A New Grouse Hunter
On return to Silicon Valley, he read all he could find about grouse hunting. On the sale of the Unicorn he bought two setter grouse field trial champions, a Humvee custom fit for grouse hunting, and a half-dozen pricey double guns (two side-by-side, four over-and-under) recommend for grouse hunting by internet sellers.
Then he set out to find a Minnesota grouse guide. He received several recommendations for Barney Brame . He had a phone number, no address or other details. (Barney's home location in Minnesota will not be revealed here. Your narrator is a grouse hunter. No genuine grouse hunter reveals locations.)
Sam called Barney and reserved a week mid-October and mailed Barney a money order for his fees to a PO Box address. (Except in grouse season, Barney made his living as a handy man. He had no bank account and had never filed a tax return). Barney gave Sam a beer-joint address in central Minnesota as their place to meet.
When Sam arrived in the Humvee, he saw a gray 2000 Toyota Tacoma with a plywood dog box in the bed parked where Barney had specified. He found Barney at the bar inside, nursing a 16-ounce bottled Pepsi. They shook (Barney's hand twice the size of Sam’s and calloused, Sam's recently manicured) and walked out to their vehicles.
Before Barney could give instructions, Sam said, "I'll follow you."
Barney looked at the Humvee and said, "it's going to get scratched."
Sam assured him that was OK.
Barney left the parking lot amid the roar of the Tacoma's blown muffler. Sam set his Humvee's GPS and followed. An hour later Barney pulled off the two-lane blacktop onto a narrow two-track dirt logging road and Sam followed in the Humvee. Ten-foot-tall aspens scratched both sides of the Humvee.
Ten minutes later, Barney parked the Toyato at the edge of a recently chip-cut thirty-acre rectangle and got out, reaching for the latch on the plywood dog box to release his dog.
"Let's hunt mine first”, said Sam.
“OK, but let mine empty before you release yours,” Barney said, and released a small white and pale orange-headed pointer female, her sides marked with dried blood from a whipping briar-cut tail. She emptied and, on Barney’s soft command, re-entered the box.
Sam carefully hooked a check cord to the collar of a large white setter, let it out as he held the cord firmly, and it trotted to the woods edge and emptied. Then Sam commenced attaching a Garmin tracking-training collar and a separate beeper collar on the setter's neck.
“Why you need both? Barney asked.
“Sometimes he ranges beyond the beeper,” Sam said.
Barney nodded.
“Please set it for ‘point only’ mode,” Barney said when he heard the constant
‘ Beep, beep'. Sam complied.
Barney told Sam where to walk and they began the hunt, Barney walking on Sam's left (Sam was right-handed) and two steps behind. Sam's dog, name Buck, stood three woodcock , steady to wing and shot, which Sam fired two shots each at without effect.
Then Sam noticed Barney had departed, leaving him and Buck alone in the Big Woods. Sam looked at the tracker-trainer receiver for the pin he had dropped to mark where his Humvee was parked. It was absent. In his excitement, he had forgot to set it. Sam had no clue where the Humvee was parked.
Sam walked to a large stump, sat on it, and removed a sandwich from his bright orange game vest. He shared it with Buck. He removed a plastic bottle of water from the vest and shared it too with Buck.
Then he said, "Where is the truck, Buck?"
Buck looked at him in puzzlement, then began to hunt. Sam followed. In two hours, Buck arrived at the Humvee, having pointed steady-to-wing-and-shot for Sam a dozen more woodcock, one of which Sam wing-tipped and Buck retrieved. He also bumped a half-dozen grouse which Sam heard lift but did not see.
Taped to the driver-side door of the Humvee
was an envelope containing greenbacks for all but $100 of the money Sam had sent by money order to Barney to pay for the hunt. Also in the envelope was a handwritten-in-pencil note from Barney, which read:
"Dear Mr. Sam:
Buck is a nice dog, but you better take some shooting lessons before you ruin him. Good luck.
Barney "
Sam used the Humvee's GPS system to retrace his route to the beer joint where he had met Barney. There the Toyota pickup with plywood dog box was parked. Sam noticed for the first time the beer joint's sign, “BEAR’S DEN.”
Inside, Sam found Barney sitting again at the bar, but before him was a long neck Bud, not a Pepsi.
Author’s note: This fictional tale is dedicated to Steve Grossman and his son Travis of
Staples, Minnesota .
About the Author : Tom Word
Visit authors website | View more articlesTom Word is a lawyer who represents individuals about managing their assets and for amusement writes fiction and non-fiction about bird dogs and humans obsessed with them.
About the Artist : Leah Brigham
Visit artist websiteAfter graduating from Millersville University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelors of Science in Art Education, Leah began teaching Art to inner city Middle School students in Houston and later Dallas, TX. Leah has shared with her students her passion for art and nature. This passion has sustained her and continued throughout her life in the form of painting and drawing.
Leah was introduced to American Field Horseback Field Trails and has been able to experience the excitement of seeing her own dog, competing for the National Championship at Ames Plantation in Grand Junction, TN ...standing on point, head and tail held high. This has inspired her to create works of art depicting dogs and the wildlife associated with the sport and hunting.
Related Aritlces
Booty Blevins and Marvin Means
It was 1946. The War was finally over, and Booty was back in Alabama after duty as a duce-and-a half driver and then infantryman at the Battle of the Bulge, mustering out as a corporal. Before the War, he had worked as a hand on Mr. Maytag's quail plantation at Union Springs. The washing machine maker had loved to shoot quail. Booty had helped Mr. George Hardin train his bird dogs and retrievers and the horses ridden by those involved in the hunts or pulling the hunt wagon.
Losing It
Harry Bain had been an all-age for-the-public pointing dog trainer-handler for thirty years. In that role he had lived in south Alabama, trained trial and hunting dog's mid-July through mid-September in North Dakota and traveled the major all-age trial circuit September through mid-March. Summers he had fished the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere until the last week of June when he readied for the trip north.
