Not just for the birds
I almost didn't go on a blind date with him but I ended up meeting him anyway and it was because of a bird dog. That was 18 years ago this month. Before agreeing to meet him in person for the first time, I saw a photograph of him kneeling next to his 6-month-old puppy. …
WARNING: This has very little to do with chukar hunting. But it does have to do with people who read and comment on this blog. I went back to my classroom today for the first time since surgery 10 days ago, and saw some of what my students have been up to. Actually, I've been …
Haris Papadopoulos, Molly, and some evidence of a good day's chukar hunting on Cyprus Haris Papadopoulos contacted me through another blog of mine about two years ago with some questions about our dogs and the Brittany breed in general. He lives in Cyprus. We've been in touch since then, and just a few days ago …
This post might seem off-track to some readers, and for that I apologize. But one of the reasons I changed the name of this blog earlier this year is because I wanted it to be more about the culture surrounding my favorite pastime than solely about chasing chukar. Where we live, our "setting," is a …
Continue reading "A Little Culture: Let My Horse Bring Me Home"
Look what Santa brought me!
I'm lucky enough to be able to teach in a small school nestled here at Galliformes Ground Zero. One of my classes, a group of six 11th- and 12th-grade young men, each with a passion for hunting, has been reading A Hunter's Heart: Honest Essays on Blood Sport (1997; a fantastic collection if you haven't …
When the season consumes you, you don't worry about much else. When it's over, you worry about everything else. Filling up that worry with good things to carry it away like water helps. Yesterday was one of those good days between seasons. We collected a painting we commissioned and hung it up. It is …
It's not at all "just" for the birds. It's not "just" for any one thing. It's for Angus, whose rapturous pursuit of birds expresses the epitome of equivocal desire: his instincts draw him toward birds, but he knows I'm also interested and - because he checks on where I am, even when he's birdy - …
So I'm playing my bagpipes at the Tilted Kilt the other night, and it's nutty and people are shoving $1 bills in my arm garter, and this fetching woman comes up and puts some cash in there, looks me in the eye and says, "I prefer metric shot." There's only one other person on earth …
What an ungodly time to post anything about chukar. Right now, all here is mud. Now is the time to focus on the losing battles of keeping your house as clean as you in no way can. Now is the time to ignore dirt drying on carpet if at all possible. Now is the time …