Without bird dogs where would we be? Fly fishing, obviously, but besides that I hate to imagine such a life - birddogless. I also hate to alienate upland hunters who may not be able to keep a dog for any number of sound reasons. So I offer to all such dogless hunters now: you’re welcome to gun over the Setters any time, you’ll never look back! And as an amazing bonus, by their very nature, bird dogs take us to so many different places, keeping us on the move, helping us unravel the mysteries of our journey. It’s actually trapped in the ancient code of their DNA. During their waking hours, wolves are almost always traveling somewhere and they move with purpose.
In retrospect, having a litter of Setter pups right before the season opener, out of our best bird dog no less, was not a great idea if birds in the bag is your measure of ultimate success. But we had waited too long already for her to come into season and had to get it done. For this reason our first trip wasn’t until the last few days of October and our grouse season at home had been limited to local covers. The usual haunts produced birds but with inexperienced, younger dogs our wing shooting opportunities were less consistent.
Four week old pups out of our War Paint, sired by RU CH Erin’s Prometheus, getting a whiff of freshly harvested Ruffed Grouse, taken within just a short walk of our property.
A few days before Halloween we pointed the upland rig north, a new direction for us, loaded with four adult Setters and three, eight week old pups! We were on our way to northern Minnesota where we met up with our compadres Patrick and Phil of Border to Border Outfitters fame. We moved good numbers of Ruffs and shot some birds. The most memorable parts of the trip were spending time with those guys who treated us like family and some amazingly good dog work, maybe the best single brace of Grouse dog work I’ve seen: one of Pat’s good Pointer dogs and of course “the chosen one” - Blaze. As we walked in on one of Blaze’s points I whispered to Pat, “go ahead and shoot over her if you can”. “I’m gonna!”, he replied like he was on a mission. It’s a great feeling to watch a friend who loves to shoot Ruffs and who’s been guiding nearly every day of the season, have a chance to carry his gun and get shots over your best dog. I have no doubt I’ll recall days like these as I’m fading from this life into that great Grouse hunt in the sky where all dogs are staunch and never die.
Patrick Flanagan holding up a Ruffed Grouse that his dog pointed and he dropped but didn’t kill right away. Our Blaze pointed the bird dead under a log for him and retrieved it as it tried to make an escape. These two dogs pointed and honored and complimented each others work as well as any brace of bird dogs I’ve seen.
Since we had to care for a new batch of pups our annual South Dakota Prairie Grouse opener was sorely missed so we planned and schemed and committed ourselves to a late November adventure in Kansas instead! Just as the Wisconsin faithful would be donning blaze orange and climbing into tree stands looking for antlers, we’d be turning our dogs loose in some Kansas CRP! Who really cares about deer hunting anyway!? Bobs and Chickens on the great plains is as good as it gets for us. We also met a new friend, Robert from California and broke bread and told tales. When we meet again we’ll have more time and gun over each other’s Setters. Thanksgiving dinner was baked Quail and Prairie Chicken, mashed potatoes, stuffing and green beans - a meal that we savored and as we shared it we articulated our true thankfulness… for this place, the abundant public access, the wild birds, these dogs that give their lives to hunt for us, our health to continue following them in the uplands and our family of friends who we’ve met there. Yes they’re like a family.
Field to table Thanksgiving Dinner - baked Prairie Chicken and Bobwhite Quail.
Safanad (Erin’s Prometheus x War Paint) at 12 weeks old, checking out a Kansas Prairie Chicken and a Bobwhite Quail taken over the points of her mother, War Paint, just a few hundred yards from each other on the same WIHA property.
With Kansas behind us we were stuck at home and borderline depressed after a few weeks. But our last move would be south toward the borderline and each sunrise brought us closer. We spent two glorious weeks chasing quail in the southwest. Arizona has captured our upland hearts. It’s an unforgiving place to run a bird dog. Expect them to get beat up and impaled on every plant that springs forth from red rock and dust. If the life of a plant begins in the parched crevice of an ancient slab of granite under the desert sun, it’s probably going to evolve some defense mechanisms to deter the herbivore in all of us. Let’s just say if you’re going down, do not reach out for the nearest limb to break your fall! But then a little bit of blood and boot leather will lead you to your own version of upland adventure, stored away in your soul for a day when you can no longer make it to a place like this, like no other place you can dream of in the uplands. One of our dogs, Roadee was going hard in Gambels country and took a mesquite thorn in the bottom of her pad that worked up all the way out through the top of her toe. As usual, Katie noticed it first and pulled it. We hunted her a couple more hours then drank Mexican beers from a can, gazing at a desert sunset bursting with color over a horizon of mountain peaks and a hint of Gambels Quail calling in the breeze. Is that your upland heaven? For a few moments it was ours.
Desert Sun setting on a perfect day of hunting.
Roadee on Gambels Quail.
There were three states visited and lots of lessons learned during the 2018 season. We’ll try to cover even more ground this year: South Dakota, Montana, Kansas, definitely Arizona and maybe even Oklahoma. Some of what sticks in my memory from this past season is… shooting well, then shooting very poorly, watching a young dog mature into a bird finding machine, meeting new friends who love bird dogs and the uplands as much as we do, raising six beautiful pups, Katie shooting her first Ruff over a Blaze point, far too many moments to list. But now it’s time to leave it to memory and dream of new uplands. I know the Setters are doing just that, snoring here at my feet.
Ruffed Grouse, Prairie Chicken, Woodcock - a selection of this season’s bounty, brought to us by our public lands, classic American double guns and field bred Setters.