What is the attraction to dogs with dead disgusting thoroughly gross smelling animal carcasses? And it’s not only animal carcasses, it’s animal poop, urine or the likes that dogs love. Charlie especially. The more wretched the better. I’ve lost track of the number of times Charlie would be off exploring on our walks, then come racing back to me with a proud expression of excitement on him, as if he’d won the lottery. He would smell so bad I would barely be able to get close enough to put the lease on him and take him home for a bath in the basement garage. Because no dog will come into my house smelling like that.
This hunting trip was no different. Monday, last day of the trip, Mitch and I were working a small stand of tall prairie grass, about the width of a football field and the double the length. Perfect for four hunters, but also manageable for two. We’d made the trip from one end to the other without any success and decided to walk back through one more time, just to give it a complete sweep. I was in the middle of the field and Mitch was close to the south edge, when I heard Mitch hollering at Charlie, “No Charlie, get up. Quit!”
I asked him what was up and Mitch told me that Charlie had found a deer carcass and did the stop, drop and roll. He came up thoroughly pleased with himself. Charlie came running over to me for a whiff. Lucky me. Both Mitch and I said simultaneously, “You’re getting a bath today, Buster!”
Feeling sorry for the dead deer and sorrier for me, because I was the giver of bathes, I restarted working the field. We hadn’t made it twenty feet when Charlie came upon more remains of another dead deer. Thinking he’d hit the jackpot, Charlie dive bombed head first into the disgusting pile of bones, fur and flesh. I yelled at him to stop, but he was in stinky dog nirvana. I finally had to use his shock collar to get him to stop. Charlie was so proud of himself, he strutted up to Orso with his head high, as if to say I am the king of stink! Smell me I smell absolutely wonderful.
What a stinker, literally.
A woman's view of hunting...with men 