Do you have a good retrieve story? I know there are some great ones out there. If you want to send your best story as a comment (please keep it under 500 words), I’ll publish the best one as a separate post (Leslie & I are the judges, and we’ll ask for a photo of you and your dog), and send the winner a copy of my new book, Chukar Culture: Memory, Dogs, Paradox.
The topic of retrieving, in fact, can be so stressful that humor is often forgotten. It shouldn’t be that way. Leslie just reminded me about the time I shot a chukar on Brownlee that we could not find. Three people and two dogs looked and looked, and finally gave up. As a last resort, we ended up looking for it along the cliffs when we were boating back to the ramp, and a friend of mine actually free-soloed up the cliff to check for feathers and found the bird! When he proudly brought the chukar back to me, we all noticed Angus sporting a wisp of arugula and a trace of mayonnaise on his lower lip, the last of my friend’s roast beef sandwich.
Years ago, when I was a kid and long before I began hunting, I loved Farley Mowat’s The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be. I think it was the opening of the book where he told the story of his dad’s dog who’d accompanied him downtown to a gun shop. Finding a nice side-by-side, the dad took it out on the sidewalk to see how it felt. Tracing an imaginary duck or goose, he said, “Bang!” The dog took off to who knows where, and his dad went back in the shop to haggle with the shopkeeper. A few minutes later, the dog ran into the shop with a taxidermied duck from a store down the street. At least that’s how I remember it.
Retrieving, and how well our dogs do (or don’t) do this, has been on my mind a lot in the first weeks of this new season. Bloom, for example, seemed to start off deciding he was no longer interested in retrieving; he’d be the first dog to a downed bird, pick it up, and drop it, sometimes several hundred yards down a steep hill, forcing me to lose all that elevation and get it myself. He did this on the first couple of hunts. I was dreading having to work with him to get him back on track. But before I had a chance to do anything, he shined on the next hunt, retrieving everything to hand. Since then he’s been perfect for some reason. Fingers crossed.
Bloom did so well, in fact, for a couple straight hunts that I thought Peat had decided it was much more fun to watch, like Peter Sellers in Being There. But then…
On three consecutive hunts (the last three hunts I’ve done), Peat found birds I winged hundreds of yards from where I saw them land. Each time, he hadn’t seen the bird fall because they’d busted in all directions, and — like a good shooter — he’d followed a single bird or two which happened to be birds I did not shoot at. I had to call him over to the area and hope he’d pick up the scent. In all of the cases, he went a direction much different than I thought the bird had gone. In all cases, he disappeared for at least ten minutes in dense brush. And each time he came trotting up the hill with the still-live bird softly clamped in his mouth. There is no way I would have found a single one of these birds. He’s saved me, three times now, from losing any birds this season. He’s 10-1/2 years old. I’ve raved about him before, but — as Angus did before him — Peat seems to get better every time we go out.
It’s good to be lucky.
Lucky, indeed.
Not what you’re looking for, but I’m feeling nostalgic …
My first griff wasn’t an inspiring pointer, but she was patient at finding a bird—not quite to the level of lifting every leaf, branch, or bit of scrub, and saying “not here,” before going on to the next, but close. Maybe because she started hunting during a deep down cycle of Minnesota grouse, when even moving a bird was worth bragging about? I think she liked to retrieve, but a friend claimed she wasn’t willing to leave a job half done and certainly wasn’t going to trust a human with such an important task. A little thing, one of my fond memories is of her dragging a pheasant that was so big that she couldn’t get her mouth around it. And another of her standing over an injured pheasant that had burrowed into a hole in some tules—she just didn’t weigh enough to break her way through them.
My second griff struggled to handle large coveys, but he had the legs—even if I didn’t—to break up a covey, find them again, break them up again, etc. until they’d hold for him. As a pup, he seemed to like finding a down bird but then thought of it as a snack. So, I paid to have him trained. Like many dogs that have been through fetch training, he seemed happy to do it. I made myself watch the training, and I hated it. Even so, he never lost his joy at being in the field with me, and he lost damned few birds.
My current griff is the most gifted of the three at handling birds and, even at ten, has an intense point. But after a flush, she would really, really rather get moving and find the next one. She’ll search for a down bird, but only for as long as I keep reminding her of what we’re doing. She’s willing to retrieve, but again, would really rather move on.
And my pointer—the ground he covers and his patience on point amaze me—but he can’t be bothered to look for a downed bird, let alone retrieve one. Even when I show him a down bird, it only gets a desultory sniff. Now I know why it’s traditional to pair pointers with a retriever.
It is an unusually hot and windless day on the Alaska Peninsula, 400 miles southwest of Anchorage, and the mosquitos and gnats are vicious. It is an uncomfortable day to be hunting.
I am with three clients hunting ptarmigan on the rolling tundra and in an area that typically holds birds we have seen nothing yet in the half hour we have been walking. Then Pepe, my French Brittany, comes on point and the hunters move up and flush a single bird. A slight shudder confirms that the bird is hit but it sails straights out from us and is nearly out of sight when it drops like a rock hundreds of yards away.
Pepe has watched the bird and when it drops he goes after it. Minutes later he is back with the bird.
It was the only bird we saw that morning rendering a vivid memory of the perfection of a disciplined bird hunting team mate.