Gus the enforcer

Posted on July 7, 2014 by Jerry Johnson
Gus

Gus

“Boy,” he said, “I will tell you a very wise thing. If a man is really intelligent, there’s practically nothing a good dog can’t teach him.”

          – Robert Ruark (1915-65), novelist and outdoor writer, from his essay Old Dogs and Old Men Smell Bad, from the book The Old Man and the Boy

 

 

 

Gus the enforcer

If Gus says “Down!” your belly better hit the ground in less than two seconds or you are going to be knocked rolling.

Gus is a seventy-five pound German shepherd. He does not tolerate misbehavior in my French spaniels.  They are Francaise. He is Teutonic. They are canine revelers. He is a police dog.

When les petite mademoiselles Abbey and Sasha bounce out of their kennel runs for the morning walk on the farm, der oberst hauptmann Gus stands waiting. Each of the boisterous ladies runs a circle around him. He barks twice. They stop and drop. He tilts his head and utters his guttural yowl. They dash across the yard to the weedy edge of the dry run, squat, and piddle. He sniffs his approval and points to the lane leading up to the hayfield. They dash away.

Gus turns and looks back at me. “Kommen sie, schnell!” he orders. I kommen. Schnell.

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Posted in Bird Dogs, Dog Training, German shepherds, humor, Hunting Humor | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Fathers and sons

Posted on July 5, 2014 by Jerry Johnson
Al Johnson with the first deer he took with a bow, age 52, 1977.

Al Johnson with the first deer he took with a bow, age 52, 1977.

Every man learns the trade of fatherhood through a series of on-the-job-training blunders and successes, and he has few resources to draw on beyond his memory of how his own father raised him. Given the difficulty of the task and the vagaries of chance and circumstance in life, it is no wonder that some men do exceptionally well in the father business and some are abject failures. Most of us fall somewhere between those two extremes.
                        – Clement Seagrave

Fathers and sons

It was the most amazing feat of rifle shooting I ever witnessed.

Eleven years of age, sitting in a southern Ohio woods on an October morning, shivering with cold in the hazy light of dawn, I first heard two squirrels doing their mating chase and then saw them running acrobatic laps around the bole of a hickory tree, about thirty yards away, four feet above the ground, sending bits of bark flying on each gravity defying circuit of the rough trunk. My father had also seen them and brought his .22 rifle to his shoulder when the squirrels were on the opposite side of the tree where they could not see his movement.

On their next lap he shot the trailing squirrel on the run, through the head, stone dead, and it dropped to the base of the tree. Less than three seconds later, the lead squirrel came around the tree again, also running at full speed and unaware that her pursuer had been dispatched. My father shot that one, too, through the head, and it dropped on top of the first squirrel lying below.

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Six-pocket pants

Posted on June 29, 2014 by Jerry Johnson

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Handy as a pocket on a shirt.
                – Traditional Folk Saying

Six-pocket pants

“Why do you always wear six-pocket pants?”

We members of the Over the Hill Gang, all debonair and sophisticated gentlemen, hear that question frequently. It’s true, although we occasionally wear jeans or Dockers, our regular attire is six-pocket pants, and tyro bird hunters eager to emulate the old masters of the game ask us “Why?”

Our standard, if flippant, answer is: “Because we cannot find seven-pocket pants.” But there are practical reasons.

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The moment

Posted on June 25, 2014 by Jerry Johnson

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAYou can go back to the place, but you cannot go back to the time.
                        – Clement Seagrave

The moment

In one moment everything changed, and your life was not the same. A door closed, another door opened, and you started off in a new direction.

A return to the place where that life-changing moment happened can elicit “what if” thoughts, sometimes whimsical but more often maudlin. Memories of the moment remind us that we are all part of the human comedy, an extemporaneous performance of life written by those three Fates named Chance, Circumstance, and Coincidence.

We all have had our moments.

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Good decisions

Posted on June 21, 2014 by Jerry Johnson
Hunters quiz question: Choosing footwear for a woodcock hunt where locals say the marshes are all dry. this year. What is your decision?

Hunters quiz question: Choosing footwear for a woodcock hunt where locals say the marshes are all dry this year. What is your decision?

Good decisions are based on experience. Experience is based on bad decisions.
– Clement Seagrave

 

 

Good decisions

You have heard that old saying “Experience is a great teacher.” What a lie! Experience is a lousy teacher.

What kind of teacher would give you the final exam first and then present the course syllabus and materials later, after you have failed abysmally? That old saying should be, “Experience is a cruel teacher.” The kind of teacher that believes all learning must be accompanied by pain and suffering. And injury, for the advanced lessons.

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Red in tooth and claw

Posted on June 19, 2014 by Jerry Johnson
The approach of a thunderstorm on the prairie makes the hunter aware of his small place in the living panorama of the wild.

Approach of a thunderstorm on the prairie makes the hunter aware of his small place in the living panorama of the wild.

In the presence of the storm, thunderbolts, hurricane, rain, darkness, and the lions, which might be concealed but a few paces away, he felt disarmed and helpless.
            ― from In Desert and Wilderness, by Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846-1916)

 Unlike the majority of people, he did not hate or fear the wilderness; as harsh as the empty lands were, they possessed a grace and a beauty that no artifice could compete with and that he found restorative.
            ― from Inheritance, by Christopher Paolini (born 1983)

 Red in tooth and claw

The wild is not a gentle place.

Wilderness is endangered by those who want to tame or exploit it, but a bigger threat may be those who want to romanticize it. Neither the developers nor the romantics, I fear, have much experience in the wild. The huge majority of people, residents of urban and suburban communities, have only fleeting moments of actual contact with the wilderness, and most of their ventures are vicarious, sitting in front of a television screen.

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Shoulder to the wheel

Posted on June 11, 2014 by Jerry Johnson

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI did not mind killing anything, any animal, if I killed it cleanly. They all had to die and my interference with the nightly and seasonal killing that went on all the time was very minute and I had no guilty feeling at all.
  – From Green Hills of Africa by Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) 

Shoulder to the wheel

Like my diminishing ability to drink and enjoy single malt whiskey, my ability to draw and shoot a bow has declined over the years. As a fellow hunter has observed, “Shooting is a perishable skill.”

Indeed.

Drawing and shooting a bow requires much cooperative work of various anatomical groups, a collaborative effort that the labor force of my aging body is no longer willing to perform – especially that renegade Union of Muscle Mechanics and Synapse Transmitters in my right shoulder.  They seldom speak to one another these days, after the bitter split caused by two rotator cuff tears.

Rehabilitation is not necessarily reconciliation in the world of chiropractics.

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Posted in Bow Hunting, Hunting, Uncategorized, Wildlife | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Almost famous

Posted on June 2, 2014 by Jerry Johnson
The almost famous writer at work. Coffee required.

The almost famous writer at work. Coffee required.

“L’imagination est une arme dans la guerre contre la réalité.” (Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.)
       – Jules de Gaultier, French philosopher (1858-1942)

“The man who has no imagination has no wings.”
       – Muhammad Ali, world champion heavyweight boxer (born 1942 )

 

 Almost famous.

Maybe this is all in my imagination.

I’m almost famous.

Retired after a forty-five year newspaper and public relations career, I had to write something. So I launched a blog six months ago.

I doubted anyone would actually read these essays. Not as blog posts, anyway. The goal was to write for a year and compile a few dozen of the pieces into a book of essays on bird hunting, bird dogs, bird guns, reflecting on the friendships, emotions and traditions of the sport.

Over the past couple years I wrote two novels too, and self-published them. They are not on the New York Times Best Seller list.

But someone apparently did read them, and also read my blog. And wrote an article about me for publication in a regional magazine, Inspire(d).

Imagine that!

The web version of the magazine is here:

Inspire(d)

I’m flattered, but worried this could ruin my reputation as a curmudgeon.

The paperback editions of my two books are available at Dragonfly Books and the Luther College Book Shop in Decorah, Iowa.

Click on the titles below to find them at amazon.com, in both paperback and Kindle e-book editions.

Hunting Birds: The Lives and Legends of the Pine County Rod, Gun, Dog and Social Club

Scrawny Dog, Hungry Cat, and Fat Rat – A Tragedy for Children

These are not in the Famous Authors section.  Could not locate an Almost Famous Authors section.

I imagine they will create one.

 

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Newton’s Third Law

Posted on June 1, 2014 by Jerry Johnson

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  – Newton’s Third Law of Motion

Newton’s Third Law

Isaac Newton was a physicist, not much devoted to the study of human behavior, but I find his Third Law of Motion to be more and more applicable to my social and political “opposite reactions.”  To wit: Every time I encounter a “gun rights” action by the National Rifle Association, I react by moving farther into the “gun control” camp.

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Posted in Hunting, Rifles, Shooting, Shotguns | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

The Eight Commandments

Posted on May 27, 2014 by Jerry Johnson

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAO Bird Dog, companion and partner of man, when thou heareth the voice or whistle of thy master thou shalt listen and obey The Eight Commandments.

The Eight Commandments

Rick Smith, a professional trainer that I regard as one of the best in the business, has said that a bird dog only has to respond to three commands to be a good hunter. The dog has to come to you, go with you, and be still.

For some bird dog owners that is probably true. In the field, if a pointing dog will go where you want to go, come when you call, and “whoa” on command, you can have a successful day’s hunt. That is assuming the dog has the talent and desire to do what comes naturally: cover the ground, use its nose, point, stand staunch, and retrieve.

What else does the dog need to know, really?

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Posted in Bird Dogs, Bird hunting, Dog Training | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments