As I sit here now, with the field trial season all but over and the hunting season distant in the rear view mirror, my mind is taking me back to some of my dogs' most memorable points over the last forty some odd years. I'm sure you have some of your own; I'll share mine and maybe those will spark some remembrances for you.
FIRSTS ARE MAGICAL
The very first point I can remember occurred in 1972 or '73. We had a white and orange English Setter named Mac. My dad had gotten him from the owner of a hunting preserve of which his company was a member. Back in those days, bird and duck hunting were pretty common networking activities and my dad had the good fortune of being called on to hunt with important executives on a regular basis. So when the owner of the club had a litter of Setter pups, he offered one to my dad and we had our first bird dog.
And so on a particular November day, I remember my dad getting a phone call about noon. When he got off the phone he told me that it had been Tom, a farmer friend of the family, and he had seen a covey of quail while shelling (combining) corn. He had invited Dad to run up with Mac, our orange and white Setter, and see if Dad could find them. I wasn't big enough to carry a gun yet, but I was invited to tag along and I jumped at the chance.
The birds had been spotted along the edge of a small block of woods in the center of a corn field that was almost a mile square. When we got out of my dad's truck, the thrashing crinkle sound of corn being stripped and shelled by the combine came from another part of the big field and the sweet smelling corn dust hung in the air. As I tromped along behind my dad through the pale yellow-gold corn stalks that were not quite knee high to him, Mac raced ahead, only to be cautioned back closer by my father's admonitions. Tom had said that the combine had flushed the birds into the woods and that was where Dad wanted to look. We had parked on the west side of the woods and were circling around to come in on the southeast corner where the birds had been spotted. Once we got there Mac was sent in, but he kept circling out. I remember my father was a bit annoyed to have to keep directing him in and he walked in where some briars separated the field from a stand of small shagbark hickories with their little skirts of bark. While focussed on getting past the briars, his inattention had given Mac the time to swing out into the field about 40 yards to an area where fuzzy topped foxtails had invaded the corn.
My dad began to call to Mac, and I started looking for him. With me still in the field it didn't take long before I saw him. He was downwind of the foxtail patch and lined out nose and focus directed at the foxtails with his tail straight out behind as pointy as my pocket knife. That is the first point on wild birds I ever saw. Right then, in the middle of that Indiana corn field, I became hooked. I've been a bird dog guy ever since. I erupted with a holler of "He's on POINT! He's on POINT!"
Dad positioned me behind him and told me to crouch down a bit as he walked past the stone solid figure that was my buddy Mac. I was so captivated by how intense Mac looked that the great whirring eruption of birds caught me by surprise, and it seemed as if there were quail flying everywhere. I heard my dad's gun bark twice and saw one of the brown bundles fall. It was actually the second one to drop (my dad is the best wild bird shot I've seen) and Mac was sent to fetch the first. I will never forget Mac's point that day, nor the sound of that covey flushing.
NOT ALL GREAT POINTS ARE WILD BIRDS
After college I lived in a suburb of Chicago in an apartment and got married after a year or so after graduation. My new wife had grown up with house dogs and since my work kept me away from home a fair amount, often at night, she wanted to get a dog. The apartments we lived in allowed dogs, but had a maximum size; if I recall correctly it was 25 pounds. I told her I was fine with getting a dog, if we could find a bird dog that would fall within the allowable size. Al Gore hadn't invented the internet yet and so it took me a while to locate one, but I finally stumbled on an orange and white Brittany female that weighed 27 pounds. It was a bit over the limit, but I figured they weren't going to come and weigh her.
Her name was Satin and she was about the normal height for a Brit, she was just very fine boned. Satin was a pretty good bird dog. It didn't take me long to learn that there was precious little public hunting land near where I lived and what there was got pounded heavily. In those days there were hunting clubs a couple hours west of Chicago and since I had yet to become a father I had a little bit of disposable income that allowed me to join one.
At the club I first joined, you paid dues of $350 per year and that included 10 pheasants. They also had a policy that you had to put out at least one bird per trip, but any additional birds you found in the field were free. So Satin and I did a lot of what they called clean up hunting. While the birds we found weren't wild, some of those pen reared pheasants that survived a couple months on their own got pretty adept at evading the hunting parties.
The cover at the club consisted mostly of fields with strips of sorghum planted interspersed with areas of grass. The fields were bordered by thickets, fence rows or a tree lined creek bottom depending on which field you had drawn.
As I recall on this day we had gotten about 4 inches of fresh snow the night before and white clumps of it stuck to the bare skeletal tree limbs and covered the sorghum heads. Satin had found the one chukar I had paid to put out right away, I think she followed the ATV tracks to it. She was fired up and racing around, and I was keeping my eyes out for bird tracks in the fresh tracking snow. We were really hunting now, I wasn't real confident that we'd find any clean-up birds because when the snow was on, the predators seemed to get pretty adept at taking out the uneducated birds.
We worked our way across the field with Satin working up one food strip and back the next. We had gotten to the edge of our field and she was running back toward me along the wooded creek bottom. There was minimal cover there as the ground was snow covered with very few patches of weeds and sparse raspberry briars. I watched her getting closer, from 100 yards out, to 75, to 50, and at about 30 yards away it happened. Satin threw her nose up as she caught scent, and simultaneously turned 90 degrees to the right and locked up. Her forward momentum was too great for her to stop and she slid sideways in a locked-up pointing pose for about 6 feet. I don't know how she did it, but as she slid past the source of the scent she sort of fish tailed a bit to keep her front pointed in the direction of the bird, angled slightly back the way she had come. In those pre-smartphone days I carried one of the old disc cameras. Somewhere I have a picture of her standing with the clearly visible skid marks in the snow. I was so lucky to see that happen. I dearly love to see the dogs actually strike a point, and that is one I'll never forget.
Once I had taken the picture I set about finding what she was pointing. I was a little dubious, as there was almost no cover in the woods and I couldn't see anything between me and the creek about 20 yards in. I walked toward the creek and as I got there I looked over the bank to see a rooster pheasant crouching down about 2 feet below my snow covered boots. The minute he saw me he rocketed up and across the creek. It was a grouse shot on pheasant with him dodging trees to make his escape. I was so startled by the flushing of the raucous bird from such an unusual spot that I dropped him cleanly in one shot (I shoot best when my little brain doesn't get in the way of instinct). Satin darted across the creek and retrieved the big bird to hand, which was kind of unusual for her, another thing that made that a memorable event.
OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY
As the years went on, I transitioned back to English Setters. There were other transitions going on as well and at one point I found myself a new resident of Idaho Falls, Idaho. The move from the Midwest to Idaho came right in the middle of the fall and I had two boys and three English Setters. By the time the boys were settled in and enrolled in school, the dust had settled at the new house, and I was adjusted to my new work, it was after Thanksgiving. I realized that the dogs had just about missed an entire fall of hunting and hadn't been out of the kennels much since the 30 hour drive to Idaho.
Not having any friends in the area yet, I turned to the Idaho Fish and Game Department for info and was directed to the area bird biologist. I stopped by their office expecting a generic and grossly vague suggestion of areas that constitute bird habitat. I was completely shocked when she told me that the closest best chance of game birds on public land would be ruffed grouse, and then pulled out a map to show me. She directed me to the Tex Creek Wildlife Management Area and pointed to specific drainages. She explained that with the little snow that had fallen I should still be able to get there and even pointed to a couple of specific places to park. I was hugely grateful for the information and had hopes of maybe finding a bird.
For those not familiar with Idaho, there is a lot of it that is dry, even up into the mountains. As I drove in toward Tex Creek, I was starting to doubt the advice I had gotten as I drove past a few irrigated fields and then miles of sage brush. Finally I entered a valley and on the right hand side there were drainages that went up the mountains that had aspens, various bushes and large conifers on either side of them. The road had narrowed to just a little more than a two-track at that point and I soon came to the little parking area to which I had been directed. The snow on the road had been thin and the parking area was only lightly covered.
I had two of the Setters with me, Star and Bubba. Star was a short and stocky, mostly white female with a little bit of orange ticking. Bubba was a tri-colored male with a double mask and light ticking. Star won the toss and was first out of the box. Both were well trained and pretty obedient, but with this being my very first time loosing a dog in Idaho, I didn't want to run both at the same time.
Star hit the ground and was running up the steep slope in the blink of an eye. I could see that a couple hundred feet up, there was a kind of plateau that looked to have some good cover in it. As I followed her up I could smell the pine tree scent on the cold dry air, and could hear Star's bell tinkling up on the flat area. I quickly realized some important points: the snow was deeper on the hillside, the snow made climbing much more difficult than it looked, and my flatlander legs and lungs were complaining vehemently. I had to stop for a breather about 20 feet below the lip of the plateau. As I sucked in all the air I could and my brain finally started to function again, the realization hit me that I didn't hear Star's bell.
Excitement and determination overcame my perceived oxygen starvation and I dashed (ok maybe slip-slid-waddled) up over the lip. The minute my eyes cleared the edge I saw Star directly in front of me not 10 yards away. She was locked up, tail high and facing to the right, nose and eyes staring straight at a ruffed grouse that was looking right back at her from about 5 yards away. He was right out in the open and seemed more curious about her than anything. I'm sure if anyone had seen me, my eyes would have looked like they were going to pop right out of my head I was so surprised. The grouse I had experience with in the Midwest barely held for points and were gone in a flash.
When I arose fully over the hill and neared Star, the grouse must have figured that he was now outnumbered and it was time to go. He flew almost straight up and it was about as easy of a shot on a ruffed grouse as I've ever had.
The way I came upon her point and the gorgeous russet colored grouse against the snowy backdrop was enough to secure the memory. However, that point was also the first domino in a succession which made for a Hall of Fame hunt for me. Here is "the rest of the story", as they say: the bird dropped at my shot, falling down the hillside close to a big Ponderosa Pine that had shielded the ground from most of the snow. Star raced down the hill to make the retrieve and slammed into another point. I made my way down much easier than up, half thinking that she was pointing the dead bird. Ten yards from her I learned that it was not the dead bird, as a ruff rocketed skyward. The dark gray phase bird fell at my shot and almost landed on another grouse, causing it to flush. That bird flew horizontally toward a couple of berry bushes and I knocked it down. Star saw that action and darted over to get that dead bird, but slammed to a point after only a few yards. I had already broken my over and under to reload, and quickly completed the act. At the closing of the action, a fourth and a fifth bird flushed. The one I tracked cork-screwed around the big old pine tree and it took me two shots to bring it down. So I was limited out in about 5 minutes of hunting, and still had another dog that hadn't even been out yet. As I went to help Star retrieve the birds, I flushed yet another that flew back up and over the rim of the plateau. A memorable point, and memorable hunt for sure.
SOMETIMES IT'S THE TOUGH ONES
Some birds are difficult for dogs to get pointed. In eastern Idaho the sharp tail season, when I was there, was fairly late compared to sharp tail season in other states. They weren't impossible to kill, if you hunted them when they hung out in the sage brush. But getting solid points on them was unusual to say the least. By the time season opened the young were no longer young and the birds were far from their breeding grounds, often gathered into large groups. That meant lots of beady little Tympanuchus eyes to see the dog coming and very little tolerance of a canine getting close enough for even a choke bored nose to point.
Bubba, the tri-colored Setter that I introduced before had been frustrated by the touchy birds on a number of occasions. He always took it personally, I think he felt guilty, when the birds would get up wild 80 to 100 yards out ahead of him. I took it personally because in the rolling grasslands bordered and often bisected by sage brush, the birds didn't just fly, they flew AWAY. Like they would go miles. I was accustomed to bobwhites that would fly maybe a football field and scatter down, or woodcock that sometimes flew only half that if the cover was thick enough. Sharpies flew over not the next ridge but the one after that. Then they set their wings and coasted til you just couldn't see them anymore. To add insult to injury, they chuckled at you as they made good on their departure.
The morning in question Bubba and I got out to the Walk-In hunting area east of Idaho Falls about an hour after sunrise. I think it was one of the government holidays in the fall, and I was alone and had the place to myself. We were in the rolling terrain common in those foothills and the cover we would attack was native grasses with pockets of alfalfa that I presumed to be leftover from a time when it had been a hayfield for the land owner. The sharp tails seemed to like the little ridge tops that had a supply of the green and leafy alfalfa. If the cover wasn't too tall they could see you, or the dog, coming from a long way off.
Bubba and I snuck up the east side of a ridge we knew the sharp tailed scoundrels liked to eat breakfast, as the morning sun followed our ascent. As we crested the ridge Bubba instantly got birdy and started quartering back and forth, tail cracking back and forth and his inhaling snuffles audible from several yards away. Soon the quartering morphed into tracking as he followed his nose into some taller weeds that were more open underneath. Knowing the reputation of the ill-mannered quarry, I tried to stay close to him to prepare for a wild flush, hoping it would be in range. When he started pointing, then moving I hoped we were close. Twice he held long enough that I got to him and started to flush before he lost intensity and flagged his tail to let me know the bird wasn't there. On the gradual downhill slope he became much more deliberate, the look in his eyes was dead serious and he slowed to a snail's pace. I stayed ready but lagged back, wanting to let this be his show, and to stay out of his way.
He briefly pointed once more, then eased ahead another 5 yards very slowly. He didn't slam into the point but rather eased into it like a locomotive comes to a stop. This time, he puffed his chest out and tipped his nose up just a touch. I didn't know if he had them, but I had no doubt that he thought he did. I eased past him, poised for the flush, trying to focus 10 or even 20 yards ahead. Five yards past him I glanced back - still pointing. Ten yards, glance back - still pointing. At 15 yards I started having my doubts, Bubba had none. At 20 yards past Bubba I contemplated going back to flush more thoroughly or relocate him, but decided to press on. At 25 yards beyond my trusty companion, a lone sharp tail got up another 10 yards ahead. Luckily I had my 20 gauge Remington 870 pump that day. The bird quartered to the right and I rushed my first shot and missed. The second shot drew a few feathers, but I needed the third shot to put him down solidly.
Bubba's retrieve seemed a bit prideful and I interpreted the sideways glance upon delivery as his saying "you almost screwed that up". Maybe I read into it, but I'm confident that we were both glad I was finally able to bring that bird down. Bubba's been gone a while now, but I'll never forget his assault on sharp tail ridge that day.
YOU'RE NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE - BUT WISH YOU WERE
While living in Idaho I had the great fortune to become friends with my buddy Jon. As with most of the people that tolerate me enough for me to consider them friends, I receive far more than I give in my friendship with him. The good Lord sure shined on me the day I met Jon.
Jon is from Kansas and his family has farmed there for many years. He also happens to come from a family of bird hunters. After bird hunting together in Idaho for a couple years, Jon invited me to Kansas for quail and pheasant hunting and lucky for me a trip there became an annual occurrence.
A few years later we had both left Idaho, Jon back to his home state of Kansas and I was living down in Georgia. I had a young female Setter that I was bringing along and the trip to hunt Kansas that year came at a great time for the Setter I called Katie.
On the first day Katie started learning right away. We hunted cut milo fields where the stubble was taller that Katie and held birds just about anywhere. Katie had a find on a rooster pheasant that probably would have given her the slip but that she had just happened to cut into the field at a place that cut him off from the bulk of the field. Getting that bird seemed to bolster her confidence greatly.
The second day she was hunting hard, flying around like the successful field trial dog that she eventually became. Jon, his dad, and I started the day at a farm that is bisected by a road. Property on one side is a small weedy valley that was once a pasture and was bordered by a cut milo field. The other side of the road has an old homestead surrounded by a picked milo field on three sides and on the fourth is a larger weedy and wooded valley/creek bottom. We almost always find a covey of quail on one side of the road or the other.
We had started on the pasture side, not found anything there, then crossed the road to the milo that surrounded the old homestead. We hoped to find the quail feeding or maybe stumble across one of the gaudy rooster pheasants that frequented the field as well. We worked the field, Jon and his dad with their Setter Sam, who was from one of my previous breedings, along with Katie and I. Katie ran up ahead and disappeared near the old homestead. When she didn't circle back soon I told Jon that I as going over to have a look for her.
As I came closer I could see Katie posed like a statue. She stood with her head gel high and her tail stiff and straight with its feathers rippling in the strong Kansas breeze. Fifteen yards ahead of her was a briar patch under and around some cedar trees that had been planted by a generation long gone. On the other side of the cedars was the cut milo. Katie looked so intense, so proud. I was so enthralled with how Katie looked as I came toward her from the side, that I was almost completely taken off guard by the covey blasting into the Kansas wind and riding it right over Katie's head. Part of the surprise was also attributable to the fact that I was a fair distance from them when they got up. My second shot knocked one down, and I was just happy to have not wasted Katie's beautiful find.
IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO
Thanksgiving week in 2010 found me meeting my new wife at my parent's old farm in Indiana. I came there straight from the National Amateur Grouse Championship that had been held near Marienville, Pennsylvania, where Katie had just taken the Runner-Up. I had Katie and our male named Charlie with me. I had picked up stocky little orange and white Charlie in Pennsylvania. He had won the Michigan Woodcock Championship that fall with pro Scott Forman handling him and after I ran him in the Amateur I was taking him back south with me for some trials down there.
Nothing felt more like HOME than Thanksgiving time at the house and farm where I grew up. My sons and I would deer hunt, rabbit hunt and sometimes we'd turn loose some pheasants and let the dogs have fun. Our quail had taken a horrendous beating in the late 70s with a blizzard that virtually wiped them out. But by the late '90s we'd see some here and there and occasionally on the farm. I think there has only been 3 times that I can actually remember successfully hunting them there.
One of those times was the fall of 2010. After I arrived at the farm, we bought some pen raised birds to let Katie and Charlie have some fun with, both of them having earned it with big field trial wins. The farm was a typical mix of Indiana habitat, slightly rolling mixture of open fields and hardwoods. By that time all the leaves were off the trees and the copper colored big and little bluestem in the fields had started to fade just a bit from its early fall brilliance. My dad had enrolled the fields in CRP back in the early 90s and encouraged the growth of the native grasses. He also planted food plots with the county extension office's concurrence and with the advice from a Department of Natural Resources biologist. He rotated between corn, sorghum and soybeans in the 1/2 acre to 2 acre plots.
My wife and I had worked the dogs on pen raised birds in a field close to the house. When we were done I decided to take them back to what we called the West Field to see if we just might get lucky and see a covey of wild bobs. It was truly a long shot, but I figured a little more exercise would be good for them. We had soybeans in the food plot in the West Field that year and quail seem to really like those blanched-yellowish little beans.
Katie and Charlie had gotten ahead of us a bit and had gone over a little rise to where the food plot was. We hadn't seen them in a few minutes and with the field not being very big, I started to wonder where they had gotten to. I really didn't think that finding quail was very likely at all. But as I topped the rise, to my great surprise I saw Charlie on point chest deep in the bean stalks that were darkened by weather and devoid of all accessories save for scant pods that had yet to be broken or eaten by the burgeoning deer population. My steps quickened and as I cleared more of the hill, I realized that Charlie was actually backing Katie who was frozen tall, eyes and nostrils bulging and focussed in the direction of several big clumps of foxtails with the tails swishing gently in the light breeze. The two of them were so intense, so locked on, it was post-card perfect.
At the flush, I saw it was a nice sized covey, maybe 20 birds. One of the first birds to get up was an easy straight away and it was mine in a puff of feathers. The bulk of the covey headed toward the woods to my right and I caught up with one in a that group, brining it down before it made the woods. Even though I was shooting my 870, I stopped shooting then. Katie got the first bird. Charlie went past the second and into the edge of the woods. I walked to where my second bird had fallen in the still green fescue of the lane around the field edge. As I picked up the bird Charlie came trotting out to me with a third bird in his mouth. I almost felt a little guilty for taking three of the birds. Not because it would harm the sizable covey, but because I so rarely got to see them there.
I won't soon forget that point, that flush, that day. A bit bittersweet, because even as I write this, my parents are in the process of selling the farm that's been home for almost all my life.
ONE FOR THE WIN
I was a bird hunter for about 30 years before I got into field trials. Throughout those years I had several friends and acquaintances try and talk me into running in field trials and I repeatedly stated that I was just a hunter. But in the last 11 years or so I have come to be involved in trialing. While this is not a discussion of the merits and pitfalls of trials, the two main reasons I got involved and continue to trial are: to allow my dogs to do what they love more than just the brief period of wild bird hunting season and to have a relatively objective way to validate my breeding.
In the field trial realm, my dogs have competed in many different venues. One such dog is a tri-colored Setter male named Hawk that I co-own with one of my sons. Hawk has been with a few different handlers but most of his career was spent under the whistle of Jeanette Tracy. A couple years ago he was having a pretty good year, with the capstone being a win of the Northeastern Shooting Dog Championship. In the colder months the circuit comes south and Hawk was set to run in the Bobby Fox Shooting Dog Classic held at Cedar Town, Georgia.
I was fortunate to be able to attend the trial as it is not too far from where I was living. There was a pretty big entry, 52 dogs if I remember correctly. Jeanette had Hawk ready and luckily for me she totes a client horse around for us clients who are horse challenged. The horse I rode, and very much prefer to ride, is a fairly short dapple gray Tennessee Walker named Elvis.
It was cold that morning, at least much colder than Georgia can be even in the "winter". The saddle was creaky and stiff and old Elvis pranced spryly as we followed Jeanette toward the line. Hawk was up early on in the trial and he made good use of the cool weather. In fairly short order he had accumulated four solid finds. He had been reaching a bit farther with each cast, looking stronger and stronger. It became apparent that he was making a serious bid to get in the money. And then he ranged forward and out of sight and was gone long enough to get me worried. Jeanette sent her scout Dillon to the left up a big hill so he could gain a good vantage and maybe spot Hawk. Riding in the gallery, but not far behind the judges, I was elated to hear Dillon's faint cry of "POINT!" Jeanette and Hawk's judge charged their horses up the steep incline, Elvis and I followed directly if not quite hot on their heels. But Elvis got me there in time to see Jeanette stepping out of her stirrups and Hawk buried in deep in a briar patch, head to the right and tail poker straight, a beautiful sight that brought a wave of relief.
I don't think I've ever been more happy to see a point. Dillon found him standing way up on the hill at just the right time. The way that trials go, the judges need to see the dogs every so often, and if they aren't seen, then it can count against them or even get them disqualified. Hawk being found on point not only prevented him from looking bad, but showed a far reaching and successful quest to find birds. Hawk went on to have two more finds in his brace and was ultimately awarded first place. Not only did that find essentially win the trial for him, that placement helped propel Hawk to winning the very prestigious Elwin G. Smith Setter Shooting Dog Award for that year. That award is given to the "best" English Setter shooting dog based on number of points earned by field trial placements. As an English Setter enthusiast, that award meant a great deal to me.
Those are some of my most memorable points from years of bird dogs. Relating these high points of my bird dog life has stirred memories of other points, other hunts, other birds and other people; hunts that happened far away in distant mountains or far away in a time long gone. I hope reading this has done the same for you. And there are more memories to be made, hunting season isn't that far away and there's a litter of Setter pups that I look forward to bringing into the life.
