpies) and Tympanuchus cupido (the chickens) – so part of our difficulty was that we do not cover as much ground in our 60s as we did in our 30s. But a bigger problem was the extreme change in habitat. It rained in Dakota in the early summer. A lot. July was dry, but more rain fell in August.

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Homecoming

Posted on September 28, 2014 by Jerry Johnson
After the first hard frosts in the North Country the sunflowers on the edge of the garden can barely hold up their heavy heads.

After the first hard frosts in the North Country the sunflowers on the edge of the garden can barely hold up their heavy heads.

Autumn is as joyful and sweet as an untimely end.
            – Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915), French poet and novelist

Homecoming

Waking to a frost-covered world on the first true day of autumn is like coming home after a long, lonely trip. Although I have, in fact, not left the farm through all the sweltering dog days of August, on this late September morning as I watch the sun rise over a white-coated hayfield and woodland, grass and leaves curled and made brittle by a hard killing frost, I can feel my soul filling up to bursting with that same sense of serenity and contentment that surges through me at the moment of homecoming after a long absence. I suddenly realize I am being healed of a bout of homesickness that I didn’t even know I had, and a troubled corner of my mind tells me “At last, we’re back here where we are meant to be.”

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Pernicious pump guns

Posted on September 15, 2014 by Jerry Johnson
The Remington pump gun that has been tagged '870 Weapons System"

The Remington pump gun that has been tagged ‘870 Weapons System”

“…if I only had one gun to go ducking with, it would have to be a pump.”

“I’d rather look good shooting than have what I’m shooting look good!”

 – from Shotgunner’s Notebook, a collection of essays by Gene Hill (1928-97)

Pernicious pump guns

Until I cut down the stock on my pump-action shotgun to a 13 7/8 inch length of pull, I could not shoot it worth a damn in the field. Now that I can shoot it as well as any of my other shotguns, I wish I had never stumbled onto that solution.

A devotee of the cult of double guns, I disdain taking any semi-automatic or pump shotgun to hunt birds in the uplands. A finely made side-by-side double gun is a creation of the craftsman’s art and science, a thing of elegance and refinement, a symbol of the upland hunting credo, and the ultimate example of the joining of form and function.

Conversely, I have always regarded semi-autos and pumps as machines, inventions of the artless mechanical engineers of the industrial age of gunmaking, intended for shooters who worship firepower over grace and beauty. The tools of the devil.

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