By Steve Smith
Steve Smith lives in the grouse and woodcock, duck and goose country of Michigan near Traverse City. Fittingly, those game species hold the key to his livelihood a an outdoor writer, magazine editor and book author. Steve is editor of The Retriever Journal and managing editor of The Pointing Dog Journal. He is the former editor of Gun Dog and a columnist for Shooting Sportsman, a magazine he founded. Steve has written a dozen books on dogs, wingshooting and upland bird and waterfowl hunting. His titles include Just Labs, Just Setters, Outdoor Yarns and Outright Lies, Reflections on Wingshooting, The Whispering Wings of Autumn, and instructional books on hunting ducks, geese, pheasants and woodcock. He finds time each year to hunt in "half a dozen states and a foreign country or two."
"Men trifle with their politics and they trifle with their careers, but they do not trifle with their sport."
Try this. Walk into a tavern and announce, in order:
See which one of those gets you punched in the mouth.
You see, when it comes to gun dogs, upland shooters and waterfowl hunters have never been wired up exactly like they should be -- haven't been since familiaris stopped being lupus and moved into the family cave on this side of the fire, and probably onto what passed for the Neanderthal version of the good sofa.
I know one guy who has a female setter that breaks point, chases birds, eats the few my pal manages to scratch down and at nine years old hasn't quite got the housebreaking thing mastered. He dotes on her. The same guy is just finishing up a divorce to his third wife; this one couldn't get the toothpaste cap drill right. In any event, you get the picture.
So, it stands to reason that if you aren't used to hunting with dogs, you should realize there are several types. There are those that find and point game -- pointing breeds. There are those that find and retrieve downed birds -- retrieving breeds. There are those that find and flush birds for the gun -- flushing breeds.
Now, on any given day, each of hese lines can become blurred. Dogs that are supposed to point will flush, those that are supposed to retrieve can flush and (rarely) point, and all of them are supposed to retrieve after a fashion, even though only the retrieving breeds will do it with any degree of regularity.
The lines become further blurred by the retrievers and the pointers and the flushers being wrapped up into one package called the "versatile" dog of Continental extraction, which means the mutt will flush when he should point, point when he should be chasing, and eat downed birds like God's going to stop making them.
Then there's the type not often discussed: the Other Guy's Dog, a breed apart.
You see, there is something special about the Other Guy's Dog, and you have to realize that right off. And hunting with this beast is usually an exercise in self-restraint you could use to train for the Olympic Water-Torture Team. I mean, you can go to this man's house and he hands you his newborn son to fondle. You can turn up your lip, recoil and cringe, and mutter something like, "Get the little bugger away from me -- he's all sticky," and the guy will shrug his shoulders and pass the kid off to his wife. But comment after a couple of drinks that the guy's two-thousand-pound shorthair is cutting the circulation off to your knees after sitting in your lap for the last four hours, and he shows you the door. And I mean right now.
I've got a pal who's got a mutt name of Sam -- big English setter. Dog's a moron. Everybody knows it, including my pal, who got him as the result of a bet he lost or something. Or, maybe he's serving community service for kiting a check a few years back. That's the only explanation for the bond that exists between these two. The beast has two talents, the same two that are exhibited by English setters everywhere: eating and sleeping. Sam's world-class. Except, that's all he does.
Oh, my pal takes him hunting, all right. Sometimes when I scrape up the nerve or can't get out of it, I go with them. We hunt grouse and we hunt wodcock. Mostly we hunt for Sam, who gets out of the truck and just sort of leaves. About every twenty minutes, my pal starts shrieking at Sam, takes off through the cover like he was catapulted, and tackles Sam, who is heading for the epicenter of magnetic north. They wrestle in the leaves for a bit, and my pal wins because he's in better shape than Sam. Then, Sam hunts a while -- maybe even points, although that's not guarantee he smelled anything or knows even a trifle more than we do about the whereabouts of any birds. Then, Sam splits again, and the scene is repeated.
But if you can stay with my pal when he goes after Sam, you'll get some shots, because the guy's the best flusher I ever hunted with. Hands down. Now, naturally, I don't criticize old Sam. He's doing the best he can with what he's got, poor soul. And besides being cruel to the dog, criticism would have a tendency to set my buddy's teeth on edge to the point that you watch the enamel splinter. You see, he doesn't trifle with his sport.
Spotting a felon among the changing cast of characters you'll hunt with in a year is easy, once you know what to look for in the Other Guy's Dog. First tip: the name. Now, folks who run a lot of dogs over the years have sort of run out of names, so they give them people names: Fred, Bill, Sally, Poindexter, you know. A dog handler at a Southern plantation with fifty dogs doesn't have time to sit around and think up cutesy names.
But, our hero is different. The cuter, the more autumn-is-the-smoky-colored-umber-smelling-earth-in-its-majesty sounding the name is, probably the worse the dog is. The inverse is usually true also: the simpler the name, the better the dog, because he's been named and trained by a guy who ran out of those sweet little names thirty dogs ago. There are exceptions (see Sam above) both ways, but it's a good starting rule of thumb.
For example, if your hunting pal introduces you to his new Lab Misty Morning (Missy for short), be ready for the canine equivalent of the Hillside Strangler. Good Las are named Maggie and Tar and Jake. If the man's chiseled-headed setter looks like an Osthaus painting and has a name like October Delight, think about spending that particular Saturday at the Christian Science Reading Room.
There aren't many things I know too much about, but I learned a long time ago not to verbalize my true opinions of The Other Guy's Dog. You'll forgive me if I give you advice without informing you of the exact details that give me the right to give it. Trust me when I tell you it is hard-won knowledge I paid for in dashed friendships, bad hunting trips and the odd rearranged facial feature. Innocent little remarks on my part, I tell you, but the opposition does not trifle.
So, for your enlightenment, here is the advice: develop an alternative vocabulary, commit it to memory, and use it when you discuss the Other Guy's Dog with him. Use these terms only when called upon. Volunteer nothing. To wit:
Good range. This means the dog can actually be seen on clear days if you're on a hill and he's passing over the next. Replaces previous usages like "coyote" and "smoker."
Thorough. This refers to the dog that thinks the birds are most likely found between your feet or eight yards behind you. Avoid here the use of the terms "bootlicker" and "gun-shy."
Intensity. Another term you can use to admire the Other Guy's Dog. This is best used after you've had a tug-of-war to get a bird away from him. Substitute for "hardmouth" and "jarhead."
Good conformation. Use this when the dog at least seems to vaguely resemble any one of the following: the sire, the dam, the breed, a dog. Avoid at all costs discussions of "papers" and the "Field Dog Stud Book."
Staunch. Admire the mutt's "staunchness" if you notice he has a tendency to doze off while on point.
Drive/fire. These can be used interchangeably in referring to a dog who can't stay on the ground when birds are in the air. To the Other Guy, "steady to wing and shot" might as well be "byziliop nugerlow epilimbot."
People-oriented. This means the dog will spendat least a portion of what he considers down time in the field trying to hump your leg. Admire his friendliness. Comment on how he's "bonded" with humans. Kick him when the Other Guy isn't looking.
* * *
But for all their faults, of course, what would we do without them? Who would share our duck-blind sandwiches? Who would care enough to take the time to ask how we feel each morning? Who else would put up with us the way we are? And as they age, and some of their fire cools and we catch on to their schemes, they become, as we all know, the best companions we can have.
Old dogs, especially old hunting dogs, are indeed a rare breed -- rare as in remarkable, singular, irreplaceable and precious. There is something uniquely elegant about old dogs. They become, in their last years, so much more human than they ever seemed before.
The old gals become fastidious little clucking hens, set in their ways, sometimes a little crotchety, but mostly a little frightened, like a widow from the old neighborhood that is changing as she herself changes. Males, for their part, get to aching and paining, and sometimes they aren't in the most pleasant humor, but mostly they, too, mellow with time. There is an elegance in age that is a bittersweet potion made up of equal parts shrewdness, serenity and sweetness. They become so much more in tune with our moods, adjusting theirs to fit ours. I have a good friend who has such a good friend, an aging wirehair. Time was, she was a crackerjack pheasant dog. She could go all day and ask for more, pinning running roosters and the odd covey of quail on the Iowa prairies. These days, her favorite outings are bass fishing with her somewhat aging partner. She really likes bass fishing, likes the boat rides, likes watching the line part the surface of the lake as the bass takes the plastic worm and runs. Mostly, she likes the carpeted deck of her friend's bass boat and the warm June sunshine.
My own setter, Jess, with miles beyond her dozen years, has taken lately to following the sun acros the living room floor, and the back steps are sometimes a little steeper and icier than she'd like, an opinion she'll share with me through a sometimes bewildered look when the night winds spring up cold and melancholy. Old folks feel so alone at such times. As Guy de la Valdene said in his wonderful Making Game, "She once was strong; now she is very wise."
These old dogs, these old friends. There is a certain sadness, an emptiness that comes over us as we watch them dream by the hearth, doing the things again in their musings that they did once in their youth. The paws moving, the eyes flickering, the flews lifting in a barely audible little woof now and then. This is their world now, and it is not a cruel one. We can only hope for pleasant dreams and warm hearths when the last of our hunts, too, are but memories.
* * *
Now, I dislike sappy, saccharin dog stories as much as you do. You know, the kind where Old Rufus gives up the ghost after a life of faithfully finding birds for his master, pulling part-time duty as a guide dog for the blind and rescuing wagon trains lost in that big blizzard eighty miles out of Fort Laramie.
But the truth is, as Ben Ames Williams said in Fraternity Village, "... dogs will die and men will weep for them so long as there are men and dogs."
Take Jess. A gentler soul, human, canine or otherwise, never lived. She's a great house pet, companion, world-class beggar at the table (total strangers being her favorite target), and more than a passably good bird dog. In her eleven seasons, she hunted in maybe thirty states and a half-dozen provinces, and slept more than one night under the stars with me in some Godforsaken woodcock camp tucked away very close to the edge of the world.
She's still with my wife and me, though, and she did a fine job of raising our daughter through med school and marriage and our two sons into college. She did it with a cool head, sagacious judgment, loving discipline when needed, and the firm belief that no bed is complete after there's a kid in it wihout a seventy-pound orange belt on one end of it to keep it from floating off during the night. When my daughter and her husband visit, Jess still hops on their bed, the better to keep the evil things of night away from the girl-now-a-woman she loves so well.
So, what follows isn't one of those this-is-how-Old-Jess-bought-it stories. This is about Jess's retirement party.
I had been off for a four-day pheasant shoot in Michigan's thumb, fine pheasant country, and I had intended to use Jess with her roommate, Maggie, my son's four-year-old Lab. But the CRP grass fields were thick and the weather rugged, so I left her back each day. Good thing, too, because Maggie could barely move after the hunt. It would have killed Jess. But she asked at the door each day to be taken along.
So, when I got back home to Traverse City, I knew I owed Jess a hunt. I also knew something she didn't -- this was probably her last one. I knew a place where there were a few grouse, so after work I loaded her in the car and headed for one of the spots near home. I was using a little Parker 20 I just got, and I hadn't even fired it yet, so I sort of planned Jess's last hunt to be the Parker's first. Fitting, I felt, because most of the birds I had shot over her in her long career were woodcock and grouse, and I had shot them with my old 16-gauge Parker.
We moved no grouse the first half-hour, and the going was slow, her arthritic hips making her dawdle around deadfalls she once vaulted with aplomb or smashed straight through. As I watched and waited for her, I thought how I wished I could transplant that magnificent heart and mind and spirit of hers into a young body. Hell, I wished I could do the same thing for myself.
Making a swing toward the gravel road to hunt the other side back to the car, Jess came on point. She doesn't have the style she once had. It's more like, "If you want one, there's one right there." Though her nose is still what it always was, she's about deaf, so when I told her, "Steady," it was out of old habit.
I walked nto a patch of bracken fern, and a hen woodcock rose through the bare aspen branches. The shot was easy and true, and Jess sort of speed-shuffled toward the downed bird. Now, I should explain here that Jess was gun-shy when she was young, a fault she cured herself of because she loved me and loved hunting more than she hated the sound of gunfire. But while we were working through the gun-shyness thing, we sort of skipped the retrieving thing. She never had any propensity toward being a natural retriever, so it would have been a force-breaking operation. After she came back for me over the gun-shyness, I didn't have the heart to force-train her to retrieve. So, over the years, we perfected this little ritual:
For a few years, it was easier. My sons hunted with me and they were faster than I was, and got faster than Jess as all the players either grew into their prime or aged out of it. Hell, I even got faster than she was. Jess got very few munchies in before someone had the bird, a circumstance she found vexing.
But this time, I didn't race her. I let her amble over, find the bird in the dead and browning leaves, and flash-point it. I sat down, leaned against an aspen trunk, lit my pipe and watched as she slowly dropped to her belly, stretched her neck forward and gathered in the bird. She munched a few times, raising her head to look for me. I got up and walked over, and she feigned innocence, but her flews covered with feathers gave her away. I picked up the bird, pulled a few tail feathers and put them in the empty 20-gauge shell, and we walked back to the car.
I poured Jess some water into the pushed-down crown of my old tweed hat -- she especially likes water from my oldtweed hat -- and as she drank, I took the Parker apart and put the shell with the feathers from Jess's last bird in the case. I'll never open that case without remembering that shot, and someday, before too long, I'll look at that shell and use it to help me remember the dog that made that shot and so many others possible.
Anyway, I took the bird home with us, trimmed off the meat, fried it with a little bacon and some garlic (Jess likes a little garlic) and fed it to her in pieces off a fork. She asked why we didn't think of this custom eleven years ago.
So that was Jess's retirement party. She's been a companion and a friend and a drinking partner for so many years that when the season comes next fall, life will seem different. And not for the better. There will probably be a new pup, but there will never be another Jess. I just thought you'd like to know.
The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.
—Andrew A. Rooney
RWOL
Copyright 1997 by Steve Smith. Reprinted by permission of the author.
© Copyright 1998- , Anglers of the Au Sable, Inc. All rights reserved. Last modified: January 31, 2002
