Not just for the birds

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  • Reason

    Reason

    If one speaks it should only be to say, as well as one can, how wonderfully all this fits together, to indicate what a long, fierce peace can derive from this knowledge. — Barry Lopez, “Children in the Woods”

    And then a Plank in Reason, broke… — Emily Dickinson, from “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain”

    Not recognizing but trying to recognize the wrinkles on my hands tells me something I don’t want to know but know too well: my childhood is long over. The new year began with radically different challenges for me than the last, and an ennui I can’t recognize and don’t want to. So what? Does it all fit together, wonderfully or not? Does seeing an integration in one’s life create peace, fierce or otherwise?

    I grew up with some great influences I wouldn’t trade for anything. Parents who I think unwittingly complied with Lopez’s notions about how to speak to children in the woods; teachers who provided similar tools; shelves full of LPs that hammered me with another plane of existence entirely, infecting me with instruments of utopia and war and peace: these things and more fit together because I’ve allowed them to, and the fact that I see that they do is wonderful in itself. But where’s the peace?

    Bird hunting, because it requires (the way I want to do it) integrating a dog whose very being makes me understand better than anything else Emily Dickinson’s obsession with death (others’ and hers), has also made me really pissed at time and gravity. How much longer will I have the muscles to walk uphill? There was an old guy in my old neighborhood in Boise who used to be a chukar hunting fool. He walked like a fool, every day, rain or shine, a walking stick in each hand and a fetching houndstooth Tam O’Shanter on his head. Often I wanted to yell at him, “You’re nuts!” He wasn’t strong enough to hunt chukar anymore. I wonder what he thought he was training for, or if he was just trying to cheat death. I still don’t get it.

    I think my season is over, but I might get out another couple times before the end of the month. My log shows I climbed more and hiked farther than ever this season, and I wonder how that’s possible, but — surely — am grateful to have been able to have done that. But lots of things were different this year, and it sure felt more segregated than integrated. For whatever reason the parts didn’t jell: Peat had the big seam to cross and figure out how to hunt without Angus; I didn’t recognize what we were doing without the old warrior, especially at first; Leslie had to learn how to hunt without the best partner, and we fought over that; Medusahead seemed to have cropped up overnight in places it didn’t exist last season; bird numbers were way down; shooting steel seemed like a good idea until I literally hit nothing for weeks; we ran into more chukar hunters in one week than in the last decade combined; I was no longer a teacher and had become a ______________.

    I already wrote about the 2020-ness of 2020, so I guess this is just more of the same. Sorry. The new year, and the promise of a new administration and vaccinations and improving health and economies and weather and the plunge of Twitter from ever-present consciousness loom as a great array of “I’ll-believe-it-when-I-see-it” things. Maybe all this froughtness is just my response to seeing that I’m in the group that won’t get a vaccine until June. That’s probably it. But it still feels like a disintegration still happening in slow motion. Chukar hunting, this season, has not been the antidote it was once. There’s been little there there.

    It seems, though, that in a way there is in fact integration going on here, although its wonderfulness is open to debate. It all is what it all is. Do we even have a choice to refuse fitting things together? I think it was John Lennon who said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” He would know, right? I look out the window, and notice that seventeen straight days of f-ing frigid fog is lifting just before Beer:30 and I can see my old friend the mountain. I have a headache and am worried for the thousandth time I have Covid. Leslie’s sitting near me reading a book of words about words and I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. 73 quail are eating us, to our delight, out of house and home. The fire’s about to go out but there’s more wood on the porch. Dinner is coming (“Garden burgers AGAIN?!”). Peat sits on the other side of the dog door in the garage waiting insanely for his half cup of kibble. Twenty-six miles northwest chukar are eating as much of the fresh blades of winter grass as they can, if their crops on the last batch we butchered are any indication.

    Sense might be breaking through. Peace.

  • Done

    Done

    Cleaned the last birds today. The wind here is ice. It’s our millionth day in a row without sun. We hunted every single possible day we could this season, except for the penultimate weekend when we both were sick. We literally outdid ourselves. So did the dogs. Angus is a miracle. I think he’s related to Ponce de Leon.

    I can’t wait for next season. There’s a lot to think about, though, and stuff to do in the meantime. It’s important, but will be very hard, to stay positive. Those who know me understand what I’m talking about.

    So for now I’ll say it was my best season in many ways. Coming back after last season’s back problems, and without “training” last summer (sitting in a drift boat doesn’t do much for one’s physical fitness), our average hunts were bigger in mileage, duration, and elevation gain than in any previous season. To say that at 57, after doing this for 20 years, I think is pretty lucky. Maybe it says something about desire. Maybe it just is.

    Still, I noticed some things this season that weren’t all good, which I’ve mentioned before. Medusahead continues its literally uncontrollable spread-and-destroy blanketing of the range in southwest Idaho and eastern Oregon, and other noxious players are rapidly adding themselves to the list. Bird numbers here — I don’t care what anybody says — are down. The number of chukar hunters using ATVs down here continues to climb. Chukar hunting is my favorite thing to do, but it’s becoming the thing I worry about the most. That sounds silly. But it is true. These birds are pretty resilient, but they’re no match for what’s happening to their environment. Chukar are non-native, so maybe it won’t be such a great loss. But they’re in the same boat as the sage grouse and sharp-tailed grouse in these parts, whose numbers are nearly gone (Fish & Game’s last count in 2016 of the Midvale sage grouse lek totaled 2 — two — birds*). We need to do better by the wildlife we all devote our recreational spirit and finances to.

    *From Idaho Fish & Game’s last statewide upland game report, from 2017 re: Sage Grouse in Washington County: “A report documenting seasonal distribution, habitat use patterns, productivity, and survival rates in Washington County is available. Washington County is unique because it is isolated from other sage-grouse populations and habitat; the land is highly fragmented and primarily under private ownership. West Nile Virus has surfaced annually in this area and much of the habitat has been converted/developed to ranchettes. The Washington County population will likely not persist within the next 10-15 years.” [my emphasis; p. 46]

  • Tick Trouble

    Tick Trouble

    [Here’s another old unpublished post, from May 2011. NOTE: I might have been mistaken on the species of tick in the following post — it seems that Idaho Fish and Game specifies that the most common tick here is dermacentor andersoni, or the Rocky Mountain Wood Tick, which is what the featured image of this updated post shows…]

    American Dog Tick
    American Dog Tick

    After a trail run today, Leslie and I picked 19 American Dog Ticks (dermacentor variabilis) off of Angus. We found some crawling on us, which we assumed came from Angus, and are included in that number, which is one shy of the record 20 I pulled off of Glenna after a hike a few years ago. I assume that anyone hiking with a dog in the spring knows the drill: caress the fur with heightened fingertip sensitivity, feel for little flat bumps on the skin, and then quickly extract the little nuisances and flush them down the toilet. At least that’s what we do with them. Then we spend a couple hours imagining they’re crawling around in our shorts or on our scalps or in our armpits.

    I went googling for info on ticks because I couldn’t imagine any good their existence provided the world. Even worse than mosquitoes, which I know at least provide a food source for trout, ticks just seem like pure badness. They’re creepy, they’re parasitic, and they spread some really horrible diseases, not unlike investment bankers, politicians, lawyers, and crooked CEOs.

    The Good

    If it’s permissible to put a value judgment on an insect (debatable), ticks are good because they help control the rodent population. That’s about it. The bad things they do are more interesting.

    The Bad

    Ticks spread Lyme Disease. You can read about it on wikipedia, but I found a post on a forum that paints a clearer picture. This person chimed in on a thread that was being dominated by more scientific types who took the time to explain in biological terms the position of ticks in the greater ecosystem; some even qualified their remarks with the good-science move distinguishing science from morality or judgment (i.e., “ticks are what they are”). Some of the posters, however, couldn’t refrain from saying that because of the “good” ticks provided their habitat, they were better than humans. Enter this poor soul:

    When a tick pays for my medicine, doctor and emergency room bills, I’ll think about “save the ticks.” I have Lyme Disease. I know what a Neurologist is. I know what an epileptic seizure is. I know more medications than I should. I sometimes have a hard time walking to get my morning newspaper. I haven’t run in 4 years. I can’t SCUBA, Frisbee, sail alone, ski, walk on boulder jetties, drive (without a lawyer), I golf like a loser, can’t throw a (base, foot, snow)ball without falling. I have vertigo, I can’t climb a ladder; I used to climb a mast on a sailboat underway to change a lightbulb. I lost my “sea-legs.” I lost my Captain’s License, driver’s license is in perpetual limbo. Have a “spaz” lose a license. Sometimes I use a cane. Part of running around is risk. I got whacked… I’ll be an adult and NOT sue someone. I’ve been beaten, stabbed, robbed, left-for-dead, shot at… Lyme scares me the most. There is nothing I can do now.

    Ticks spread other diseases, too, such as Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, anaplasmosis, tularemia, and – my personal favorite – 364D Rickettsiosis. None of these are any fun. The key is removing the tick before they have a chance to get deep into their feeding cycle, which sometimes takes over 24 hours. I read that as many as 50% of the ticks out there carry one of these diseases, some of which are species specific.

    The Tick
    The Tick, from a 1994 TV cartoon series

    The Weird

    American popular culture has a fascination with strange and gross things. Ticks pop up here and there. There’s a cartoon I watched on Saturday mornings back in my thirties. It’s called The Tick, of all things, and was based on a comic book character and spawned an even weirder TV series starring the guy who played David Puddy on Seinfeld (Patrick Warburton). Then there is the 1993 horror film Ticks, which marketed itself with the line, “It’s not nice to mess with mother nature.” Do me a favor and don’t see it. Do me a favor and do listen to “The Ticks” girl band if you want to run screaming from your computer. And do your dog a favor and get those ticks off of him or her before they do some serious damage.

  • Book Review: Strategies & Tactics for Chukars and Huns

    There’s a new book out on chukar hunting, which I had a chance to read recently. Strategies and Tactics for Chukars and Huns, by retired wildlife biologist Mike Stamm, is currently available as an e-book on Amazon. It’s a welcome addition to the limited book-length information on chukar hunting, and — while looking at similar things as the books by Pat Wray and Richard O’Toole (whose book seems out of print) — focuses more on the title’s promise: how to hunt these birds successfully.

    Written in a straightforward, conversational way, Stamm’s book surveys what most experienced chukar hunters do to prepare for and execute a successful hunt, from equipment, clothing, footware (even more thorough than my several posts on chukar hunting boots), maps (real and virtual), and — most importantly — how to approach birds in different terrain and at different times of the season.

    We get a lot of questions from visitors to this blog about where to find birds. Stamm’s book is worth a read for people relatively new to this endeavor because it spends some time on what kind of habitat to look for (and how to look for it), and will give other more experienced hunters either new ideas about or validation of their own strategies and tactics.

    This is a self-published book, and is admittedly a work in progress. One of the things I like about it are the author’s own illustrations, which show a humorous side to the activity, which is in keeping with most serious chukar hunters’ self-conception: you have to be able to laugh at yourself to want to keep doing this ridiculousness; when the birds are laughing at you from the rimrock above, if you don’t laugh, too, you’re in for an even harder day. The illustrations also make me feel much better about my own shoddy artistic talent. So there’s that.

    My favorite illustration in Stamm’s book. I can think of other figures that visit (or live in) chukar habitat to describe as “outlaws.” I prefer to think of chukar more as naturalized overlords facing an invasion from bovine and ATV abuse.

    Two things missing from Stamm’s book, in my humble opinion, are (first) an informative diatribe about medusahead and the forces that have led to its status as the thing that will extinguish chukar in natural habitat, and (second) any mention of the best chukar dog breed ever, the Brittany. If you can look past those two things, I think it’s well worth a read.

  • Weathering the Storm

    Weathering the Storm

    Moving forward. Going backwards, uphill, and slowly descending.

    Last hunt of 2020 for us was yesterday, I followed Bob around the chukar hills just like the old days. Camera in hand. No shotgun. Winter is my favorite time to be out there. It’s quiet.

    Following tracks of ghosts of deer, elk, and birds. Detective work. Bob whispers to me, “I think they were just here.” I look down to examine the prints in the snow. Tiny dog tracks are heading upwards, the lone elk is going downhill. We keep going up.

    We continue to follow Peat. He’s pointing 185 yards away. We look up to see if we can see him, snowflakes are gently falling to earth and into our face. We climb the steep ladder to get to him. He’s focused, patient, and won’t even look towards our direction but knows we’re finally there. His job is almost done.

    The covey busts, Bob shoots, Peat retrieves. Beautiful dog work. Magical. We continue this sequence a few more times finding new coveys and relocating old ones. The dense fog started to come up from below and the snow fell more heavily. We were dressed for the elements but the ground was getting slippery so we decided to head back to the pickup. Bob tells me, “Be careful on the downhill.” We headed down the same ridge we came up and our footprints, Peat’s, and the elk’s had vanished underneath a fresh dusting of snow.