Anatomy of a slump

I am in a slump. A slump of grand porportions. I haven't seen a wild game bird in over two weeks. Worse yet, it is November 13th and I have yet to shoot a wild bird. My bird hunting journal tells me I've been 12 times this season to hunt wild birds and have nothing to show for it. I stand to lose what little credibility I have as a dedicated upland bird hunter.

The season started out well enough. We chased woodcock in late September and early October. We never got into the flights like we did last season, but put them up in one's and two's. Not all of them presented shots, and the ones that did were cleanly missed. I spent an absolutely lovely day in grouse country, but only put up one woodcock that my parnter missed. Pheasant season opened in mid-October. Conditions were far from ideal with many warm, dry days. Nonetheless, at first we were getting into birds, but never more than two on a given day. I can recall exactly three birds that were put up over solids points that offered reasonable shots. Missed them all. Now, we can't seem find birds anywhere, despite a record number of boots-on-the-ground hours.

I think part of the slump is the natural ebb and flow of bird season. In October, the birds are relatively naive and sometimes offer easier shooting. By November, the dumb ones are gone and the hard scrabble survivors are the only ones left. The weather has been mild, so the cover is still in excellent shape. Whit has pointed many a bird that has just run from us through acres of unbroken cover. When winter comes, the birds will concnetrate in the thicker cover and perhaps offer us better opportunities. Now, the odds are clearly tipped in their favor.

I've now been a serious upland hunter for about the past 6 years. I recognize there are plenty of guys (and gals) out there with way more experience than me. Regardless, I've been doing this long enough to learn a thing or two. I spent a lot of time at the gun club this past summer working on my shooting technique. By August, I was shooting much more consistently. My dog is 8 years old and true professional. I don't need to tell her what to do, I just let her loose and follow. I understand the habits of game birds, am knowledgeable of their habitat and understand how to use cover and wind to my advantage. Doesn't seem to be helping me out of the slump.

I told my wife I was going to sell all my guns and pick up a new hobby. She knew I was not serious. The affliction still burns. We'll be out again in two days. Maybe day number 13 will be the lucky one.

Whit and how she got here

A guy could stand to do a lot worse with his first birddog. The upland bird hunting bug bit me hard in my final year of specialty training. Shortly thereafter, we moved to Milwaukee. We had a very nice, 1920's era home, but it was under 1400 sq. feet and had a yard like a postage stamp. We also had a brand new baby and 70 pound lab-mix from the humane society. And I was just starting my career, needed to pass my boards and figure out the academic aspect of my career. My initial pleas to bring home a birddog fell on deaf ears.

After a while, my wife relented. She gave me some criteria, which if met, would mean I could get another dog. First, she was only interested in a Weimaraner. I had wanted a German Shorthair Pointer given their good looks and "out the box" hunting abilities. My wife was not keen on the breed. Noted author Tom Davis referred to Weimaraners as that are credible hunters as "kind of like bigfoot; I've heard of them but never seen one". She only wanted a female. She found the marking behavior of males annoying. Additionally, the dog needed to be at least two years old and professionally trained. Perhaps this part was wise. I didn't know the first thing about training a birddog and certainly didn't have an abundance of time to learn how.

I set about my search. This was in 2004. Many breeders did not have websites at that point. In fact, there are still some prominent breeders without websites. Googling "hunting weimaraners" didn't yield much useful information. I browsed the back of hunting magazines, and found small add for a breeder of Weimaraners from hunting stock. I emailed the breeder and told him what I was looking for: a two-year old or older, started female Weimaraner. Predictably, he emailed back something to the effect of "sorry, we have nothing of the sort". And then, the improbable happened. He emailed me back less than an hour later. The email was brief; "call me. I might have a dog for you".

That afternoon, one of his clients returned a two-year old female Weimaraner that had quite a bit of professional training. Seems he had to move out of state unexpectedly and could not accommodate a dog. The price was fair, and the dog checked all the boxes. My wife admitted that she thought she sent me on an impossible mission, but conceded that I had met the challenge. Now, I just needed to figure out how to make time to drive the 7 hours to the breeder in order to evaluate the dog. I sent a deposit and started looking for dates to make the drive.

Things then got even better. The breeder was driving to Madison, Wisconsin to buy some goats. Seems dogs were not the only animals he was breeding on his farm. He offered to let me look at the dog in Madison, which was only 90 minutes away. Deal.

We set out on snowy night in February to meet to the breeder and the dog. We walked into their hotel room and were greeter by an energetic, friendly Weim, not the "aloof" attitude they are often said to possess. My wife set down the car seat with our infant daughter snuggled inside. Whit gently sniffed her and then curled up beside the carrier. Sold.

I brought Whit out to the parking lot and opened the back glass on our small SUV. Whit leaped in, easily clearing the tail gate which was still in the upright position. Not everything went smoothly at first. Whit was very dominant with other dogs. She would mount our 6 year-old lab mix daily, just to show him who is the boss. She would not start fights with other dogs, but she was for damn sure not going to back down. I tried taking her on runs with me, but they did little to tire her. The only thing that seemed calm her was off-leash running.

In March, I had my first opportunity to take her hunting. The wild bird season had been closed since December, so my only choice was a game farm. I had no idea what she would do. I let her loose for the first time, not knowing if she would run off, hunt, point or do anything that a birddog is supposed to do. I was overwhelmed with joy when she went on point a few minutes later. I flushed the pheasant and shot it cleanly. She was on it moments and retrieved it to hand. Before I could tuck it in my game pouch, she was off hunting again. I couldn't believe my luck.

Whit and I have been partners now for over 6 years. She's an old pro now. She's not perfect, but we have a good working relationship. I forgive her her faults, and she mostly forgives me mine (I do get protests if I my shooting gets too poor). Given the circumstances under which I found her, I can't ask for much more.

The spot

It's embarrassing, really. I have a pretty good hunting spot for pheasants. It's a short drive from my home. Unlike a lot places where you hunt pheasants, it's pretty to look at. And it holds a lot of birds. This place, however, gets pounded. It is hunted hard. I'll pull in the turn off at 10 AM on Wednesday and there will often be two or three other trucks there. I think to myself "who gets to go bird hunting at 10 AM on a Wednesday?", then I remind myself that I am one of those people.

Anyway, most of the hunters leave the lot and walk on the trail into the fields. To the left of the trail, there is a vast expanse of grasses and mixed cover. Most guys focus their efforts there. To the right of the trail, there is a swamp. Nobody goes to the swamp. Except me. And the roosters. In fact, nearly every time we've hunted the swamp, we've put up a rooster. It's no more than 100 yards from the parking area and 15 or 20 yards from the main trail. It is uncanny how often this area produces birds. They are almost always in the same spot, a thick patch of "cover within the cover". Now here's the real embarrassing part: I've never hit one of these swamp roosters. It's almost like I don't believe there will actually be one there, again. The scenario that unfolds reminds of the movie "Groundhog's Day": Whit gets birdy and then goes on point. I start to move in, doubting there could actually be another rooster there, that a bunch of other guys and dogs walked by, only a few yards from the trail. Then the thing flushes, startles me and I miss like a rank amateur. For all I know, it could be the same rooster every time, a mythic swamp rooster, capable of dodging a hot load of #6 shot. On the other hand, I could just be a mediocre wingshooter. The score so far this season is swamp rooster 2, Mike zero. Last season I think I went 0-4 against the swamp rooster. If this keeps up, I might start rooting for the bird.

My wife mentioned to one of her girlfriends that I was out bird hunting on a recent morning. Her friend responded, "Oh, my ex-husband used to do that from time to time. I never understood why he would want to get up at the crack of dawn and then go lay in a field, hoping for some birds to fly by". My wife responded, "that's not how Mike does it. The way he hunts birds is more like practicing an art form". I'll keep her.

Reunion

I've known Matt for a pretty long time. We first met in kindergarten and became fast friends. My family moved to the other side of town the following year. Imagine my surprise, when as a newly minted second grader the following year, the new kid in the class was my old friend Matt. His parents had moved within bicycling distance of our new neighborhood. From that point on, we were just about inseparable. We did a lot of typical kid stuff, but one of our favorite activities was "playing guns". There was an empty woodlot near his house where we built bunkers, machine gun nests and staged juvenille military campaigns.

Matt will be the first one to tell you that things did not go well during his adolescence. At first, I tried to be the supportive best friend, but as his troubles grew deeper, we grew further apart. By our early 20's we had lost touch with each other entirely.

Nearly a decade and a half later, we were re-connected by the social networking phenomenon. At first, I was just relieved to learned that after many troubled years, Matt had landed on his feet. Turns out he got pretty good at landing on his feet. In the depth of his troubles, Matt enlisted in the Army. He served in the airborne infantry, and after several years, left honorably, a changed man. He married a young woman that first caught his eye in high school. He held down a respectable job and was close to finishing his college degree.

Improbably, our paths crossed again. Matt took a new job, hoping to relocate closer to family. He ended up in Madison, Wisconsin, less than thirty minutes from me. We met for coffee a couple times after he moved. After so long, I think we both wanted to test the waters and approached things cautiously. Perhaps we needn't have. After all that time, hurt on both sides, we picked we up where we left off.

Matt and I both shared a love of the outdoors as kids, and in the pre-political correctness era, a boyish fascination with guns. Turns out guns would end up playing a substantial role in our lives, Matt as a serviceman and now sport shooter, and me as broken birdhunting addict.

I invited Matt to come with me pheasant hunting. I knew he wouldn't be all that interested in hunting, but thought he might enjoy the hike. I took him to one of my favorite spots. Unlike most terrain that holds pheasants, it is hilly an pleasant to look at. This time of year, much of the ground cover turns a golden hue, framed by the tree-lined hills, which were nearing their peak colors. If anything, we'd have a nice hike on a gorgeous fall day.

After busting cover for over an hour with nothing to show for it, I decided to take a little break and actually walk along an established trail. I was pleased with the way my dog Whit was quatering, covering the edges of the trail. Regardless, I think even the most dedicated birddogger starts to lose a little faith in the pup if you aren't finding any birds. It was about that time that Whit found religion and got on a bird. There was a small game trail off the main thoroughfare that caught her interest. She pointed briefly, and then began a low, cat-like crawl. Each footstep seemed to fall more deliberately than the last, until she finally froze into a point. It was clear that the bird was on the move, as this sequence repeated itself several times. We made our way down the game trail, a jaunt of about 75 yards. The trail then came to a small clearing. Several things tend to happen at clearings like this. Sometimes, the bird will loose its nerve and flush. That didn't happend. Other times, they will hunker down at the end of the cover, which can make for some nice shooting. Often, they just keep running. Thankfuly, this bird took the second best option: it ran across the clearing and into the closest patch of thick cover, where it sat. It wasn't fooling Whit. She made right for the tangle and went on point. The bird had had enough and flushed, offering a relatively easy quatering-to-the-right shot. I missed cleanly with both barrels. We watched it fly, Matt at a slightly better vantage point than I. We both lost track of the bird as it dipped below a small rise. We followed it and were greeted by acres upon acres of unbroken, chest high cover. I knew the bird was as good as gone, but we tried anyway. We never found any sign of the bird.

After many years, Matt and I were forging a new bond, with similar constituents to when we were kids: guns and the outdoors. I'm glad to have my oldest friend back.

The old and new

The thing about hunting is that you are almost always looking for new places to do it. Today, I hunted the "home covert", my woodcock hot spot from last year. We put up two birds, only one of which had to worry about dodging my shot string, which it did nicely. Coverts that are golden one year my be barren the next. That's why most the time I drive anywhere I am also scouting for land to hunt.

After picking the through the home covert, I went on to explore an area I scouted last spring. After high-stepping through marsh grass, loosing a boot in a sink a hole and taking a tumble in a mud wallow, I once again began to question why I do this sort of thing. There were no birds to speak of and just a lot of misery for me and the dog.

Yesterday, I hunted an entirely new area with a new friend. After about 3 hours of boots on the ground, we put up exactly one woodcock. At least I don't have to take credit for the miss. We still drove home happy. I spent the day feeling like I was walking through one of those paintings that idealizes hunting in the fall. It was ideal, except for the no birds in the bag part.

Timing is everything

September 29th. The date had been on my calendar for a while. It would be the first day I would try to hunt woodcock this year and the official start of my upland hunting season.

It was about 42 degrees out when I woke up, with a light frost and fog heavy in the air. Just about perfect weather for hunting. Well, then I helped get the kids off to school and loaded the gear to go. I hit the woods at about 8:30 AM. The frost was gone, the sun was up and the fog burned off. It was a hell of nice morning, but far from ideal hunting conditions. The window of really excellent weather only lasted about 90 minutes.

I was hunting the home covert today, where I had quite a bit of luck during the flights last year and moved some resident birds outside of the peak times. Being September, the undergrowth was still quite thick. More than once the dog and I just about bounced off impossibly thick tangles that seemed to say "you shall not pass!".

Whit had one solid point, but it was a non-productive. I don't doubt there was bird there, was being the appropriate form of the verb. I think my eagerness to get the season going we hunted less-than-ideal cover too early in the season under too warm conditions. We'll let it rest for a couple weeks and try again.