We were delighted to get a photo from Kurt and a very tired Ginger down in Georgia, her first mountain ruffed grouse lying in state on the truck tailgate. Ginger is a 2017 puppy out of Dixie by Parker, a precocious young thing who got a great start last year on her very first trip to the Lake States, handling both grouse and woodcock. Kurt wrote at that time, "Today the light switch came on. I killed two grouse and a woodcock over three solid points today. She has hunted her little tail off.
“These (Blizzard’s Huntmore) dogs have natural birdiness in the woods. (Ginger) pointed (Michigan) grouse and woodcock at 5-6 months. I did nothing other than socialize and take her hunting!”
But Appalachian grouse (and sometimes woodcock) are birds of a different feather. This came toward the end of her second season: "Went grouse hunting last Friday and had six flushes. Ginger pointed three, and I got a shot at one. (W)oodcock today...gave her fits. (It was) really, really thick and they were running. You would have to crawl to a point, but it was fun. Ginger is coming along fine.
A setter's first grouse taken over a solid point is a sweet moment in time, a celebration. If you hunt the eastern highlands for your birds, as we have, you probably remember what it was like when your youngster finally made game for the gun.
No doubt you remember the miles pushing briar and brush. The heavy slogs along the edges of alder tangles. Trying to navigate the dog to the downwind side of steep slopes laden with grapevines. Bearing up under the turkey chases, the deer hegiras, the empty points on a hot spot, trying to be patient while your dog is learning to stay found, to stay in front, slowly figuring out that she can check in without coming all the way in, learning that she really does want to stay in contact and hunt as a team…
Then there are the long days of low (or no) bird numbers. Wild flushes. Grouse bumped from exuberance, inexperience, or sometimes just plain bad luck. Reminding yourself over and over that getting a young dog started on ruffed grouse, particularly in our Appalachian highlands is one part faith, one part plain cussedness built around the notion that every arch-straining step, every briar cut, every brush whip, every leg wrenching, wind-busting climb to better cover, always looking for better cover, is one step closer to the stuff of dreams born back when that puppy first trundled into the woods.
Of course in our dreams, when that first productive point finally comes, we have time and terrain to come around in toward the dog, building confidence in her to stay put while the Boss does what he’s done a thousand times in his or her reveries. The bird holds until our feet are planted, the gun that’s been so useless for so long is in a good ready position so that when the grouse lifts into the single open spot in the dense stand of tulip poplars, the shot breaks as an after-thought. Of course the bird folds cleanly and bounces dead into that clearing where the maiden-no-more puppy can dance in, scoop it up, and bring it directly to hand.
Sometimes it goes just like that.
Most times, though, we hear the bell go silent or the beeper begin to tone “point,” at some distance, and the first traitorous act is to just stand there and listen. We’ve been disappointed before, and the dog is on the strip mine flat just above, a hand over hand climb that, if there is a bird, will probably touch it off.
We huff up on the dog holding on a dense stretch of rhododendron running through a deadfall tree top broken down the highwall slope. So crowded is the narrow flat that there’s nothing for it but to walk in past the stand, bushes clawing at the heavy brush pants. You hiss a caution to the dog, hoping the single caution will keep her from being tolled along.
You muscle in well beyond the dog. Nothing. You walk a quick arc to the end of the run. Nothing. But lordy she’s in a trance, flews quivering, the heat from that point enough to set the woods floor ablaze, and you can’t help but admire that beautiful dog you’ve raised from a weanling and you’re starting to walk back in, sure that the bird has given her the slip, when all heaven breaks loose from the dropped tree top, grouse thunder rolling up out of the ground behind you, just on the lip of the flat.
You turn, and though you know better, you don’t wait to set up, and the first shot at the first grouse your dog has finally nailed isn’t even close, primarily because the stock of the gun never makes it even close to your face.
But you’re locked on to the bird now as he careens down the flat. Your hands take over, the gun lifts up under your right cheekbone, moving through the mount. The second shot breaks and connects… just about where you should have taken the first one!
The dog had bounced three jumps at the flush. When the bird cartwheels and tumbles down the edge of the flat, she’s off.
She marks it short from where you saw it drop and goes to ground, tearing up woods duff in hard beagle mode, back and forth in frenzied dashes. Reluctant to track up the fall, you ease down the same slope you climbed to the point, urging her on.
Fear and doubt rise like bile. This is one grouse you absolutely cannot lose, and now you’re talking too much, trying to give directions she’s not trained to take, babbling like an idiot.
Finally, you shut up, and her search widens. When she happens downwind of a jumble of rocks and brush, her head snaps to and she freezes twenty yards below you.
You are sidehilling in an arc, hopefully to pin the bird between you and the dog when the bird struggles out from the rock pile, and the chase is on, your puppy breaking, pouncing, skidding downhill before finally mouthing the bird between her paws.
The broken-winged bird gets free once, then once again before the dog gets a better hold, makes the pick and…suddenly has not a single, solitary clue about what to do next.
By this time, you are trying to find a reasonably level place to stand, moving away, willing the dog to follow, listening for the bell to at least SEEM to draw closer.
Nope. She’s searching for something, and suddenly you realize that what she really wants to do is bury that bird. She considers three different spots for internment before you drop to one knee, the empty gun open over your lap.
Even from twenty yards away, you can see a light spark in dark eyes crinkled over a mouthful of red-phase ruffed grouse; now you’re the magnet as if you were back in those months-ago puppy fetch sessions down the bedroom hallway at home, and just like that she’s there with her grouse.
You let her hold it for a bit while you tell her she is the very finest Longhaired Amalgamated Pot Licking Kentucky Grouse Hound in the Milky Way galaxy. One hand on the collar, you lift a silky ear and puff air. The bird drops…just as it did forty years ago from Jessie then Drummer, Arran and Dusk and Captain, Fancy and Pete and Dixie and Eli…and suddenly there’s something in your eye, and you call yourself a fool as you heave back up on your feet.
Bird stowed in your game pocket, you spend ten seconds thinking about toting that L.A.P.L.K. G. Hound back uphill to where she originally pointed the bird, there to set her back up on “whoa” and admire her just a bit while both of you reboot, as folks say these days. After all, she broke at flush, something you thought you had worked through more than a month ago.
But there’s only about an hour left before dusk and a few minutes more than that to the truck. Accepting that you're a sorry excuse for a dog trainer, you heel her for a dozen yards instead, then make that dog that you would now not trade for love nor treasure “whoa,” before whistling her on. There’s good cover between here and there and just enough day - and faith - to hunt it on out.