Acarophobia

 

“Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway.” ~ John Wayne *

Gentle Readers and Loved Ones,

Over the last year, this blog has become mostly me bloviating about hunting with Rowdy, but this weekend, I got a chance to do some Gadabouts with an old friend.  There will be a string of stories, this is the first.   

Al Cave and I were roomies at the Trade School 45 years ago.  He and his wife, Lisa came to visit Ann and I here in Wisco last weekend.  The major reason was for Al and I to hunt grouse and woodcock together with Rowdy.

The visit gave me a chance to see the greatest act of Christian Love and Courage that I’ve witnessed in my three score and 7.   Bear with me while I lay it out….

Lisa and Rowdy seem to have a special bond.  She loves dogs, Rowdy senses it and he just bounces around happy as a lark when he sees her and he just wants to play and play. 

Next, you cannot enjoy the great outdoors here in NW Wisconsin without coming into contact with Ticks.  Deer ticks, wood ticks, big ticks, little ticks, we got ‘em all.  Every night before I bed down, I stand in front of a mirror and check for them.  Rowdy gets a NexGard chew at the beginning of every month and he’s a tick killing machine.  No tick can survive longer than 24 hours on the Doodle’s non-shedding coat.  Which is great because he just gets freckled with the evil insects as he beats around looking for birds.  Multi-Tens of them and you can see them on his light coat.

The tick cycle up here morbidly fascinates me.  Once the first hard freeze hits, you never see a tick again all winter as you would expect.  But come March or April, after the first thaw, within days, there is a tick bloom and Rowdy just gets loaded.  As the summer progresses an inevitable hot dry spell hits in July or Aug, the ticks die down and I don’t see any on Rowdy for some time.  But come cooler September after the first full rain, the ticks bloom back again in earnest.  This year, the last two weeks have been especially bad as the wet cool fall drags on.  Great for hunting, awful for ticks....

The first day Al was here, we beat the woods hard.  Ann and Lisa drove around behind us on the Sylvan Assault Vehicle picking us up when necessary.  The ladies didn’t plunge into the woods but they did get exposed to the ticks.  It didn’t take long for Lisa to discover that a few ticks had jumped on her, many had jumped on Rowdy and while she still loved the dog, understandably, she didn’t want to pet him anymore.  We had a great time and came back to the cabin to clean up and make dinner.  Rowdy wants to play some more and is puzzled that Lisa won’t have any of it.  He’s all ticked up and there’s really not much to do about it but let the drugs work.  I think Lisa knew this intellectually, but that first day reality hit hard.  She really doesn’t like ticks.  Heck, I get phantom tick crawling sensations on my skin that I can't ignore.

Al has been finding them on him and tossing them in the roaring fire place.  My preferred disposal method is to “bury them at sea” in the potty. 

Ann made a wonderful chili, we sat down to eat and said Grace.  A few minutes later, I look over at Ann.  There is a small, black deer tick, not much bigger than a grain of black pepper and the same color, crawling on her left cheek, just below her eye.  Lisa is sitting between Ann and I.  Without thinking, I blurt out: “Lisa, there’s a tick on Ann’s cheek, grab it!”  You can see her shudder.  This is when I witnessed bravery at its finest.  She set her shoulders, reached over and grabbed the tick off of Ann, pinched between thumb and forefinger, even though she really didn’t want to.  Then, she looks quizzically at me.  I held out my hand, she drops it onto my palm, looking very relieved.  I went back and buried it at sea and we continued dinner.

On that happy note, I remain,

Dad/Geoff

*Yeah, I know, the Duke was a racist and he’s been cancelled.  We all stand before God with both our wisdom and our faults displayed in full measure.  I think it’s idiocy to throw out wisdom because there is also evil….

Friendship

 

"Your greatest advantage in life is having your enemies overestimate your faults, except possibly, for having your friends under-estimate your virtues." ~ Mario Puzo, The Godfather

 

Gentle Readers and Loved Ones all,

"Jim", Rowdy, Geoff, SAV and Grouse

It was my privilege today to hunt the NW Wisconsin woods with a gentleman who has been tramping around up here since his boyhood back in the Depression. Rowdy worked the woods, found some grouse and we had a great time.

It is an unfortunate consequence of the times we live in that I am uncomfortable with expressly stating my friend’s name on the interwebz because of the crazies that inhabit the net. So, for brevity, let’s call him “Jim”.  (Not his real name.)

Jim was one of the several fellows who took me under his wing and accepted me onto his trap shooting team around 5 years ago when I first started seriously shooting trap at the Fishbowl Sportsman’s Club.  Every Wednesday afternoon all through the summer, he tells me great stories about Burnett County.  I treasure his friendship. He's a true gentleman.

Last summer, I bragged on Rowdy and grouse hunting.  I said I’d call him when the leaves fell off the trees and grouse season hit in full.  That happy time finally occurred today and Jim and I joined up to run Rowdy through the trees and see what he popped up. 

Ann came along to drive the Sylvan Assault Vehicle (SAV) so that we didn't have to trudge back along the path we’d already covered. 

At this point, I will add my standard trigger warning that if hunting stories offend you, just stop reading now, please.

There is a fire lane that runs along Loon Creek.  It is your standard 10 yard wide “two track” road designed to be a fire break.  These roads are perfect for the grouse hunter as you can walk down them in relatively easy conditions while Rowdy does the hard work beating the woods on either side.

It was a gorgeous, sunny, coolish day today – in the 40s – and on these kinds of days, the grouse like to hunker on the edge of the fire lanes where they can soak up some warmth, fill their craws with sand and have a clear field of view around them for threats.   We got out of the SAV, gunned up and told Rowdy to “hunt!”  Rowdy crisscrossed the road out into the woods with his tail waving in big happy loops. 

We hadn’t walked 50 yards – Ann can still see us from her seat in the SAV – when I beeped Rowdy and yelled “Sit, Stay!”  Rowdy eagerly sat in the fire lane, his tail wiping an arc in the sand.  I had just spotted the head of a Ruffed Grouse about 50 yards up ahead.  It's sticking up out of the grass on the left side in a bend in the road. 

I told Jim, “There’s a grouse on the left edge of the road up in the bend, I’ll hold Rowdy, you walk on up and shoot him.”  “Geoff, that’s a dead fern sticking up.”  “No, it’s a grouse.”  “Ok, Geoff, you walk on up and get him.”  I really wanted to get Jim a shot, but I wasn’t gonna argue about it right then,  so I started up the fire lane towards the grouse.  Rowdy is sitting about a third of the way to the grouse.  I can’t tell if he’s seen the bird or not but he’s just generally excited.  As I passed Rowdy, I reaffirmed “Stay”.  Rowdy really doesn’t want to stay but does. 

I’ve had my eye on the bird all through this, not wanting to lose sight of it.  Now I’m within roughly 30 yards and the bird is getting agitated.  It’s sucked its feathers up tight against its skin and ducked down closer to the ground.  I mount up my Benelli and get the muzzle picture roughly pointed at the bird and walk maybe 5-10 yards closer.  There are dense brushy woods immediately to the left and a fairly wide shooting zone to the right out over a fairly large bramble thicket on the right edge of the two track.

Finally, the grouse has had enough of the tension filled milieu and flushes to the right, over the road and brambles, just as I’d hoped.  I track the muzzle picture out ahead of the bird, fire once and I’ve either hit the bird or it dives into the brambles. 

Seconds later, Rowdy gallops bye and goes straight to the brambles and begins beating around looking for the bird.  Suddenly, his head dives into the thicket, his tail is sticking straight up, flagging frantically.  He comes up out of the brambles and he has the bird by its breast.  The bird is dead, but beating its wings spasmodically.  The lower wing is drumming on Rowdy’s chest and the upper wing is whapping his eyes and forehead.  Rowdy can’t see where he’s going but majestically ignores the indignity and proudly trots over to me and gives me the bird.  Jim and I tell him “Good dog”, scratch his ears and begin walking down the two track again. 

About 200 or 300 yards later, Rowdy stops beating around in the popples to the left of the two track and comes barreling straight-out to the road.  As he hits the edge, he flushes another grouse that flies across the road but we are way too slow and don't shoot.  Not long after that the fire lane climbs 10’ or so up out of grouse habitat and I called Ann to come get us. 

Just east of that fire lane - maybe a mile away - is another two track I’ve scouted out that leads out to a bear baiting station in the woods.  We go through the same procedure, get out of the SAV, leave Ann to come pick us up later, tell Rowdy to “Hunt!” and begin walking the ¾ mile trail.  Again, we aren’t out of sight of Ann when Rowdy bounces up a grouse on the left edge of the two track.  The trail leads down a hill. There is a sharp drop off down into the thicket below us on the left.  On our near left is a stand of 10-year-old popples growing out of the side of the drop off.  Jim is to my left and I’m closer to the bird. 

I really wanted to get Jim a bird, but he’s way out of position and I’m the one with the shot.  I manage to uncradle my gun, track the bird and shoot just before it bends around to my left behind the popple trees out over the thicket.  Again, it either dives down into the thicket or I’ve hit it.  I can’t tell which.  Rowdy runs straight to the place where I’ve marked the fall and disappears in the thicket.  As I stand there wondering if I hit it, Rowdy proudly trots out with the bird in his mouth and gives it to me. 

Ann is standing next to the SAV back up the hill yelling “Yay!” which gives me an idea.  During training, I have taught Rowdy to take bumpers back to Ann to make things go quicker.  So, I scratch his ears, tell him what a good dog he is and then hold the bird out in front of his nose.  “Hold!” He grabs the bird and sits there.  I point up at Ann and say “Take it to Mom!” and sure as the world, he trots up the road, runs around behind Ann and heels up to her command.  “Give” and now my bride has a bloody dead grouse in her hands.  Success!  She’s giving me a wifely look that says, “Why do I have this bird?” 

“Put it in the back of the SAV!”  I get a disgusted "Ok..."

We turn back down the hill.  Rowdy found us another bird about 10 minutes later that we were too slow to shoot. I called Ann to come get us and we posed for the picture above.

So, in about two hours of morning hunting, Jim, Ann and I managed to find four grouse, bag two of them and just have a great time in the bright, cold sunshine.  A 50% grouse harvest rate is about as good as anyone can expect hunting with a flushing retriever.  It was, quite simply, the best two hours of hunting with Rowdy yet. 

On that happy note, I remain,

Dad/Geoff

The First Woodcock of '21

 

 "They also serve who only stand and wait." ~ John Milton, When I Consider

 Gentle Readers and Loved Ones,

Another Rowdy hunting story from two weeks ago - three days into Woodcock season. 

Roughly last Thanksgiving, Jaybo and I picked up a brand-new Ranger from the East Bethel Polaris dealership.

 

Rowdy and the SAV

We spent the spring putting a roof and a windshield on it and it’s a much more usable way to get around the trails up near the cabin.  I’ve been trying – with little success – to get the family to call it the “Sylvan Assault Vehicle” (SAV).

The SAV has allowed Rowdy and I to get into some really great game bird covers that we couldn’t get to with my truck.  We got our first woodcock of the year just three days into the season in one of them. 

There is a creek that winds through the public land north of the cabin.  The snowmobile/trail crosses over the creek and near that bridge is really cool little area.  There is a high sandy bluff surrounded on three sides by the creek and a smallish pond the creek makes.  At the edge of this peninsula is a ring of young popples growing out of the black, loamy sandy soil.  It’s a wormy woodcock nirvana.  The locals have worn an infrequently walked trail that winds around the peninsula through the popples.  It appears to be a duck hunter cover too.

Rowdy and I took this trail and had walked roughly a quarter of mile when he suddenly stopped and disappeared in the foliage.  Today, the leaves are almost all gone but two weeks ago it was still very leafy and he was hard to see.  I thought he’d disappeared behind this light colored log I’m catching glimpses of between the leaves.  I thought it was one of those logs that the pileated woodpeckers tear up exposing the light colored wood.  

I’m just about to beep him and call him back when I suddenly realize the light colored log IS Rowdy.  I move a few steps left to get a better look through the leaves.  He's roughly 15 yards away and just as I realize he’s staring at a spot about 3’ off his nose, the woodcock he’s been holding bounds up and flies over Rowdy’s head making the concurrent whirr and high pitched twitter they make when flushed. 

This is not my video but it’s a great example of the unmistakable sound.  

One of the benefits of my new hearing aids is that I can actually hear the Timberdoodles flushing twitter now. 

The bird safely clears Rowdy.  I’m already tracking and I fire once.  I thought I’d missed.  Rowdy is gone after the bird.  I safe up the gun and reload.  Thinking a bit, I decide to let Rowdy run. Frequently, woodcocks don’t fly far and settle back down.  Maybe Rowdy will stir it up again and this time it’ll fly back toward me for a better shot.  He’s made this happen before.

That’s when I hear Rowdy crashing back through the cover towards me.  I call him over and I’m totally surprised to see he’s got the dead bird in his mouth.  

Freshly delivered Timberdoodle

When we got back to the SAV, I took this really poor selfie….

 

The worst hunting selfie ever

With those happy images, I remain,

Dad/Geoff