My dog’s feet smell like Fritos. We don’t buy Fritos, so I have no idea why they do. Go figure.
Tag: humor
Charlie Super Retriever
Another Hunting Trip
We just got home from pheasant hunting in Central Nebraska. There were ups and downs with the trip. We even made a few discoveries. We bagged eight birds. That was an up. The weather was way too hot, 75 degrees with 25 mile an hour winds. That was a down. We walked through prairie grass fields that were six feet tall plus in spots. And so dense I couldn’t see the dogs with their neon colored bandanas through the tall thin reeds right in front of me. When one of the dogs would flush a bird, it would hang suspended in the sky for just a split second before it caught the wind and take off making that whump, whump, whump, sound like a helicopter. They were very hard to hit in the high winds and when one was shot, the pheasant were hard to find in the dense grass.
Charlie was the star of the hunting trip. This was his best year ever. He didn’t range out too far, stayed in close and checked on us frequently to see where we were in the tall grass. He flushed two birds right off and retrieved both of them.
One of our discoveries was that not all hunting dog breeds are hunters. Mitch has had such high hopes for Orso, our chocolate lab. Orso, the water dog that doesn’t especially like water, doesn’t retrieve and doesn’t use his nose to hunt. He is four years old and has absolutely no interest in pheasant hunting. His idea of pheasant hunting is chasing after Charlie and AJ in the field to see what they are doing and then running back full bore into me to make sure I’m still there. Try walking on uneven terrain carrying a seven pound shotgun, wearing an ammo belt full of shotgun shells and a quart of water and have a ninety pound dog bash into you.
Mitch shot a pheasant and before picking it up called Orso over to find the bird, hoping he would show some interest in the dead bird. Orso walked up to the bird, put his paw on it and preceded to start pulling feathers off of the bird. A huge no-no. Then it even got worse. I shot a bird and called the dogs to find the bird. After not getting the retrieve as quickly as I thought they should, I ran down the hill to where the bird dropped and there was Orso and now AJ pulling the feathers out of the bird. Orso was teaching bad habits to our best hunting dog. That was definitely a down. Needless to say, Orso is not going on any future hunting trips with us.
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.
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.
MINE!
Hunter Anarchy (first excerpt)
This is the first excerpt of a story of one of our first hunting trips to Nebraska. Since hunting season is very close and we’ve started getting the dogs in shape again, I thought it was time to get my act in gear again and start writing again. I took the summer off and now it’s time to focus again on my dream.
We rounded up everyone and set out for Todd’s preserve. We had quite a crew with us this trip: the Booth’s, Judd, Hank and Steve, then Mitch and me, and this time another father and sons’ group, the McKay’s, Buck, John and Joe. Eight total, plus Buddy and AJ. Buck’s sons have hunted deer, turkey and quail, but have never hunted pheasant. None of the rest of us could be considered master hunters, so this would prove entertaining.
At Todd’s we made the necessary introductions and completed the preliminary paperwork, hunting licenses, and conservation stamps. Because of the large number of hunters, we asked for more birds to be released. We mistakenly thought with all of the bodies tromping around we would scare up more birds.
Todd pointed our merry band in the right direction and Mitch tried to get everyone in some semblance of order and not just a bunch of lunatics carrying guns scaring all of the birds off. That was a lost cause from the start. People were scattered all over the hillside and the cedar break. I decided it would be safer for me to stay on the outside edge of the invading horde. I didn’t want to be anywhere near where the guns would be going off. I looked over at Mitch and could see the frustration all over his face. Poor man, he was so used to an orderly routine when hunting with his father. Everybody had a position in the line (that invisible line that hunters form when working a field) and by God; they better stay in that position. Now Mitch was faced with total “hunter anarchy”.
There was no rhyme or reason to the hunters’ placement in the field. Judd was wandering off down the hill; Buck was almost on top of Hank, if Hank swung his gun up to take a shot, he would probably whack Buck. One of Buck’s sons was too far in front of everybody, probably running the birds into the next county. Mitch and I finished the cedar break at the top of the hill; we started working our way back towards the rest of our group. A pheasant flew up in the middle of the merry band and it sounded like a fourth of July celebration. They were spread out in a rough backwards semi-circle, facing away from the draw. The bird flew up behind them; everyone started shooting at that poor bird. Six men unloaded their guns at that bird and all of them missed, not even a feather was ruffled. I don’t think that bird quit flying until he hit Omaha. Mitch and I stood there and watched in amazement.
I looked over at Mitch and said, “They suck! We are never going to shoot anywhere close to all the birds Todd set out.”
Mitch shook his head and said, “This is going to be a long week.”
(Some of the names have been changed to protect the innocent.) Come back for more of the story.
A woman's view of hunting...with men 