Sweet Melodies

When a group of beautifully arranged notes is blended with another group of on-pitch human voices, the result is a sweet melody. There are also some days when you and your dog are so much in tune that there’s not a single “clinker” to provide a note of dissonance to the sweet melody of your relationship. 

I’ve been fortunate to have more than a few of those days with my dogs through the years as they did what their breed was meant to do. Since I have Sporting breeds, these days of perfect harmony have always occurred during hunting seasons.

On one of those days on my hunting partner’s farm in central Nebraska, there was a light breeze that carried a late-October edge to it and made the yellow leaves drift down over me from aspens that flanked a pond. My six-month-old Chesapeake play-chased a few of the leaves to the pond’s edge with the inexhaustible energy of puppyhood but not quite brave enough or sure enough of his swimming skills in that strange pond to pursue them any farther.  

Sparky, my cantankerous, autocratic, queenly old Brittany, was content to snooze in the sun on the carpeted floor of the pickup bed, lazily lifting her head now and then to reach over and take a few laps of water from her bowl. 

The gin-like scent of juniper berries from the trees in a nearby grove permeated the fall air, a particularly appropriate smell in view of the fact that juniper-berry sauce is an excellent accompaniment for pheasant and quail that wind up as table fare. Across the pond, a flock of crows squabbled over the milo remaining in a field after the combine had removed Bill’s share of the grain. On the other side of the grassy field next to the pond, I could hear the faint whistle of a lonely bobwhite separated from its covey and looking for a friend while in the game pouch of my vest quite possibly were several of its covey mates.  

Sparky, savvy about the ways of puppies determined to garner a share of the credit for any harvested bird, had made certain that the area chosen for her nap was between the truck’s tailgate and a pair of pheasant roosters that she had found, pointed and ultimately retrieved earlier in the day. One of the birds had not fallen dead despite losing a considerable puff of feathers when the shot hit it. That bird had led the dog on a wild chase of nearly a quarter-mile before she finally ran it to ground and pulled it out from under an overhang of turf where flowing rainwater had created a sort of tunnel on an old furrow.  

By the pond, I was sitting on a decaying, moss-covered juniper stump with a pair of bobwhites alongside that about a half-hour earlier had been part of a strung-out covey at the head of the draw that led to the pond. I had taken another pair from the covey rise that occurred in two segments about two minutes apart. That was fortunate because I had missed a shot on the first covey rise before tumbling one bird, and I needed those few seconds the delayed second rise provided to reload the over/under shotgun I was carrying that day. 

Bill had also dropped a pair of birds from the covey. The remainder of the covey flew down the draw, so after the dog had retrieved all the birds we sat on a convenient log for a few minutes drinking water, eating a couple of candy bars and offering water along with some dog treats to Sparky while we waited for the remains of the covey to settle and begin to put out scent.  

When we returned to ambling down the draw, the dog disappeared from sight behind a juniper deadfall, and the gentle tinkling of the Swiss sheep bell on her collar fell silent. Seconds later, her collar’s locator beeper began putting out its far less pleasant sound, but one that had proven to be very necessary on several occasions when trying to find an orange and white dog immobile on point in a field of fall switchgrass.  

Good luck finding an orange-and-white dog amid the fall splendor.

As I walked up to the deadfall, I caught a glimpse of blaze orange from the dog’s collar. By bending down a bit, I could see her nostrils flaring as she crept almost imperceptibly nearer the deadfall. Then, her head shifted slightly, and she froze.  

I circled the edge of the deadfall, dried branches snapping under my boots, stopping now and then to check her position. When I was directly opposite her point, the quail, caught between my deliberate noise and the dog’s silent presence erupted from under the dead juniper. Dry needles scattered along the birds’ flight as they arrowed out low using the deadfall as cover until they were right in front of the dog. Then, in an eyeblink, they reversed direction, tumbling in the air like woodcock rather than bobwhites away from the dog and back toward me. 

Their attempt at escape and evasion nearly worked, because I pivoted too quickly and had to play catch-up with my swing, which caused me to miss with the top barrel. There was nothing evasive about the birds’ flight after the first shot, as it was all speed making for the juniper grove. But that was where my second barrel caught both birds in a perfect alignment to take them with one shot, and they hit the ground in a small shower of feathers. When I sent the dog for the retrieves and she placed the second bird in my hand, I could see Bill smiling. In his rich baritone he said, “That’s why we hunt with dogs.”

After we roused ourselves from the pond’s edge to resume the hunt and walked over to the truck, Sparky raised her head. In the corner of her mouth was a quail feather. I reached down to pluck it off, but Bill stopped me. 

 “Leave it,” he said. “It belongs where it is. Don’t disturb the magic.”  

All of the most glorious of these harmonious days have occurred during autumn hunts.

On another day of harmony, the birds were ducks and geese on a prairie slough in Alberta not far from Edmonton. I had waded out on a typically treacherous prairie pothole bottom to scatter a few decoys in the water. For a change, I had not lost a boot in the mud or stepped in a hole deep enough to send cascades of water over the top of my hip boots. 

Tony, my hunting partner, found a nice spot on the bank under a stunted tree behind some reeds. Like me, Tony couldn’t spend the entire fall hunting, much as both of us would have liked to. He had a real job not with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, where he held the rank of inspector. 

By traditional standards, the spot he picked was more a brush pile than a duck-hunting blind, but it was just fine for what was needed on that particular day. 

The farmer who owned the land said that the area had not been hunted, which is probably why, when I first glassed the slough, it was full of puddle ducks – mallards, gadwalls, widgeon, spoonbills, a few pintails that had missed the signal to head south and even a few green-wing teal. There were also some small – by prairie province measures, anyway – flocks of white-fronted, snow and Ross geese on the pond. The birds were all in a relaxed pose, having found security and seclusion on this isolated slough.

The slough was full of puddle ducks – including the widgeon pictured here.

On this particular day, I was seeking roughly the same sort of seclusion as the ducks and geese where I could relax and forget the tension-filled phone calls I had received during the previous two days and evenings from my editor when he informed me that, among other things, a U.S. marshal had stopped by the magazine’s office bearing subpoenas demanding that my reporter partner and I appear before a federal grand jury investigating people who were an integral part of a story we’d done that had been published six months earlier.  

When I asked my editor if he had told the marshals where I was, he said, “Yeah, I didn’t really have much choice in the matter. But all I told them was that you were hunting somewhere in Canada, and Lon was also out of the country on a trip to his ancestors’ home canton in Switzerland.” But he also said the date when we were supposed to appear was only a few days away, so he asked if I was going to return from the hunting trip in time. 

My initial reaction was, “Hell, no. In fact, I may stay here a week or two longer than I’d originally planned. If the government doesn’t like it, let them come across the border and try to find me.” However, after a chat with the magazine’s lawyers, obstinate defiance didn’t seem prudent, so I told my editor that I’d think about it. What I needed was a quiet, peaceful place with a warm Chesapeake, whose formal name, in a touch of irony, contained the words “chief justice,” snuggled next to me to do that thinking. The placid slough filled with cackling waterfowl provided a perfect setting to mull my options, limited though they were.

Although the birds had skedaddled the second Tony, the dog and I appeared on the hill overlooking the slough, they soon came drifting back in twos and threes. I shot a few birds, including a beautiful mature pintail drake already in mating plumage, just to keep the dog happy, but I mainly sat with Tony and Chief, beneath that sorry-looking, denuded tree, and watched the variety of puddle ducks that called that slough home come winging in and sit down. I even passed up an easy shot at a pair of Ross geese sporting colored neckbands.

Fortunately, Tony wasn’t quite so charitable, and he executed a perfect double. When the birds hit the water, my usually dignified hunting partner did a little dance of delight, and he was joined in the dance by my equally dignified dog as Tony again became a schoolboy on his first successful hunt and Chief again became an excited puppy for a few moments. 

I laughed at the two of them frolicking about as I called Chief’s name to send him to fetch the geese, which he did with much happy tail-wagging. Tony smiled and said, “Haven’t heard much of that from you these past two days, only a couple of half-hearted laughs at some gallows humor.”

It was true that I hadn’t exactly been filled with joy the previous two days. But, to prove that the threat from the department of justice hadn’t completely altered my personality, and since a dyed-in-the-wool goose hunter can only resist so much temptation, I did shoot a blue-phase snow goose later that morning that was banded but, sadly, only with a leg band, not the colored neck collar. 

For the most part, I spent the morning thinking of past hunts with Tony and George, another Mountie who was now a chief superintendent with the force back in Ottawa, soaking up the pleasure of the current one and mulling just a bit what lay ahead. I also spent a considerable amount of time with an arm draped around Chief, explaining to him why he had to spend so much time sitting and looking with no action. But he had hunted with me for several years, and if that’s what I wanted to do, well, it was okay with him.

I sat under the tree for a long time, staring at the gunmetal color of the water, the low white cloud bank on the western horizon with its promise of nasty weather in the very near future and the birds milling around the slough, already restless with their migratory urges. Finally, Tony quietly asked if I had decided whether to head home. 

 “Yeah,” I replied. “I can’t avoid the confrontation forever, so I might as well get it done.”

 “I’m really glad you came to that conclusion,” he said, “because I would not have enjoyed having to transport you to the border in handcuffs.” 

When I looked askance at his comment, he responded, “Hey, you have your duty and I have mine,” reminding me that although we were good friends and hunting partners, there was and always would be that thorny, antagonistic gap between our professions.

As I waded out to pick up the decoys, I knew that all too soon it would be time for the birds, the dog and I to pack up and go south – the birds to avoid the realities of the Canadian prairie’s winter, and me to deal with the realities of being an investigative reporter. But for those few hours on the slough, the birds, the marsh itself, Tony, the dog and I were in perfect harmony, and the music was sweet indeed.