A much-welcomed late September Canadian cold front pushed out opening week temps in the 80s from my Northern Minnesota ruffed grouse hunting haunts. Temps were now in the 50s and soon my springer Hunter and I hit the road for our first grouse hunt of the year.
When a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? The answer is “Yes the wolf hears it.” The wolf’s direct descendant, the dog, shares the wolf’s very sensitive hearing. According to the sparse research available, the dog’s hearing is four times more sensitive than man’s.
Meet Augustus Fink-Nottle, known as Gus. He’s not the P.G. Wodehouse character from the novels. Instead, he’s the namesake Labrador Retriever from Florida who, in 2017 at age three, became the only American born, bred and trained gundog to win field trials in the U.K.
I set out quail hunting with David Lanier at Carr Farms in the plantation belt around his hometown of Albany, Georgia. He’s an affable guy with your average mid-50s paunch and a friendly clean-shaven face shaded by the brim of a blaze ball cap. The brush pants, frayed at the hems, bunched up at the buckled wingshooter boots scuffed and rough, his forest-green hunting shirt nicely ironed and the pouches of his vest swollen with gear (he always hunts with a camera).
The first thing we saw, through the mist and fog, were dark shapes on the hillside. In scattered bunches they huddled together, at rest, while others fed around them. A relic of a time when wild bison roamed across the great prairie with no fences to stop them.
The West Highland White Terrier cast back and forth around the broomstraw and Johnson grass. It caught a whiff of scent and moved rapidly in a manner customary with all short-legged dogs. That Westie smelled a covey of quail as I do a morning plate of biscuits and gravy and he was looking for a way in. A gust of wind must have pushed the scent around for suddenly the pup found the entrance to a maize. In an instant it zig zagged to the covey and the birds busted every which way into the air. His owner, the noted sporting artist Gordon Allen, took a crosser. The Westie is now immortalized in a line drawing and might reappear in an oil painting or in an etching.
There is no greater event for a bird hunter than this year’s Pheasant Fest and Quail Classic that took place February 16-18 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The annual convention is a large educational and entertainment attraction organized by Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, which are dedicated to the conservation of pheasants, quail and other wildlife through habitat improvements, public awareness, education and land management policies and programs.
There are hunting seasons for greater prairie chickens and sharptailed grouse in several states. However, among all the locations where both species are found, I know of only one outfitter that hunts from horseback. That outfitter is Bob Tinker of Tinker Kennels and Horsefeathers Lodge near Pierre, South Dakota. This past September I spent several days hunting on the more than 100,000 acres of private lands that Tinker has leased. He concentrates his efforts on prairie chickens and sharptails and while South Dakota is known for pheasants, he leaves them to other outfitters.
As another hunting season comes to a close, shooters typically reflect back on the memories, and assess the season: What went right, what went wrong, and how to improve things for the next season. If you hunt with your own dog, that usually means assessing your “partners” performance. More specific, what you would like to improve. For some hunters, the post-season reflection confirms their dog’s old age has finally indicated the time to start looking for succession.
“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.” Jeremiah 33:3
To the locals one of the best-known features of Buck Mountain is the listening rocks, an outcrop of granite on the end of what we call Rocky Ridge. I call the rocks The Old Man because if you look at them from the right angle, you can see the old man’s face. He is the guardian of the Hell Hole and here is where our story begins.
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