Younger

Just got home from a great week hunting chukar in Oregon. We were blessed with mostly good weather, and my shooting actually seemed to get better. Imagine that. To be honest, I’d switched from the #7 steel Rio shells (1-1/8 ounce, 1350 fps) that were sent to me in error last season (I’d ordered #6, but they wouldn’t take them back) to some lighter target #6 steel loads (1 ounce, 1365 fps) I’d brought as backups. Who knows? Biorhythms? Planetary alignment? Jerky? Payday bars? A penchant for Joni Mitchell?

The revelation of the week, for me, came accidentally. Peat, who’s now nearing 10, is wearing out and it breaks my heart. He was limping badly from some abrasions on his pads and also the arthritis or tendonitis that has crept up on him the past few seasons after tough hunts. To call this an accident is dishonest, but I’m still gonna call it that. I was hoping to take Peat for a fourth straight hunt, seeing as it would have been our last day on this trip. But he wasn’t up for it. He didn’t even get off the bed in the camper when I walked out the door with Bloom. Leslie had very kindly encouraged me to go alone with the younger dog. Her dog.

I didn’t have high hopes for the hunt. I’d never hunted alone with Bloom, who’ll be 4 next March. His nose has always seemed to be almost too sensitive, leading — we’ve theorized — to lots of false pointing. But he’s also found us a ton of birds. Peat, whose favorite thing in the world has always been backing another pointing dog, and, as Angus did with Peat in his early days, seems to have gotten comfortable letting the younger dog do the most work. My log shows Peat barely outrunning Bloom their first season together, then Bloom besting Peat by about a mile or two per hunt, and this season so far (after 17 hunts) Bloom is outrunning Peat by 3 or 4 miles. Bloom is an athlete, a freight train of uncut and solid muscle, and runs 4 to 5 times what we hike. Peat’s a finesse hunter, and has always “only” averaged about 3 times our mileage. The upshot of the discrepancy in the ground each dog covers is that I’d never really paid careful attention to how Bloom hunted, only noticing that he covered much more ground than Peat did. Still, when Peat points it’s a sure thing. I’d gotten used to 50-50-ing Bloom’s points, and focusing mostly on Peat.

But hunting alone with Bloom the other day let me see him work more clearly. Before too long, it had become obvious how utterly methodical he was. He’d almost intuit the path I moved along, and would run ovals apexing at almost exactly 200 yards in front of me, then circle around just behind me and start another oval. He did this for 3 straight hours, deviating only when chukar scent pulled him “off” course. Which happened five times, resulting in four shots and three bagged birds. My “best” hunt (as far as numbers go) this season.

Bloom seemed to appreciate the simplicity of our hunt, too. He didn’t have two hunters and another more experienced dog to contend with. It was reassuring, in a bittersweet way. It was almost as if we both responded to being able to focus better on the task at hand, where the sum of the affair was greater than its parts. How sweet. But the bitter part remains. Anyone who’s had multiple dogs knows this game: you favor a certain dog and then he or she starts showing the inevitable decline that comes with age. The cloud moves in. I’m at the point where I can, finally, hunt more consecutive days than Peat can, but I know it won’t last long, both because of my age (And if no other misery yet age?) and because of his. We look for things that might mitigate this sadness, and a younger dog improving, or just being able to appreciate him without comparing him to an older, more beloved beast, certainly doesn’t hurt.

I’m glad Leslie encouraged me to take her pup out, and that she sacrificed a gorgeous late October day (the day before her birthday no less!) to stay at camp with Peat.