Back Cast
There’s only one day left in September and I’ve yet to shoot a grouse.
It’s not for a lack of effort, days in the field walking shortgrass haunts that have been money over the years. I want to cast blame in various directions, but I know where the fault lies.
I keep reminding myself that I’m not bummed about this early season hiccup because I’ve shot my share in the nearly 40 years I’ve been chasing sharp-tailed grouse. But that thinking passes as quickly as a flushed grouse winging it from left to right. I have all the store-bought, farm-raised fixings for my go-to grouse stroganoff dish, but I long for the key ingredient.
Opening weekend in the badlands we flushed just four grouse in places where we’ve shot limits of birds in the past when the hunting was silly good. I shot once, missed, and swore I would redeem myself if given the chance.
Never got a chance.
Did the intermittent rain, fog, and seriously humid conditions have something to do with it? Or were the birds hit exceptionally hard in the area where we concentrated in western North Dakota by a statewide West Nile virus die-off that biologists warned us about going into the season?
Back home in Burleigh County, I loaded Larry, my young golden retriever, into my pickup for a morning hunt close to home. I’ve been hunting behind bird dogs longer than I’ve had children. And like my children, long grown and living their adult lives, they were all different, singular in their own ways in how they hunted, and behaved around the house.
Merle, a Brittany, had a good nose, and like me, didn’t care for getting hollered at in the field, so our hunts were mostly quiet. Ollie, a golden retriever, never took to the retrieving part of the game, but he was a smart sonofagun and the best of my dogs at holding a conversation. Deke, another Brittany, hunted his heart out and made me look good. Like a lot of dogs of his breed, he ran big, hunted well out in front, but would hold the point until I got there. While this style worked well for us, it didn’t sit with everybody. A landowner who joined us on a hunt years ago remarked on his big-running style that Deke must be a “Democrat dog.” Twenty-plus years later, I still don’t know what that means.
Larry, it turns out, embodies the Southern American idiom “That dog won’t hunt.” I blame it on Fourth of July fireworks (not mine) that put him over the edge, sent him into hiding months ago in the farthest reaches of our basement where he stuffed just enough of his head under the couch to feel safe.
During his first two seasons in the field, green behind the ears but eager to run across the prairie without restraint, I could tell his least favorite part of these outings was when the trigger was pulled. I slowly learned he didn’t like loud noises, and the fireworks solidified it. Accidentally drop something in the kitchen and he scrambles for his indoor kennel. Yell at the television during a ball game and he vanishes. Uncase my shotgun and thumb in a shell, “Have fun, Dad, but I’ll just wait for you at the pickup.”
Hunting was never something I pushed on my kids, but they, to my delight, just took to it. I dangled the same carrot for my dogs over the decades and, again to my delight, they ate it.
Larry, it turns out, took a sniff and wouldn’t bite, which is something I can live with.
