"Nature will tell you a direct lie if she can." ~ Charles Darwin
Gentle Readers and Loved Ones,
In NW Wisconsin, Burnett County is home to two upland game birds. The Ruffed Grouse and the Sharptail Grouse. Ruffed Grouse are everywhere in the woods, especially youngish Aspen growths. The season for hunting them extends from mid-September to early January. Sharpies, on the other hand, are officially endangered and only infrequently does the WI DNR issue tags to harvest single birds.
This is because, while they were everywhere a hundred years ago, the rich prairie and pine mosaic habitat that is their home and results from natural fires is pretty much gone. It was managed out of existence during the last century in favor of huge pine plantings for lumbering operations.
Namekagon Barrens is a fairly large wildlife management area about 20 minutes north of the cabin here. It is the best sharpie habitat in Wisconsin. The barrens consist mostly of old farmsteads that went bust because of the sandy soil and the distance from distribution points to sell the harvest. The properties defaulted on taxation and returned to the state. The DNR and the Friends of the Barrens have spent the last decades doing managed burns to return to natural conditions.
The beauty of the north woods is an acquired taste. We don’t get sweeping vistas and soaring mountain ranges. We get short 10-20 foot forest views. Except for the Barrens, which is a roughly 5 mile by 5 mile square of rolling sandy hills and lowlands. It gives you a feel for what the northern prairies must have been like.
Ann and I decided at the last minute yesterday to drive up there and take Rowdy for a walk. Maybe we could find and flush some sharpies. Can’t shoot ‘em, understand, but you can let Rowdy work them. On the south end of the northern parcel lies the old cemetery. The place is pretty yet kind of somber as you consider the people that tried to make a go of it up there and wound up in this desolate little plot…
Enough of that. Just north of the cemetery is a nice big sandy bluff. After last year’s controlled burn, it is grass covered and fairly smooth and easy to walk. As is the little grassy bowl to the east and the rising sandy hills further east. We drove over just east of that where the north south access road and fire break makes a nice little parking area.
We walked west from there while Rowdy quartered back and forth. He knew where he was and that there were birds to be found. I was challenged to keep him with ‘reasonable shotgun range’. We trekked through a nice little grassy 100-yard square field.
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| Prairie Grass |
Then it was up and into the first bowl that is filled with young aspen saplings and scrub oak. No birds. Up a little saddle rise and now we are down into the big flattish grassy meadow that sits just west of the knoll north of the cemetery. No birds yet. We strolled up on top of the knoll, stood next the to the nice sentinel tree that over looks the cemetery and enjoyed the view.
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| On the knoll, looking down at cemetary |
Then we decided to go down the east slope of the knoll across a short grassy neck of the field and back up a little hill that is filled with scrub oak. Off to the left is a fairly scraggy little stand of year-old aspen saplings. They aren’t more than a foot tall. I thought nothing of it.
Until Rowdy, off to our right and down the hill, lowered his nose, went all birdy and turn to the north and started beating his way up towards those pitiful little popples.
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| Rowdy getting Birdy |
Suddenly he just sat and stared intensely at a spot in them. This is classic Rowdy pointing behavior.
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| Not actual point but it looks like this. |
( These last two pictures are ones Ann took yesterday during the walk. They are Dan Rather level "Fake but Accurate" as we did not get pictures during this pointing episode...)
He has turned 270 degrees left and is generally pointed back towards me. I’m about 30 yards away or so which means if there is a bird it’s roughly caught between Rowdy and I. It was holding in place while Ann and I walked pretty near it.
I walk a rough arc to my left trying to get exactly opposite of where Rowdy is fixated. As I get about 20 yards away three Sharpies erupt from the grass and popples with that heart stopping whirrrrr of their wings and the cackle they make as they flush. I have a blank pistol in my hand exactly for simulating a hunting shot and so I "shot" the right most and closest bird to me. Rowdy broke his hold and runs down the hill in full scale pursuit of the left most Sharpie which by then was up to full Sharpie escape speed and flying back up the path we had just walked.
I beep Rowdy with the e-collar and sit him. Call him back to heel. He really doesn’t want to obey but does. As he comes back up the hill and is roughly about where he sat and pointed before, he goes birdy again and jinks slightly left. Dern if he doesn’t flush 3 more sharpies that had just been holding there this whole time. So, I empty the blank gun at them. A competent shotgunner – which I don’t claim to be – would have bagged several sharpies that day, were sharpies legal to shoot which they aren't. No Sharpies were harmed during the telling of this story.
As I thought about it on the drive home, I wish I’d put the blank gun in my pocket and grabbed my phone and started videoing. I’d have had some great video.
We hiked back to the truck along the track we thought the birds had flown but we never saw them again. By then it was near sundown and we drove around the rest of the barrens a little enjoying the sunset. That’s when we came up on the 4 more sharpies just sitting in the road enjoying the sunset too.
On that happy note, I remain,
Dad / Geoff
