Author: susank456

I love to be outdoors, hiking, pheasant hunting, playing with my dogs. And I love to take pictures of the things I see and write about my experiences. I don't take life too seriously, I poke fun at myself and just about everybody else. I've gotten selfish as I've gotten older.

Our Not So Happy Family

I didn’t want Orso, I didn’t even want to go see him when Mitch said, “Come on we’ll just take a look see.”  We had AJ and Charlie and I was quite happy with just two dogs.  Orso was a rescue that one of his co-workers’ son had and needed to find a home for.  He was 10 months old and a huge brown clumsy, lovable dog.  Very calm and just wanted someone to want him.  So we took him home.   Charlie hated Orso on sight.  We thought that Charlie would come around in a few days and all would be calm.  Not so.  The attacks just got worse.  Orso would look at Charlie, or just walk into the same room as Charlie and the fight would be on.  Orso would yelp and scream and Charlie would rip into him.  These attacks were not just a show of force or putting Orso on the bottom rung of the pack.  Charlie wanted him dead and gone.  Blood was usually drawn on Orso.  One day I tried to break up an attack in the yard and Charlie bit my hand drawing blood.  Mitch grabbed him and slammed Charlie to the ground and held him there until everyone calmed down.  That was when I told Mitch that something had to change.  I didn’t want to come home anymore.  Not to the tension and chaos.  I was done. 

The dog behavioralist our vet recommended turned out to be a godsend.  On the first visit she just sat at the kitchen table and talked to us, while watching the dynamics of our inter-relationships with each other.   She helped us realign our pack, spot the signs of eminent danger and how to counteract and prevent the fights.  The change didn’t happen overnight.  It took hard work and vigilance on our part to spot the signs of impending doom.  We are still very aware of Charlie and the “psycho” switch.  Without her, one or more of us wouldn’t be here today.

Trying on Hunting for Size

I started hunting as a means to an end.  I had no longing or any real desire to carrying a gun and shooting at some wild animal or bird.  That would probably entail having to go to the bathroom at some point and I don’t do outhouses or au “naturalle” in the woods.  It’s flush toilets for me.  I was once called the “Queen of hold it”.  “Hunting” conjured up images of smelly men dressed in camouflage sitting in the woods waiting for a victim to come within scope range.  My ex-husband had once told me that deer hunters would spray deer urine on them to mask their own scent.  NOT ME!  So after the divorce and when I started dating my future husband, who is an avid upland game bird hunter, I began to rethink my earlier opinion of hunting. 

I showed an interest to learning to hunt for purely selfish reasons.  I wanted to spend more time with Mitch.  When we started dating, I was obsessed.  I was insecure about our relationship, and figured that the more time I spent with him, the more he would see what a “fine catch” I was.  Dumb, huh? 

I think Mitch was skeptical, but never really said anything, he just threw himself totally into the task of teaching me to wing shoot with a shotgun, to walk in the field carrying my gun and be completely outfitted. 

The high point after the first trip when I all carried was a camera was being there with Mitch from the first bird killed to the long drive home.  I wasn’t hooked yet, but I was getting there.  After ten years of going hunting with Mitch, I think that when we’re there together, we truly are a team.

Orso

I have always laughed and poked fun of some pet owners.  You know the ones I’m talking about.  Those pet owners that pamper them,  give their pets special treats, dress them up like people, paint their toe nails and basically fawn all over them.  Don’t get me wrong, I love our dogs dearly.  We have spent so much money at the vet’s office, that each year our goal is to NOT get the annual  Christmas calendar.  And each year we get a new calendar.  We feed them carrots for treats and I make frozen yogurt pumpkin pops for them as a cold treat.  But I think  we finally became one of “those” pet owners.

Orso, our chocolate lab, a.k.a. water dog, does not particularly like water.  He doesn’t go swimming really.  He might go in up to his chest or swim out and back a few yards when he’s hot, but that’s all he does.  He absolutely abhors the rain.  He will stand under the eave of the house and refuse to go out in the yard to go pee or on walks, he’ll walk next to me under the umbrella, just to not get his head wet.  He’s not interested in retrieving anything on land or in the water.  When we go pheasant hunting, he usually walks at my heals.  Last week we were at our friends’ house for a play day with their two dogs, which entails a walk to the public access boat launch for an afternoon of swimming, tag and a good game of wrestling.  Tied up to the dock was an old aluminum runabout.  No one was around and Orso walked right up to the boat and jumped right in like it was his own.  We had to pull him out a couple of times fearful the owner would show up. 

The rest of the dogs decided on a game of tag, but Orso wasn’t interested.  I turned around looking for him and there he was sitting at the back of the dock wagging his tail waiting patiently for a pontoon boat to come in and tie up to the dock.  He wanted to get on that boat so much.   We talked another friend of ours into taking Orso for a boat ride on his pontoon boat.  Our friend asked if Orso would try to jump in the water and Mitch told not to worry, Orso wouldn’t jump in.  He walked back forth looking at the other boats in the water.  Mitch opened the gate to the front deck and Orso walked out and sat down totally at home afloat on a boat.  That was the best day of his life.

Just The Two of Us

Some of my favorite hunting memories with Mitch are when it’s just the two of us after everyone else has left and headed back home.  It’s usually afternoon the dogs are getting tired and have slowed down.  It’s almost like taking a long walk and reconnecting with each other.  There’s no pressure to shoot better than the others in our group.  No matter what anyone ever says, there is always some competition.  Call it pride or machismo (even in women), being better at what you’re doing than the next guy is very important.  Maybe even more for me.  I’ve always been extremely competitive growing up, and now taking up hunting later in life, a male dominated sport, I feel like I have to prove that I can hold my own and out hunt the rest of the group. 

But when it’s just Mitch, the dogs and me, I can relax and enjoy the day.  We can laugh at each other’s missteps or in my case, when I trip over some invisible rut.  I think that one of my favorite memory was just the two of us on the last day of one hunting trip in the late afternoon.  We had just finished working a stubble field and were standing at the end discussing our lack of success.  Mitch re-packed his pipe and had just lit it, when Charlie flushed a rooster up to our left.  Mitch rushed to shoulder his gun to get off a shot and in the process, shattered his pipe.  He normally has his pipe sticking out of the left side of his mouth, but in his haste to not miss a shot, he forgot to move the pipe over.  Added insult, he missed the bird.  Luckily, no teeth were broken.  I laughed so hard, I thought he might shoot me just for general principles.

Buddy (part 2)

Buddy was probably the easiest dog for anybody to own.  It only took about three days to housebreak him.  Even at a year and a half, Buddy was very calm and didn’t jump up on people.  I’m only 5’2″ so having an eighty five pound dog jumping up on me always ended with me on the losing end.  I’m not saying that Buddy was perfect, but he was very close to it for me.  He always had a happy expression on him face.  Buddy loved to be around people.  He wasn’t pushy or overtly “in your face” like some dogs, he would come up to people to greet them and get petted, then go lie down and just be near everyone.  Just in case there might be food and just in case someone might drop something his way.

Buddy went everywhere with us.  In the car, he would stick his head out the window into the wind as far as he could.  Buddy would open his mouth to taste the air and the wind would force the skin on his muzzle covering his mouth to  flap up and down.  People would drive past us and be laughing at the sight of this huge yellow head hanging out of my Pontiac Grand Am and towering over the top of the car.  He filled up the whole back seat.

Mitch decided it was time to start working with Buddy and his hunting skills.  We got a pheasant wing (yes, a real dead pheasant wing) from his brother.  Why anyone would keep a dead pheasant wing with the feathers still on it in their freezer is beyond me, but his brother had one.   Mitch wanted to see if Buddy would be attracted to the scent and bring out his hunting instincts.  Mitch would let Buddy smell the pheasant wing then go and hide the wing for Buddy to find and then hopefully retrieve bird wing back to us.  Buddy liked the smell of dead pheasant, what self respecting dog wouldn’t like the smell of something dead?  Personally I can’t think of anything worse than putting a fresh or rotted dead animal in my mouth.  But evidently these are things that dogs live for.

The hiding and the finding worked great, but the retrieving, not so good.  Buddy wasn’t real keen on coming when called.  He would come only after he was good and ready.  So I came up with a “brilliant idea”.  Let’s tie a lightweight rope to his collar which I’ll let play out as he runs to go fetch the bird wing, then when he grabs the wing we’ll call “come” and bring him back pulling up the rope that he is tethered to.  Great idea in theory, not such a great idea in practice.  I tied the rope to Buddy’s collar and while I was trying to get the rope untangled, Buddy was grabbing the rope and pulling at it.  I was pleading with him to stop, “No Buddy no.”  Well all Mitch heard was “Go”.  So he hid the wing, Buddy went charging out in the yard to find it  and I went along for the ride with the rope wrapped around my hand.  I was certain that the ring finger on my left hand had been amputated.  I cried like a little girl.

Mitch

Mitch hated me the first time I met him.  I was positive of that.  I returned a scuba diving video the owner of the dive shop had loaned me back to the dive shop that Mitch managed.   When I handed it to him, Mitch went into a tirade about videos going out without any documentation.  I thought all of the anger was targeted at me, but no it was at the owner of the shop.  Mitch intrigued me.  He came off as aloof and solicitous at the same time.  He acted like he really cared what the customer wanted or needed and at the same time held himself detached from the situation.  I made it my mission in life to make him like me and in the process I fell in love with him.

As our relationship developed, I listened and watched and memorized everything about him.  One of his passions was pheasant hunting.  Once a year he would go to western Kansas and spend a week hunting upland game birds (pheasants).  I was jealous of the time that he spent with family and friends that week while I stayed home waiting for him to come back and hear all of the stories of the past week.  In an effort to spend more time with him I decided that I wanted to learn to pheasant hunt, even though I’d never been hunting for anything in my life and had no idea what that entailed.  The very thought of sitting in a deer stand or a duck blind for hours waiting on a passing victim bored the hell out of me.  I’d rather clean the bathroom and I hate cleaning the bathroom.

Mitch was amused when I asked that he teach me to hunt.  But he dove head long into teaching me.  put together the gear I would need.  Mitch gave me hand-me-down shirts, ammo belt and bought an army surplus field coat for the cold.  He showed me how the hunters carry the gun in the field and how to wing shoot. 

My first trip I carried a camera and  watched and learned how the hunters would line up in a vee shape and work a field hunting for the very elusive pheasant.  When I came back, I was hooked.  He even bought me a shotgun and modified to fit me.

Buddy

Buddy came into my life at a time when I didn’t have a dog and didn’t really want a dog.  Isn’t that always the case?  Sometimes the best things happen when you weren’t looking.  From the very beginning, Buddy brightened my days.  Here was this 85 pound clumsy yellow lab that always had a happy face.  He was always glad to greet anyone. 

Buddy was truly a rescue on death row when we adopted him.  He had been found wandering around Basehor Kansas and was taken to the county vet that was used as a shelter/pound.  The patrons of the vet put up signs  but no one came forward and after two weeks , Buddy was still at the vet’s.  Some of the pet owners that used the vet took turns taking him home at night just to keep him from the needle.  A friend of ours came to us one day and spoke those fateful words,  “Do you know anyone who needs a dog?”

Mitch said politely without much interest, “What kind of dog?”

“A yellow lab.”

“Does he hunt?”

“He’s a yellow lab.”  And the hook was set. 

Karen drove the hour and a half to the vet’s office and the hour and a half back, just to let Mitch “take a look”.  Once I saw Buddy, there was no going back for him.  He was ours for better or for worse.

Buddy was my first exposure to a hunting dog.  He was definitely not a regular old hunting dog.  He had been taught a few basic skills, sit, down, but come was not a word that Buddy thought was really important unless food was involved.  Then Buddy was right there.  We called Buddy a land tiger shark.  He would eat anything that couldn’t eat him.  He would eat until it was all gone or he would bust.  I have never been exposed to a breed of dog that just doesn’t quit eating once they are full.  Labradors have no off valve on their stomachs. 

More on Buddy later.  Stick around.

Hunter Anarchy (final excerpt)

In a way, I guess missing the bird was a good thing, because after that everybody settled down, relaxed a little and slowed down.  Buddy and AJ had their jobs cut out for them trying to work the field with all of these bodies tromping all over.  AJ was following a scent when he came up on the pheasant.  He went on point and froze waiting for help, holding the bird tight.  Mitch got in and helped AJ and shot the bird when it flew.  John was there and saw AJ on point.  He couldn’t believe it.  He told his dad about AJ pointing, but Buck didn’t believe it.

Buck said, “No, you’re wrong, labs don’t point.  It must have looked that way.”

When we broke for lunch, we had shot a total of eight birds among us.  I was surprised that were any birds left around with all of the guns blazing.  Buck and his son were still talking about AJ pointing.

Mitch said, “AJ is a pointing lab.  He was trained to point.  He actually is a registered pointing lab.”

Buck couldn’t believe it.  He was surprised to say the least.

After lunch we headed back to the preserve for more fun in the sun.  We started off again in one big group.  Once again order was abandoned and chaos reigned.  Somehow we lost Judd and Steve; they headed off over the hill.   That left Hank, Buck and Joe heading toward the woods.  Mitch, John and I started walking along with the dogs, by the way, the dogs stayed with us, close to the cow pasture.  Right in front of us was a chukar just sitting on a cow pie with no cover.  A chukar is a littler smaller than a pheasant and a soft gray color. 

Mitch was on the left, John was in the middle and I was on the right as we approached the bird.  The dogs were not paying attention to us, sniffing for something to catch their interest.  When chukars fly, they fly very erratically.  They may fly straight at you before veering off.  This can be very disconcerting and a challenge to have a bird fly right at you while you are trying to get a shot off.  We were about five feet from the bird, and he showed no signs of flying, he just sat there trying to be invisible.  Since John spotted him first, I wanted him to get the bird.  I just stood there and waited for the bird to fly so John could shoot it.  Well the bird finally did fly and it flew straight at John before veering off in the opposite direction.  John unloaded his gun at the bird and didn’t come close.  The bird flew down the hill into a plum thicket and landed.

We laughed so hard at the injustice or maybe justice of the whole affair, I almost peed my pants.  Off we went down toward the plum thicket to see if we could locate that bird again.  On the way there, a pheasant broke from cover and I shot and downed it with one shot.

John turned to Mitch and said, “She doesn’t fool around does she?”

Mitch said, “I wouldn’t want her shooting at me.”

I have to admit, for some unusual reason I was shooting great that day.  It seemed like every time I pulled the trigger a bird fell out of the sky.  I was just as surprised as everyone else, but I hid it well.  I didn’t want anybody to know that this was just a fluke.  I think I shot six birds by myself.  Inside I knew this probably would never happen again, outside I acted like this was nothing new.  If they only knew!

We trudged down into the plum thicket and with Buddy and AJ’s help; we got two more birds up and shot them.  After we cleared that side of the preserve, we decided to head over to the general vicinity where we left the others.  When we finally caught up to Buck and Hank, Buck was sitting down in the grass resting.  Resting?  Come on, we hadn’t been out there that long.  The day was beautiful, not too cold, not too warm and the sun was shining, and there were BIRDS!  What more could you ask for?  But I didn’t say what I was thinking, I just stood there.  Buck said he was an old man and he was done for the day.  We headed back to the cabin to eat some cookies (this has become a tradition I started and everyone loves it) and drink some coffee.  Todd was waiting for us when we got back.  He took the birds we shot and laid them with the others to clean.  He asked how we did, because it sounded like someone was waging a war with all of the gunfire he heard.  He looked at the birds and at us and cocked his head.

“I would have thought that you’d have more birds with all of the guns going off.”

I rolled my eyes and said, “Well you know how it is, if it wasn’t for me there wouldn’t be hardly any birds there.”

Buck said that he wanted to get the birds that he and his sons shot because they were going to head home in the morning. 

“Why are you going to leave so soon?” Hank asked. 

Buck said, “Well we limited out today and we might as well head back to work in the morning.”

“Limited out?” asked Mitch “What do you mean limited out?  We’re on a hunting preserve; there is no limiting out.  We can shoot as many birds as we want.”

This was a whole new concept for Buck.  His sons had had a great time and got to shoot lots of birds and didn’t want to leave yet.  So he agreed to stay another half day and get in some more hunting.  Another day of chaos looms ahead.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the story half as much as I enjoyed living it and re-living it on paper.