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GRO\TTHOF ABIRD DOG The author'sEnglishsefferprovesherself on an unsettledseason-openingday. BY TOM KEER
he last week in September,the week prior to Opening Day for grouse and woodcock in New England, had been stunningly perfect. The days were modestly warm and the evenings chilly. cooler temperanres motivated farmers to cut silage corn early, and some began spreading fields with liquid manure to prepare for planting winter rye. I was scouting for gamebirds, and when I traded the field edges for the dirt roads the mud and manure spun out of my tires and rattled the wheel wells. I never tire of hearing a sound that I associatewith hunting season. A few sugar maples had changed color, and all hunters and bird dogs champed at the bit. It had been 1072months since we'd last hunted woodcock and 10 months since we'd last hunted grouse. we wanted to liberate dogs from their boxes and cast them through the coverrs. Some might say that this time was my christmas, for I had a new pup that I couldn't wait to put down. I was a spring coiled with excitement. she was a little tricolor serter pup from good, solid covert-dog stock. Her daddy was Crackling Thil Blue and her momma was Zipper's SassyGirl, and as a yearling she weighed 28 pounds soaking wet. She sight-pointed out of the box, had the snappy footwork of her field-trial lineage, and when the bell wenr on her neck she was all about the hunt. As the runt of the liner, she was softer in attitude than her siblings, and during our training sessionsI was careful not to be as hard on her as I am with other dogs. The pup went everywhere with me and I named her ocracoke. That violates the hard-consonant, one- or rwo-syllable convention of naming bird dogs, but I didn,t care. I never shortened her name to coke, either. My wife Angela is from carolina, you see, and I was smiften with the way she called out the dog's namesake,the barrier island that forms part of the cape Hatteras National Seashore.The name was cumbersome at the beginning, but old har after that. when Angela calls the dog, it's music to my ears.. The pinnacle of our training was october 1. Sure, ir was opening Day-but it was also ocracoke's fust birthday. Do the math and you quickly know that she hadn,t had a wild bird season in her short life. I taught her to casr and obey the whistle, ran her
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on liberated and wild birds, and shot blanks over her when 'em right. Ocracoke logged plenty of time on the she pointed "whoa" barrel, and when she mastered the pigeons, we worked her on wild woodcock and grouse. She pointed a bunch of woodcock and flash pointed a grouse' but the seasonshad been closed so she'd only heard reports from the starter pistol' She, never experiencedthe real deal. The bottom fell out a few days before the opener' A front blew in and the winds shifted to the east-southeast.Sou'easters are notoriously bad, and this one dropped a month's worth of rain in a day. My six-hour ride to bird camp became a dozen hours, and if I wasn't puttering at 10 miles an hour I was stuck in gridlock traffic waiting for the wrecker to haul the wapvard speederfrom the ditch. It was so dark during the day that it seemedimpossible a woodcock would migrate at night' The rivers and seepswould be blown out and mostly impassable, and it'd be a miracle if we could get into the woods any time soon' I listened to the wind rattle the camp windows all night long' The ragged limbs of the cedar that shaded the camp's porch scratched the roof every time the wind gusted, and at about 3 A.M. I got up and made a pot of coffee.The rain fell in buckets, and I thought I might have to pass on the opener and delay our hunt until the weather cleared and the woods dried out' I could throw a birthday party indoors for Ocracoke, with a few exra dog bones. Or I could grab a jacket and go. An hour after legal shooting, I couldn't take it anymore so I grabbed an oilskin and
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headed for the porch. Ocracoke was pressed against the camp door shaking like a leaf with excitement. h. dirt road that took me to the SaJmill Covert was soft, I atrd we fishtailed our way to the creek bed. \7ith the miserable weather, we wouldn't hunt for long, but season-inand season-out,the Sawmill Covert held the most birds' \Toodcock were usually in the left section' which had alders and poplars, and there were often grouse and woodcock mixed in the center patch comprised of aspen, goldenrod, and sumac' On my way out there was an ever-expanding clump of Japaneseknofweed, a few apple trees, and a lot of raspberries and grapes' The grouse
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loved it in here, particularly in the late afternoon' I parked by the bridge that took me into the covert and got out of the truck. The rain fell sideways and soaked me through before I could finish fastening the buckle on Ocracoke's e-collar' "Hunt'em up," I said."Let's turn you into a bird dog'" One solid point followed by a clean kill in an area where the dog could seethe bird fall-that was all I needed'If I could get her a mouthful of feathers, I'd head back to the truck a happy man. Ife would rest the covert and come back to hunt on a better weather daY. Birds make a bird dog, we all know that, and the more bird contacts we can orchestrate, the better the dog. Hey, wait a minute-I realized the bell was silent and the beeper shrieked' I hustled up to an edge and got ready to walk in for the flush'
Before I did, the beeper went silent and the bell clanged. A woodcock blasted into the open with the pup in hot pursuit. It was a Station 5 low house shot---one of the easiest shots in the book. She was excited, we both were, but she rushed in on the bird. I pulled her back into the coveft to the flush point ahd staunched her up. I raised her head and tail, combed the fur on her back against the grain, and said whoa enough times so it'd stick. "Hunt'em up," I told her again. Staunching up a young dog until they get a solid point is critical, and I repeated this process 17 times over the next hour. Dang,therc were a lot of birds! The wind made them j,rmpy, and the scenting conditions were literally washed out by the torrential rain. On the dog-performance side, Ocracoke crowded the birds. l07ith the lack of strong scent, how could she not?
good on my hot head. In an houq I'd be downright cold-which would perfectly match the despair I felt. But hold on a minuteif any training damage was done, it was too late to fix now. The horse was out of the barn, and no doubt I'd need a check cord, some birds, and a lot of time to make it right. At this point there wasn't a dadgum thing to lose. I removed the lead and turned on the beeper.I let her loose.'Wewere gonna hunt 'em up, all right. Momma didn't raise no quitters, and we hit that knotweed hard. \(e circled the path and cast toward the field, and she locked up 15 yards from me. A raspberry bush was between us. The covert was short but thick, and her head was high and her tail was straight. I stepped forward and the bird flushed up and flew toward me. Ocracoke didn't move so I turned and shot. The bird folded up in the open just before it
Then, after she locked up on point, the birds got fidgery and walked off. When they walked, she broke, and away they flew. It was a normal pattern in a young dog's life, but now it happened so many times that I worried I had undone eight months of her training. My enthusiasm was teaching her to run up birds, and now I'd have to stop that. Opening day-her birthday!couldnt have been much worse. I called her over, knelt down, and slipped the lead over her head. The squishing mud looked like coffee ice cream, swaying branches were in front of me, a gray sky was over me, and we had one last section of the coven to hunt. I took off my hat and wiped the sweat from my forehead. The rain was cold and it felt
escaped into the woods. we put a dog down in the woods we do so with \\f/henever hop.. We hope our dogs have learned enough during W their yard work and training so that they are obedient and handle well. We hope their exposure to live birds is pleasurable and that it setstheir prey drive on 6re. We hope they run well, make game, and handle the birds properly. They do everything right and when that first bird is in their mouth there is only one thing they want, and that is to do it again. Let's go, Ocracoke, you bird dog. Let's find more birds! )|
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