Friendship ...... Day 1

"A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair." ~ Samuel Johnson

Gentle Readers and Loved Ones All,

I have been putting off this Gadabout for a few months because – well, I don’t really know how to tie the three days together.  So, what I’m going to do is just show a couple of pictures of the first two days with quick descriptions.  The last day was more “Gadabouty”.

By now you are probably asking, “Geoff, what the deuce are you babbling about?”   Well, you should. 

Al, my roommate back at the Trade School in the 70s is amongst my oldest friends.  Having retired, we have established a yearly tradition.  Every year in late October, Al and his wife Lisa drive over from Bay City to spend a couple of days at the Wisco Cabin.  Late October is when Grouse and Woodcock Season is at full roar.  Al and I spend a couple of days stalking the wily Grouse with Rowdy.  Both years so far, we have not exactly put a ding in the game bird population, but we have a good time. 

I have learned a lot about the grouse habitats around North Burnett County.  Which means that I can put Rowdy in a place that almost always has birds.  Rowdy has really improved at finding birds.  So, we flushed lots of birds, just didn’t bag many.  Grouse are like that.

To the pictures. 

On the first day, Ann and Lisa drove Al and I around in the Ranger. This allowed us to walk out a hunt and get picked up without having to backtrack our walk.  This is a great thing for my aging carcass.  We started off by going to a nice short walk over on Loon Creek.  The creek at this point flows out of Briggs Lake over towards the Minerva Lake Chain.  We got this nice picture.  

Loon Creek looking towards Briggs Lake

We flailed around unsuccessfully for a couple more walks and finally Al got a bird not far on the other side of the creek from that picture above.   

Al and Rowdy and the Grouse.

 I made everyone form up for a picture at the back of the Ranger.  Rowdy mugged for the camera. 

Rowdy gives Ann the Grouse.

 

Roughly a mile east of there is nice little trail that runs the crest of a hill down into the Loon Creek basin.  I really had high hopes for that hunt, but we saw nothing. 

There are birds out there, laughing.

As we drove back up the crest we stopped and got these pictures.    Logging companies really cleaned out this forest about a year ago.  In about 8 years, when the popple stands grow up, it’ll be great grouse cover.  

Standing on the logging slag.

  

Once we got back to the cabin, we started a fire out on the deck, had some adult beverages and swapped some lies.  It was a good time.

 

On that Happy Note, I remain,

Dad/ Geoff.

Canis Latrans

 

   "The dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow" ~  Robert Goddard

Gentle Readers and Loved Ones,

When I was first grounded by heart disease in ‘15, I heard about Coyote Hunting.  (Again, if hunting tales bother you, please stop reading now.) 

When my oldest son, George learned I was “into” coyote hunting he bought me a really interesting book: “Coyote America” , by Dan Flores.

The introduction contains a great notion I will summarize.  You can tell a person’s political leaning by how they pronounce “Coyote”.  If it is “Koy Yo Tay” then they lean left.  If they say: “Ki yoat” then they lean right.  I will return to this notion later in this tale.

Coyote hunting intrigued me because it was something you can do year round.  A little Google-Fu led me to a series of YouTube videos featuring Tony Tebbe and “Predator University”.  He uses dogs to help attract the coyotes.  This intrigued me and I spent hours watching the videos.

Soon, I laid out $100 American for an electronic coyote caller.  Next, I found a cheap camouflage ghillie-ish suit at Gander Mountain on a going out of business rack. I was set! Now fully equipped, I went out into the Wisconsin Wilds filled with enthusiasm to try out my brand-new Small Game license that allowed me to hunt coyotes all year round.  Quickly, I learned that coyotes are smarter than I am and it was extremely unlikely that I would successfully call one to me, much less actually shoot it. 

Soon after that, we got Rowdy and I moved on to learning how to be a bird dog hunter.

That’s one strand of this story.   Here’s the next.

Last week, a friend in NW Iowa called and said “Hey, you wanna come down and hunt pheasants this weekend?”  “Well, heck yeah, I do!” so off we went last Friday.

We worked a lot of fields around Le Mars, Iowa, home of Blue Bunny Ice Cream and Ruba Seed.  Rowdy and I got a lot of good experience working with other hunters.  We expanded our horizons from the closed-in Wisco grouse woods to wide open Iowa.  The actual bird harvest count was not great, but as far as I’m concerned it was a rip-roaring success.  Rowdy and I learned a lot and got some great practical experience.  If we tried a field that had birds in it, Rowdy found them. 

Here’s a picture of the bird we got.

Ryan, Rowdy and the Rooster

 

Here's a picture of nuggets Ryan made:

 But I’ve got a better story to tell than mere pheasant hunting.

Michael found a nice piece of cover that wound up having a lot of birds.  Rowdy did a great job of steadying down and not chasing the hens we flushed.  We flushed a lot of hens. 

The four of us were walking downhill on a nice little drainage ditch between two cornfields.  Rowdy was working the roughly 20-yard-wide ditch hard.  I was really proud of him, he knew exactly what he was doing.   I’m walking out on the hard earth between the corn stalks on the right side.  The younger guys took the hard walk on either side of the grassy cover and I was thankful for that.  Michael is way over on the far left in the other field.

Suddenly Rowdy stops quartering and fixates on a spot about 5’ in front of him.  All of us yell something on the nature of “Look out he’s got one!”  Rowdy lowers his belly to the ground and just freezes not moving.  I’ve seen him do this before when the bird holds to the cover.    

The guys on either side start walking toward the spot just in front of Rowdy to flush the bird.   

Suddenly a face rises up out of the foot high grass and Rowdy is nose to nose with a Coyote!  Everyone yells “Ki Yoat!”  

Rowdy does a 180 and exfiltrates the battle.  The two guys in the middle just light the coyote up.  I don’t have a shot because they are in my line.  There are at least 6 shots.  It was like the Bonnie and Clyde Ambush scene - that dawg didn’t have no chance. 

Rowdy loops around to my left and heels up with being told to.  He’s looking at me like “Reoff?  What in the world do I do now?  You ain’t gonna make me retrieve that thing are you?”

The perspicacious reader will have noted how the other hunters referred to the coyote in the Moment of Truth. They are children of the corn and rooted to the land in the farming business,  There is no doubt where their political leanings lie according to the Flores Criterion.

Here’s the hero pictures.

 

 

 On inspection, the poor dawg had a bunged up back leg.  That's probably why it didn't bolt.  For you gentle readers, running into us probably shortened its sad end-of-life experience.

There is a business in town that pays fairly good beer money for a coyote carcass.  Would you sport a coyote fur collar?

This story alone made my trip.  Now I can honestly say I’ve bagged a coyote over a dog that I trained. 

On that happy note, I remain,

Dad/Geoff