My
son, Phil, and the old man with a full bag thanks to the
little
dog with short legs.
"Where do we stand now," said Skip.
"That last bird Brandy pointed was number five,"
replied Keeper. Keeper is the owner/operator of a game bird farm.
"You've picked up all those I put out along the road and down along the
creek bottom. We must have walked over the first bird. But
these birds sat tight today. You've got 5 out of the 8 I planted."
We were standing together having traversed and
criss-crossed the full 100 acres of sorghum, weeds and grass - my son,
Phil, my niece's husband, Skip and his friend, Joe along with his son,
Mike, and my dog, Sneakers, a 13-inch black and white
beagle/border-cross with three years experience flushing
pheasant. We'd been out two and a half hours. Keeper had
become concerned an hour into the hunt and fetched his young German
pointer, Brandy. Claimed the birds were sitting too tight.
On a previous hunt, he had remarked on how difficult it must be for my
small dog with the short legs to work in the tall stuff. Hell,
when you're built a couple of inches off the ground the "tall stuff" is
a stroll in the park. You don't go over it, you 'tunnel'.
Phil lives in New Jersey, doesn't have a
Pennsylvania license and had jumped at the chance to do some hunting
for a small fee while home for the Thanksgiving holiday. This was
Skip's second paid hunt. Joe was there to accompany his teenage
son who was just learning how to wing shoot.
Phil had done well - three birds. Skip bagged
one and Mike had scored on a nice cock bird. I had had some
shots, but couldn't claim any hits. As usual, I was as interested
in how Sneakers was performing as in the hunt itself. The two of
us already had over a dozen pheasant from stocked game lands in the
freezer, so if we came up empty it wouldn't be the end of world.
For the season, I figured he had put a bird up for me every half hour
on average. Were I a better shot there might be as many as two
dozen or more in the freezer. I was also curious about the
trained pointer the Keeper had abruptly put into our group.
Sneakers and I normally hunt solo. Sneakers had put up three birds
before Brandy joined the hunt.
Our last swing brought us more or less back to our
original starting point. All five hunters, the Keeper, and the
two dogs had been over this ground twice. I could see that Keeper
was hoping we'd call it a day.
I hadn't quite made up my mind about the use of the
Keeper's dog. True, he was big, strong, and could cover a lot of
ground as opposed to Sneakers who tends to work close, keeping pace
with me, and worrying a scent to death. And for a group hunt,
perhaps the big dog is more desirable. Especially when the hunt is by
the clock as well as the number of birds.
But my experience with Sneakers was that of careful,
steady tracking. If a bird is on the ground, Sneakers invariably
finds it. And chases it down. I remembered the previous
season when I lifted on a nice cock bird only to see Sneakers in the
bead hanging onto the cock's tail! That was my first pheasant
without firing a shot. He had proven himself many times by
digging out birds buried in grass or weed. With the right wind he
could scent a bird up to sixty yards away. He also has been good
at marking...we rarely leave a cripple in the field.
With the introduction of the second dog, the hunt had became
disjointed...Skip and Joe put their hopes on the ranging pointer,
Phil and I stayed with the plodding Sneakers.
And that's the way we arrived at this casual wrap-up
- Sneakers between Phil and myself, the rest arrayed around Keeper and
his big German pointer.
"It's up to you guys," Keeper was saying, "we can do
another swing up higher and maybe Brandy can locate the first bird."
I glanced at Phil, then down at Sneakers.
Suddenly Sneaker's tail shot out, whipsawed the
air. Nose down, he plunged into a clump of grass at Phil's feet.
"Hold on," I yelled to the group, then, "Get the
bird, Sneakers!"
No pointing nonsense here! Knowing that the
bird would explode within a fraction of a second, I checked my field of
fire. Sneaker's "yip" and the beating wings of the hen and shouts
of "bird" filled the air. I managed not to hit my son with the
first shot.
"Hit," Skip called out. The bird started his
tumble, three other shots were fired and the bird came down about fifty
yards away.
Several minutes later Joe and Mike were present when
Sneakers located the hen in the water of a small brook that flowed thru
the abandoned farm. Brandy was ranging well beyond the crash site
of the bird.
Eight birds planted, six bagged: Short-legged
dog = 4, long-legged dog = 2
