Back Cast
If you’re watching from a prairie hilltop, one that we’ve yet to crest as that’s where we guess the sharp-tailed grouse are loafing out of the tallish grass to evade the heavy dew this morning, you might be impressed.
While we look far from a well-oiled hunting team, we surely look like we’ve done this before.
Larry is casting left and right where the freshest cowpies and the dew-soaked and slow grasshoppers take him, and I’m wandering with my scratched 20-gauge casually thrown over my left shoulder like a seasoned hunter.
I’m thinking we should be featured in a hunting magazine somewhere and the caption for the photograph would read: “A graying hunter and his 7-month-old hunting buddy, maybe the old timer’s last bird dog, ply public land on the Northern Plains for native sharp-tailed grouse.” Yet, if you hang around long enough on that prairie high spot, you’ll eventually watch me step into three badger holes — no other critter I can blame the dirt work on — cleverly hidden in tall grass and buck brush.
After my third fall, wondering if it’s safe, or worth it, to get back up and continue, Larry wanders over and licks my face with the same tongue he was using earlier on cow poop.
We’re nine days into the sharptail and Hungarian partridge season and we’ve been on the ground five of them.
We hunted the first three with family and the following two it’s been just the two of us.
The best teacher for Larry, like my other bird dogs when they were young, is putting his nose into the cone of grouse scent, which takes time and miles.
And, if I believe my step-tracking device on my left wrist, we’ve clocked our share thus far.
Larry and I regroup and consider our options as I wipe my shotgun with the driest part of my shirttail after my third tumble.
We can head back to my pickup or continue in the opposite direction in hopes of bumping one young bird that hatched sometime before summer that is as wet behind the ears as my pup.
I don’t know what Larry looks like when he gets birdy, and I doubt he recognizes it either at this point, but when the grouse flushes to my right, I will say that while it’s unlikely he got a nose full, he was at least in the vicinity.
