A journal and memories afield

Perhaps its because I am getting older. Not old mind you, but of an age where I can feel my own mortality as a reality and no longer the nearly indestructible man I  have been since crawling under the catwalk of the Queen City Bridge picking pigeons while in the second grade.

Perhaps because the new vantage point makes me wonder how many more dogs I have time to love. Maybe this is why I’ve been thinking about the four legged friends of the past and has me of late, looking back at some journal entries of times afield and the evidences in them of how amazing these dogs are…to us.

I will leave Vincent the Magnificent the kayaking, rock climbing, bank dog, Golden Retriever and Connor the chocolate lab and my first grouse dog, for another time. I did not have the foresight to keep any journals of those days—although many memories still shine clear and bright.

I did keep a daily journal intermittently of some adventures my first setter Tucker and I have had together and it is those I have been looking back to. Tucker has aged as I have. He will be 13 come September. If the old saw is true—that a year to us is 7 years to a dog, he is now 84 plus years old. That beats my age of 63 by a good bit. If I am doing as well as he is at 84, I will have done very well indeed. He will still hunt all day, if I were to let him. Oh, his rear wheels would give out under him a few times in uneven terrain and he would be a very sore and lame pup for a couple days, but his heart will not have faltered nor his desire to hunt.

Tucker is a Llewellin English Setter. Tri-colored out of Little River Kennel in Alton, NH. He is a bird dog and my friend and partner.

In his early puppy training, he was a quick learner. That yard work stuff where an owner first gets to interact with his dog in a way that makes for both frustration, impatience and pride. Tucker learned to walk at heal and whoa on spaced out 3’x3’ plastic squares—he learned both at the same time walking at heel and then when reaching and standing on a square, he learned that whoa meant stop and stay put. The squares seemed to help communicate the stay here part. It didn’t take long.

He learned a disdain for pen raised quail because he could catch them when they flushed after the point. That was more my fault than his. Stronger flying pheasant and chucker cured him, but it was wild birds that brought out the bird dog in him. Just as it should be.

One of my earliest entries involved a young puppy before his first hunting season finding a grouse that wasn’t a grouse. It was a dusting grouse spot recently vacated by a grouse. Nevertheless, it was a moment for celebration.

Another– while out with a trainer helping us both to understand the setter dog game, Tucker happened to find himself on the opposite side of a small pond. Garret suggested that I call him to me. I did and Tucker swam a beeline across that pond directly to me. Garret opined that Tucker was a prodigy. I smiled a lot. Tucker forgot the trick sometime over the next few years.

A wonderfully strange and comical event took place the following year in Tucker’s first full season. He chased a woodcock around a small tree clump several times before that woodcock flew. I was fortunate enough to shoot him. He may have been dizzy. True story. He chased the bird around and around like a train on a circular track.

That was the first and the last time that he ever chased a woodcock. Tucker loved woodcock and discovered that it was much more fun to point them and enjoy a snoot full for as long as possible—at times that would be long indeed.

One day in ‘Mossy Cover’, before the adoption of tracking devices, we relied strictly on a bell to know the whereabouts of a pup in thick cover. Mossy Cover is a low area filled with vernal pools, fallen trees, ferns and alders. A cover that holds some grouse and local woodcock as well as being a happy hunting ground for flight birds. A wonderful and almost magical place that Tucker and I enjoyed. Tucker was in his second season and beginning to get the idea of things birdy. His bell stopped ringing this morning and because it was such thick cover, I had lost knowing just where he was. I called and called and searched until finally my eye caught sight of his tail through the alders and ferns. That sickle tail of his has enough white in the feathers to make the seeing a bit easier. It had been a good ten minutes of looking and there he was locked up on a woodcock. He had never been more than 40 yards from me and could hear me calling him all the time. I walked in and his eyes sort of rolled over to briefly communicate his semi-sorrow at ignoring me at the same time saying—look Dad. Look there. Though I was a bit worked up over the searching, I moved in to kick the bird up and connected for my partner. It fell into a wet area of moss and fern and Tucker found it, picked it up and shortly dropped it again. Such was his way with woodcock. He would hunt dead, pick it up and if feeling charitable, would carry it a few steps and never much more toward me before dropping it.

Tucker’s first grouse was later in that same year on a mid-November afternoon. It was one of those damp, cold gray days over at ‘Apple Barn Cover’. The ground under foot was tangled briars that require careful walking. I had raised my eyes about the time Tucker’s bell quieted to find him pointing with head and tail high. Even then, this more often than not meant the quarry was not a woodcock. He was fixed on a point about 30 yards ahead to an old apple tree fairly covered in grape vines. I didn’t quite get to Tucker before that grouse rocketed out to the right and low. We still have that tail fan. The thing about grouse falls and Tucker is a reluctance to immediately give them up—such a treasure they are to him. He has not changed since that day.

Its funny how a man’s memory works and which memories burn the deepest. One sunny October morning, with or without the aid of the journal– a morning that seems forever etched on my mind. It was a gorgeous morning with dry crunchy leaves underfoot walking into the cover. Named later for the morning. We had had an hours worth of flushing grouse in nearly impossible to walk cover and were both a bit tired, thirsty and hungry. We decided to stop just this side of a stone wall in a tiny clearing to sit on a broad gently arced rock that rises just a bit above surrounding grass. Sun was streaming through an opening above and Tucker and I sat together there and enjoyed a drink and a shared sandwich. He was content to set and soak it all up—it seemed, just as I was. Leaning on my shoulder, I can still feel his warmth and gratitude. Lunch Rock Cover. We have returned there many times since.

One afternoon of a late October day while walking along a trail that connects two portions of a favorite area, Tucker got birdy and pointed toward a stone wall to our right. A moment later he moved about 10 yards down and crossed over the stone wall and locked up solid pointing right at me. There he had pinned a grouse against the stone wall between us. To his chagrin, I missed that grouse when it flushed and actually that wasn’t the first time that same bird eluded us in such a fashion—never Tucker’s fault. He knew his business.

There are many more days shared afield alone and with friends and other dogs. We have many stories to tell of our time together. We are not quite done yet. Two dogs have passed during his twelve and a half years and we have a new pup, now.

Tucker has slowed some and so have I…

~ by John McGranaghan on January 21, 2019.