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A Brief Autumn's Passage by Steven MulakA BRIEF AUTUMN’S PASSAGE:A Season of Bird Dogs and Upland Dreams
A Brief Autumn’s Passage is the best book I have written, or, for that matter, ever expect to write. The book is widely advertised as a grouse-hunting book, but, in truth, I wrote it to show how anyone with a little time and patience can train a hunting dog in a very short time. I used the format of an entire season afield—a single brief autumn—to illustrate the system I use, a.k.a. “the shotgun method.” It is two stories combined and told over the course of a hunting season. The first and most obvious story is the training of Hanna, who starts the season as a seven-and-a-half month old puppy and is a finished bird dog by season’s end. The reader is with me on every day of the season, looking over my shoulder as I train Hanna and experience the disappointments and the triumphs, both great and small, that are all part of the progression that is dog training. The other story is that of hunting an old dog in her last season. That’s Stella’s story, and once in each chapter I spend a day with my 12-year-old setter. This part of the story is a seminar in adjusting to and enjoying an older dog. Of course, the two stories are intertwined. I like to say that I’ve included everything I ever learned about working with bird dogs in this book, and so far haven’t had reason to retract that statement. In Brief Autumn the reader learns a great deal about training and enjoying bird dogs, but he’s along, too, as I meet people and explore coverts and make and miss shots and thoroughly enjoy an autumn of bird hunting in New England. As with my other titles, this book is available from the publisher, Countrysport/Down East. I’ve also seen it for sale in a dozen places on line and at the Orvis store and at Kittery Trading Post, (Not at L.L. Bean, though. I’ve never seen any of my stuff in the book section Bean’s, in spite of all the good things I have to say about that company.) If you’d like an autographed copy, please contact me. As often as not, people buy books for someone else, and I’ve been asked to write something nice about that person in the flyleaf. I’m always glad to do that sort of thing.
Below are three excerpts from Brief Autumn. The first is from the puppy’s first day afield. The second is from her tenth outing, when she’s starting to figure out what hunting is all about, and the last is from November first, five weeks into her training.
Excerpt from “Just Potential”: The most important bird you’ll ever shoot for a puppy is the very first one, but since woodcock won’t be legal game for another few days, that’ll have to wait. We’re passing through a stand of alders that I refer to in my journals as The Woodcock Flats. There on the ground immediately in front of me are two white puddles of woodcock crap. I whistle to Hanna and call her in, intent on getting her a nose-full of fresh scent. As she makes her way to me she runs into the very woodcock that made the puddles. The bird bounces up from under her chin and twitters away through the leafy tops of the alders. I point the gun overhead and shoot to make some noise. Hanna stares after the bird for a moment, then becomes a runaway vacuum cleaner focused on scooping up all the scent left behind by the woodcock in it’s wanderings on the fallen leaves. I put the gun aside and take hold of her collar and lead her to the spot where the bird took off. There’s something called standing the dog up, which amounts to holding the dog’s head and tail as if she were on point. I wait until she’s stopped squirming, then tell her to “Hut” while I push on her rear end. Although there are contradictory commands—a verbal “hut” and a physical “go ahead”—in response, a small predictable miracle happens. Hanna points. I step away from her, and she softens and looks back at me. “Go ahead,” I tell her, and she returns to her vacuum cleaner imitation. How can I not grin?
Excerpt from “Indian Summer”: The day is more cloud than blue sky, very bright when the sun finds a seam in the cumulous clouds to pop through, but then too dark for sunglasses when the clouds cover the sun again. Under the beeches the light itself is yellow when the sunlight makes the overhead leaves glow incandescently, then the same leaves shade the bright sky when the sun passes back behind the clouds again. At the edge of some alders along the top of the hillside, Hanna almost has a point on a woodcock. When she starts to work scent, I encourage her to go ahead and she busts the bird. I bring her back and stand her up, showing her what she should have done. Would she have pointed that bird if I had left her alone? On my first couple attempts the young man that used to be me created two successive false-pointing Brittanys by encouraging caution-in-extreme whenever they found scent. That was a mistake. Now I encourage boldness. Of course birds are going to get bumped before any puppy can discover the right combination that makes for productive points. There is a William Blake adage that says, “You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough?” Hanna’s pointing instinct keeps trying to kick in. She just needs to be shown how to handle it.
Excerpt from “All Saints’ Day”: We work the slope of the far valley. The brook is downhill to the left, and above me to the right the hemlocks grow thick before the land flattens out into open woods. In this otherwise apple-less year there are a few fallen apples under the trees along the hillside. They’re nothing a human would bother with — little, wizened buggy things — but wild animals aren’t fussy. The flesh of the punky apples has turned brown where they’ve been sampled, and a few are showing creamy white, indicating something has been at them within the past five minutes. A lot of creatures eat fallen apples, but these seem to be pecked rather than gnawed. I’ve no sooner reached an obvious conclusion than Hanna strikes scent and works upslope. A hen grouse gets up well in front of her and heads over the hemlocks. The bird is out too far for a shot, but the gun is halfway to my shoulder as I watch the bird depart. Before it is out of sight a roll of thunder announces a second bird, this one a cock with a steel-gray tail maybe twenty-five yards to the front. I fire more quickly than needed, and the bird seems to be to the left of my aim at the shot. He continues on, apparently un-hit. I say something through my teeth that I’d rather not repeat, but then the bird does something weird. Instead of following the hen over the hemlocks and out of sight, he veers to the left and down hill toward the brook where the cover is more open. When grouse react as a pair they have a natural reluctance to fly in the same airspace. It may be a strategy to confuse predators and insure that at least one will survive. (It’s also the reason chances for doubles are so rare.) But this was strange — grouse try to screen themselves from ground predators, and this bird didn’t. His partner behaved normally, but the cock slid downhill in plain sight. Did I hit him? I take a good look around to verify my bearings. We’ll look for the hen grouse later. For now I whistle to Hanna and we start down toward the brook and after the cock. There are some still-leafy oaks here, although the leaves have all turned a color reminiscent of a vanilla caramel still wrapped in cellophane. Hanna casts ahead of me at a run as we near the brook, then she downshifts and narrows her search and as quickly as I can say it she reels into a point. She’s still firm when I walk up to her. A quiet two-note whistle tests her point — it’s the signal to “Go ahead.” She eases forward in an imitation of a snake, sixty feet or so into a little eroded washout of rocks and ferns. When she points, her tail is straight up and her neck is barely long enough to constrain her head, which wants to go even farther forward. No doubt about it: she has the bird. It’s tempting to say a bird dog on point is a magician, but then I’d have to qualify that and explain that I don’t mean the sort of charlatan magician that will fool you with slight-of-hand, which is entertaining but never believable. In Hanna’s case, the magic is real. No pussyfooting here. I walk to her right and go to where the grouse should be, then turn and start back toward Hanna. The bird boils out of some rocks and flies by me like a twin-engine plane with one engine out. There’s time to follow him with the gun lowered until he is out twenty-five yards or so, and then put him down. It’s the same steel-gray cock. The bird’s strange initial reaction and now the labored second flight is evidence enough that the grouse was carrying a pellet or two from my errant first shot. It’s good to have this one in hand, but I’m certainly not shooting my best today. After Hanna retrieves the bird, I stand her on the rocks at the head of the washout and at her feet place the first grouse taken over one of her points. Almost as if she knows I’m taking her picture, she picks up the bird and stands with it until I click the shutter. * * * * *
This site was last updated 07/21/06 |
