September marks a change in seasons with shorter days, doves flitting back and forth from field to water to roost, and grouse flushing over dogs. Come sundown, there’s a nip in the air that’s been missing since April, one that tells you fall is on the way.. If you’re a waterfowler, you count the days until the opener, but, like a kid anticipating Christmas, it could just as well be a year away because time moves slowly when it meets anticipation. September weather can be brutally hot but drop below freezing at night. But September is also the month that determines for many, just where they fit into this whole thing.
Dee and I have been getting ready for September. She’s a pointing Lab, though she doesn’t know she’s a dog, and has become my best pal, though it’s clear she likes Dar better. Anyway we walk a couple of miles together on an almost daily basis so that come opening day of South Dakota’s prairie grouse season, we’ll both be in decent shape. I’ve had a year or two when I wasn’t, and considering how much I love to hunt, that’s pretty stupid. The walks are good for both of us and I get a kick out of watching her, nose glued to the ground as she moves at breakneck speed. The area we hike is wooded with plenty of rabbits, which she pays no attention to during bird seasons, but they get her attention this time of year when she has no pheasants to hunt. It reminds me of Aldo Leopold and his dog Gus, who if there were no quail or grouse, would point meadowlarks. Hunters are like that too. If we don’t have much to hunt, we’ll take what’s available.
Consider Byron Dalrymple, an old time Texas outdoor writer and a story he wrote back when I was a lad. He advocated hunting grasshoppers with .22 rimfire birdshot, noting that it was good practice for wingshooting. I can see the challenge but wasn’t surprised it never caught on. On the other hand, if you live in Texas where fee hunting for oil company executives is the norm, and you’re an ordinary working stiff, grasshoppers with birdshot might become your meadowlark
I always open the hunting season with a trip or two for doves. Dee will retrieve doves, but doesn’t like the taste of them. But there are other things she doesn’t like. Like water. Imagine a Lab that doesn’t like water. But she does like pheasants, a trait she inherited from her Mother, Jewel, and watching this pair hunt together is pure joy. Jewel is a little better at pointing and retrieving but should be because she’s older. But when it comes to finding birds, I think Dee and her Mom are about equal.
Is there a hunting dog owner who doesn’t say that without one, he’d probably not hunt birds? I don’t think so. I guess I’d do it, just not as much or as enthusiastically.
Yet, there’s more than watching good bird dog work that keeps us going out there. I love waterfowl hunting, even if Dee can’t swim a lick. And how about deer hunting? I sure don’t need a dog for that.
Point is, hunting isn’t so much about putting meat in the freezer as it is the chase, and you either love it or you don’t. I feel for those hunters who live in the Eastern United States. If they want to hunt, the only option these days is a game farm. After a while, I guess some even begin to call it hunting. Nothing against game farms or preserves, but I fear that if we keep abusing land and water the way we do, they’ll be the only option for keeping the hunting tradition alive. And like Leopold’s dog, hunters will settle for something lesser if it’s all that remains. Fishing has its parallels too. There aren’t nearly as many wild trout in the East as you’ll find in Montana or even the Black Hills, and anyone who’s had the opportunity to fish both, knows the considerable difference between wild fish and hatchery stock. But when wild fish are gone, usually because of poor water quality, most fishermen will settle for stockers.
I really believe that within most of us, there is a built-in desire to hunt. My late friend, Dave, who passed away a year ago, certainly had that urge, as well as congenital heart disease. He bought a chocolate lab pup, did a good job of training her, and hunted nearly every day during his last autumn on Earth. That he road hunted seems moot today, but hell, that was all he could do. His heart was so bad that even a few steps had him gasping for air. Yet his love for the chase was huge, and he went out everyday, knowing that he could drop dead at any time. When I’d point that out, he’d smile, shrug his shoulders, and say, “Can you provide a better scenario in which to go than with my shotgun in my hands and my dog about to deliver a rooster?”
Then there’s Dr. Bob, my friend from Sioux Falls, who spent most of his life as a thoracic surgeon, whatever that is. Bob is 80 but he’ll walk most of us into the ground. To imagine western South Dakota without Dr. Bob and his Brittanies chasing after prairie grouse each autumn would be like seeing an empty Yankee Stadium during the World Series. But even the good doctor is showing some signs of age. He now walks only about 15 miles a day instead of 20.
Carl, my friend from Brookings, spent a lifetime managing wetlands and prairie for waterfowl and other wildlife and his passion for hunting ducks is unsurpassed. He has no trouble setting priorities.
“If I ever get the call from my Doctor telling me I have only a short time left, I don’t care what time of the year it is, I’m going duck hunting.”
Even if it’s July, I asked?
“Any time,” he answers.
He means it.
Then there’s Dave from Duluth, who suffered a high school football injury that’s had him limping on a gimpy knee for as long as I’ve known him. Yet, an autumn season does not go by without a call telling me he needs his prairie fix. He’s going to be here for a couple weeks and would I care to join him in a nice walk through the cattail marshes in search of ringnecks? Dave’s 67 now but won’t admit it because to do so would mean he should be slowing. Ever try to tell an old pheasant hunter to slow down?
Kay was my wife’s hunting bud, a jovial redhead who discovered deer hunting late in life, but once she did, plunged into it in a big way. She became the official deer license deadline-reminder for our group, which consisted of the four of us, the girls and we spouses. She’d remind us of the date applications were due. And I’m not sure she didn’t forge my signature on an application or two when I was out of town. She and Dar would hunt every deer season for which they were eligible; gun or archery, and were usually hunting during the late deer depredation seasons that often went into January.
I introduced her to deer hunting on Farm Island, a wonderful peninsula along the Missouri River that Pierre’s growth has managed to nullify in that you can no longer hunt there with a gun, thanks to some bureaucrats at Game, Fish & Parks. Unjustifiably, I’d add. because you could hunt it safely with shotgun slugs or with a muzzleloader, or a centerfire rifle. The closure put an end to the opportunity to hunt the only place in central South Dakota where you could enjoy a timber setting. I miss that hunt greatly, and if she were alive, she’d be lobbying to open it. And why not? That’s where we scattered her ashes.
I remember her at a gathering at our home. She’d just met a lady, and I can still hear her asking, “You don’t hunt?” as though she couldn’t imagine another woman not carrying a gun or bow each fall.
That’s how it is. You do or you don’t, and I don’t associate with many of the latter. So, what it is about this sport that makes it so much a part of the lives of so many of us?
I think heredity has a lot to do with it, not just hunting with our folks, but something deeper than that. The late Frankie Heidelbauer talked about it one day.
“I think we’ve all got a little of the cave man in us,” he said,his eyes twinkling, and face melting into a sly grin. “When I see ducks or geese headed my way, I feel them in every fiber, every muscle. I shake, I tingle, and I think I feel exactly what those cave dwellers must have felt when they were creeping up on a woolly mammoth. They may have hunted out of necessity, but I damn well think they had a good time while doing it.”
I know that feeling and I bet you do too.
I feel it when I’m laying on my back in a stubble field or a blind in the cattails and mallards are circling overhead at the first hint of grey in the east. It’s still too dark to discern colors, but the silhouettes are there and so is the sound of whistling wings. Ironically, while I still feel that tingle, I no longer suffer from buck fever; something I think tends to come with age and experience. Yes, my heart will beat a little faster and the tingle will get a little tinglier, but when it comes time to slap or squeeze the trigger, there’s no panic. I do it with great confidence and am surprised when my target doesn’t fall. Like many older hunters, I have become a better shot with the passing of each year, and I think there are explainable reasons for that. Among them is patience, a bit more wisdom and no longer feeling that we have to shoot piles of things to prove manhood.
Yes, I know some hunters never grow past that stage.
Sometimes we fall into the trap of specializing, getting hung on a certain type of hunting that we exclude all else. Or we ignore game birds or animals that are highly prized elsewhere. Consider the lowly cottontail, America’s number one small game animal. Put all else aside for a moment. Is there another game bird or animal that can match the wonderful flavor of pan-fried cottontail? What? You’ve never tasted cottontail? I guess I’m not surprised if you grew up in the Dakotas. Try it this fall. Kill a rabbit, skin it, remove the innards, and place it in a cooler. When you get home, cut the bunny into four pieces. Dredge them in seasoned flour and fry until they’re golden brown. Then sink your teeth into the finest of all upland game. It’s a lot like chicken only better and the only game that surpasses ruffed grouse. It took me eight years in Iowa, where the hunting isn’t nearly what it is here in the Dakotas, to realize why so many American hunters seek out rabbits. Tell ya when cottontail hunting will become popular in the Dakotas. It’ll happen when we have nothing else to hunt. And all dogs other than Beagles will be pointing meadowlarks.
Doves provide another example. If you were to venture into almost any southern state when the dove season is underway, you’d be amazed at the numbers of hunters. That’s partly because aside from deer and turkey, which are everywhere these days, in much of the nation there’s not much to hunt. But in spite of the hassle in getting a dove season in the Dakotas, I’m betting we don’t have 15,000 dove hunters in both states. Now watch what’ll happen in Minnesota where all they have to hunt are deer, turkeys, and ruffed grouse every decade or so. Minnesota will be looking at their first dove season this fall and the odds are good that there’ll be a lot of hunters participating there. And you know why.
They’re practicing their own style of pointing meadowlarks.
But that’s ok, because it’ll keep the hunting spirit alive, something clay or paper targets will never accomplish because that’s mere shooting. To some, the game of owning shotguns or rifles is shooting things. But to the rest, it’s more about hunting. And I guess on that basis, you can justify shooting gophers, prairie dogs, crows, or coyotes, none of which I do. Nothing against you doing it, I just can’t see the point in it.
About a decade ago, I was deer hunting in the Cave Hills and shot a coyote. I was waiting for deer when the coyote suddenly appeared. It was a long shot, maybe 275 yards, the kind you brag about later. Without thinking, I put the crosshairs on the coyote, and squeezed the trigger. It dropped, then wobbled a few yards and dropped again. When I walked up to the coyote, it was dead, but before dying, it had drug about 10 feet of entrails through the prairie grass. It wasn’t pretty, and for the first time in many years, I had shot something we weren’t going to eat. And I did it just because I was there, the coyote was there, and I could. I didn’t like that feeling. There was a time in my hunting life when I’d have shot anything that moved, assuming it was legal, a need I don’t feel anymore.
Shane Mahoney, the Canadian wildlife biologist who excels at telling stories, once said no two types of people are so closely tied as the avid hunter and the rabid anti-hunter.
“That’s because up until a single act on the part of one, they share the same excitement, the same passion, and the same love of things wild and free. They differ only with respect to pulling the trigger.”
Meanwhile, Dee chases dummies when I toss them, but not with the same enthusiasm she shows when she smells “Rooster.” For a bird dog, that odor must be intoxicating. Give her a whiff and everything changes. She turns instant alert, nose to the ground, following that magic smell wherever it takes her.
By early September, I’ll have already received my annual phone call from Dr. Bob of thoracic surgery and prairie grouse fame.
“What’s it like for grouse on the grasslands,” he’ll ask, “and are they still letting those damned dog trainers out there?” Bob trains his own dogs on pigeons he keeps in a shed at his spacious home in southeast Sioux Falls, but he’s dead set against professional trainers coming in with truckloads of dogs, working them on wild grouse on public lands. He thinks it spooks the birds and may take some other tolls we don’t understand. I know some biologists agree with him, and I find myself feeling pretty much that way too. Regardless, the Game, Fish & Parks Department is doing a study, closing some areas to dog training and opening others. At the end of a few years, they’ll make a decision. I understand the need for hard evidence, I guess, but aren’t there some things about wildlife that should just come from the gut?
Anyway, the Fort Pierre National Grasslands look magnificent this year. Rain came just in time and there’ll be good residual cover going into the coming winter. But how unlike these Grasslands are from the prairie grouse country I wondered as a young man in Morton County, ND. While the Fort Pierre National Grasslands are mostly flat, with only mild grades devoid of woody vegetation, the Morton county prairie rolls, and nearly every hillside is covered with buffalo berry bushes. On a warm fall day, that’s where you find sharptails. In South Dakota, the cover is different and the grass is a little taller. But there’s a common denominator. There’s a plant out there that my friend, “Wickerbill” calls “lettuce.” I don’t know its scientific name but I have learned that wherever I find it, I usually also find sharptails and prairie chickens. I finally began to realize that birds and fish are a lot alike. Find the food and you’ll find either.
My Dad thought there was no better bird than the prairie grouse, and he could have been talking about hunting or dining on them. He came by that love naturally. There’s a photo in an old family album of his Dad, my Grandfather Zacheus, standing alongside an old Ford with a couple others, and dead grouse hanging everywhere. All three gents are wearing ties and baggy trousers, which I’m told, were fashionable then, especially while hunting. I remember Dad telling how, when grouse flushed, Grandpa would get down on one knee and fire both barrels of his shotgun, and Dad said he rarely missed. Not bad for a college professor from France who spoke six languages but married a barely literate German-Russian peasant girl. He died when my Dad was just 14, but he passed those hunting genes down through his family, and for that, I’m grateful.
They’ll come in handy in September.
But the bottom line is we have to take care of our grass and water, for that’s what provides us with the habitat base to support the grouse, pheasants, deer, doves, ducks, and yes, even rabbits. To do otherwise is to admit we’re willing to point meadowlarks.
