Last year, while packing up after a rather thin week of bird shooting, I told my guide who was helping me get things together that I didn't need a letter from him telling me that "just after you left, the birds really started to come in..." I already had more than my share of those. It always happened anyway, and was not any sort of surprise.
True to form, both the birds and the guide's letter arrived as predicted. But along with the tales of how filled my empty coverts were was one that interested me even more. The evening before the first hunt the men were sitting around getting acquainted with each other and the light chitchat was the typical "who do you know and where have you hunted," before it switched over to favorite guns and memorable dogs.
Now, as you know, you rarely hear much horn-blowing in these sessions. Once in a while a very special gun is uncased--a Purdey, a Parker, a fine L.C., or a Holland for the rest of us to admire. And every so often a dog is brought in and paraded around as being "better than fair." Most of us old hands know very well that too much talk about your ability with a shotgun or the precision casts and points that Patches is famous for have a decided way of coming back very quickly to haunt, and haunt heavily.
So it came as a bit of a surprise and a slightly unpleasant one to have one of the gentlemen launch into sumptuous detail about his superb ability to handle his matched pair of 20-bore Woodwards--an ability, he admitted, that might possibly be matched by the work for which his English setter was more than justly famous. He didn't hint, but he flatly stated that the two of them were virtually bird-taking machines; without fault, peerless and perfect.
The rest of the company was so submerged by this long and rather loud self-accolade that the evening was short by most standards of hunting men and it was obvious that the tone and subject had taken a lot of the edge off the group.
The next morning at breakfast there was more of the same. One of the legendary Woodwards was put together, the dog-of-dogs was unkennelled, and the great shot and his companion rather gingerly climbed into the guide's four-wheel-drive pickup. The tailor-made tweed shooting jacket was noted and discussed by the others as they left for their first morning hunt.
Some say it was two hours later, some say it was three, but in any event it was long before lunch when they came back. As the other hunters drifted in hours later they were greeted by a limit of birds hung up outside the cabin--four woodcock, five ruffed grouse. Nine empty 20-gauge shells were placed on the nails, one over each bird's head.
The story as I got it later was that this same scene, with an occasional extra empty (but never more than one) was repeated everyday for five days. His dog was as superb as he said it was; he never wasted a footstep, never false pointed, never needed more than a word of caution or directional command. Every bird was faultlessly retrieved to hand. What went on was simplicity itself: the dog would point; the man would walk in and flush the bird and shoot; the bird would fall and would be retrieved; the dog would be lightly praised and the scene would repeat itself. Never did they fail to come back, limited out, at least an hour before noon. Never was a shot refused because of difficulty or heavy cover, which accounts for the occasional second barrel.
The guide told me that he was the most incredible wingshot he ever hoped to see if he hunted for a thousand years and the dog was a perfect match. But the strange thing was the effect on the other hunters in the camp. On one hand it's hard to sit around every night and talk the usual "how did you do, how did it go" routines when one man made it all seem a little unreal, and on the other hand there was little to talk to him about when the evidence was right there stuck in front of your nose and didn't leave much room for storytelling and banter. After all, what do you joke about with a man who fires nine shells and has nine birds in two or three hours of hunting?
A couple of the men hinted rather heavily that they'd be grateful to join him one morning, but he always put that off by saying that he didn't believe in hunting his dog more than half a day and that he felt better in the woods if he didn't have to worry about where anyone else was. His afternoons were spent walking alone, reading, and once, after he'd needed two shots on a left crossing grouse, he had the guide throw clay targets with a hand trap for him for half an hour.
Let's leave this story here and think about it for a minute. It's really not much of a story, but more of it's true than made up. You can find a moral in it--something like perfection is dull, or lonely, but that's not the point of telling it either; you can settle for those if you like, but keep on for just a little bit longer.
What of those mortal creatures, real or fictional or half and half, who if they are shooters virtually always have some mysterious, but right, line drawn to the bird. What of the dogs' stolid workmen too blasÄ to ever run a curious nose through a rabbit story or roll a questioning eye at white flag and a warm deer bed, or run up the odd bird every so often just for the hell of it?
I believe that there are parameters to our sport that are a little different than the foul lines of a baseball diamond, the out-of-bounds on a golf course, or the height of a tennis net. The rules of bird hunting are many and unwritten; good and safe conduct is unwavering, but there are rules that are as elastic as we are willing to make them in the personal day-to-day idea of having a good and interesting time. Long ago I didn't draw too fine a line between the heaviness of a game bag and the weight of my conscience. But I no longer go afield to feed myself or to prove my ability with a shotgun or my mastery over a dog. I go with an ever increasing curiosity, a wider sense of humor, and in search of a changing sense of fulfillment that more levelheaded, rules-minded people would find perhaps foolish, childish, or perverse. I am interested in trifling adventures--not scores, comparisons, numbers in stopwatches, or in tape measures.
The freedom that I look for in the field starts right there and goes on to offer me what I can make of a day that will leave me with something more than a carcass or the most transient satisfaction of making a chancy shot in some heavy alders.
I know now that I haven't laughed enough--at myself. I haven't climbed enough hills just to see what's on the other side...or remembered to make a wish on every evening star. I wish I didn't know how so many stories ended that started out with that magic "Once upon a time..."
There was a period when I found the trail that led to home with things like maps and compasses. That is a skill. Now, come evening, I'm beginning to be able to smell the paths I have to take on the darkening wind. I'd like to think that this is the coming of knowledge.
This story originally appeared in Tears & Laughter by Gene Hill. Copyright (c) 1981 Gene Hill. All rights reserved.