Getting old brings many irreversible life-changes. Most of those changes I’ve taken in stride as unavoidable. But, the life-change that I regret the most, — and the one that makes me both nostalgic and melancholy — is that bird hunting with good bird dogs is in my rear view mirror.
Inhaling the air on these crisp fall mornings, sometimes with light snow on the ground, brings memorable bird hunting experiences back into focus. To me, there’s little outdoor recreation that can match seeing a good bird dog slam onto point over a covey of quail or a colorful cock pheasant, quivering all over, waiting for me to flush the birds, hopefully bringing a feathered target down for the dog to joyfully retrieve to hand — then watch it eagerly snarf down the head of the bird as a rewarding treat.
Lest this column devolve into a pity party, let me emphasize that I’m eternally grateful for the more than 70 years of bird hunting that I enjoyed with both good bird dogs and good hunting companions who loved the sport as much as I did.
My bird hunting was mostly confined to bobwhite quail and pheasants in Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa and Nebraska. But it often branched off into hunting doves, and ducks — with an occasional woodcock thrown into the mix by accident. I even spent two years hunting chukars, Hungarian partridges, pheasant and valley quail in the Palouse region of Washington state.
To me, the biggest enjoyment of bird hunting is watching the bird dogs do what they are bred to instinctively do — point and retrieve game birds. Bird hunting without bird dogs is like trying to enjoy Christmas without a tree. Bird dogs are a must to max out the enjoyment. Shooting the birds and eating them are only nice side benefits.
My introduction to bird hunting came early in life, when I wuz in elementary school. The first bird dog I witnessed doing its thing wuz Lady, an English pointer owned by a rural neighbor. Watching her mesmerized me and must have imprinted bird dogs into my DNA.
In high school, a classmate Ronnie Mack owned the first Brittany I ever saw. After just one day of hunting over his registered dog, I wuz hooked on pedigreed Brits for the rest of my hunting days.
Now I’m going to switch to reminiscing and memorializing some of the best of the many Brits that I’ve owned, bred and hunted over. I didn’t get the chance to get my first Brit until I wuz married and working in Stillwater, OK. It wuz there I wuz given a female Brit pup by my co-worker and mentor, ol’ Myris Snipedown. He acquired a pregnant Brit and I helped bring the litter into this world. My reward wuz a pup I named Ginger.
Ginger, an orange roan, proved to be one of my best all-time bird dogs. She hunted until she wuz 13 years old. She wuz a prodigious puppy producer — having litters of 9, 7, 11, 13, 7, and 11. In those early married years, selling registered Brittany pups for $20 or $25 was a big financial windfall. I hunted with Ginger and some of her pups in Oklahoma, Kansas, Washington, and back to Kansas.
Ginger excelled at figuring out on her own how to hunt various birds. She hunted quail by simply winding their scent and trailing them until they stopped and she froze on point. But, she quickly learned to hunt running pheasants and chukar by leaving their scent trail and racing to get in front of them — which often stopped the birds from running and gave her a point and me a shot. Ginger would retrieve dove and ducks, but they weren’t her favorites. My most memorable hunting moment with Ginger wuz one time hunting chukars in the breaks of the Snake River in Washington when she pointed four chukar and I downed three of the birds with one shot. That sounds like fantasy, but I had a witness, my hunting buddy Mike.
Then I moved to Parsons, Kan. and my next memorable Brit wuz Carrie, a female pup out of my friend Mike’s dam and sired by a field champion belonging to Herman Bonine. Carrie live to hunt for 12 years. She, too, wuz excellent on point and hunted dead and retrieved without fault. She, too, had many litters of pups that I profited from by selling. She also wuz the dam of the two field champion Brits that I bred. I hunted over Carrie so many years that if I missed shooting a bird she’d pointed, she immediately looked back at me with a disgusted, disappointed look in her eyes.
The two field champions Carrie produced were Zach and Topper. Zach wuz a big almost all-white male who could run like the wind, cover a ton of ground, but would hold a point as long as it took for me to arrive at the scene with my shotgun. However, Zach would shorten up his range for me when I hunted him. Topper, another orange-roan, wuz head-strong and always fill of vigor. He was the national champion derby-age Brit before becoming a field champion
I’ll have to quickly run through some of my other notable Brits from when I lived in Iowa and back to Chase County, Kan. Most of them were out of my bloodlines. They included: Gracie, an athletic female, whose hunting career wuz cut short by canine leukemia. Rags and Ranger, littermate orange-roans that I rated as about average. Then there wuz Suzy, an orange and white female that my best hunting buddy Jerry gave up on. He just needed to give her more time. Once I lost her in the field for half-an-hour and when I found her, she wuz pointing a single quail. She wuz a solid all-around bird dog and producer.
Then came Flash — a big almost-all-white male. His speciality wuz hunting pheasants in CRP in Iowa. He held points and reliably retrieved and got skunk-sprayed multiple times. Then came Goldie and Deacon, orange and white littermates. They both hunted into old age.
My final two Brits were both orange-roan females that I bought, but they had a bit of my bloodlines in their pedigree. Annie got arthritic in middle age, but hunted like a trooper for as long as she could last in the field. And, my last Brit wuz Mandy, a fire-brand out of a national champion. She wuz the most personable Brit I ever owned. And, I sold her to an avid hunter after I had to give up going afield. Mandy deserved a hunter-owner, not a pet-on-the-head owner. Her new owner, Ray, just last week texted me a photo of Mandy retrieving a cock pheasant in western Kansas.
In closing this column, I’ll just say that remembering good dogs, good hunting companions, and good trips afield is a poor substitute, but the next best thing to actual hunting.
Go afield while you can and have a good ‘un.
