Mulak Reader - First Snow

This story is from Brown Feathers. It first appeared in Sports Afield. Did all of this actually happen? Is a frequently asked question. My answer here, and in all my other work, is always, “Yes, it all happened—not necessarily in this sequence or on the same day or exactly as I wrote it, but yes, it’s all true.” It is a rare incident that I make-up out of thin air. Making successful stories is about stringing things together. That’s always a lot more interesting than writing about all the times when nothing happened. 

FIRST SNOW

     "There have always been two major problems, man and man, and man and earth, his environment.  Neither stands alone, and the false solutions always turn out to be the ones that ignore that eternal kinship."

                                 Hal Borland

          The blue-shadowed imprint of the truck tires in the new snow is so exact that it seems to ache. The parallel tracks branch away from the few others on the road, almost like a railroad spur that the truck has ridden to the end of rather than created.  I stand for a moment, leaning on the open door, watching the vapor clouds of my breath dissipate in the morning air. The next few hours that I'll spend here loom up before me: When I return, will I be elated, or will I be disappointed with the way I've hunted? What memories will I make he this morning? I uncase the gun, then feel through the outsides of my pockets for the things I know are there—ammunition, knife, keys, wallet.

          Hazel sits on the floor of the truck, her furiously wagging tail belying her patient demeanor. There is no doubt in my mind that she uses as much energy waiting to hunt as she does at full throttle. I glance up and down the road, then bring her out with a quiet "heel". We cross to the edge of the valley, then, when I've eased my way down the short bank, I whistle her on. She races past me, kicking up a roostertail of snow. I slip a pair of shells into the barrels and start off, angling toward the brook.  Mister Kulig's Covert is an old friend that knew me when I was training my first bird dog. We'll hunt in a circuit that follows one of the big stream's feeder brooklets up into the hills beyond Mister Kulig's farm, then follow another brook back down again.

          My ears are assaulted by the quiet. The powdery snow acts as a sound absorber, and the effect is eerily like being in a small room.  Even Hazel's bell is quiet.  She crosses my path 30 yards in front of me as she works the cover.

          The snow had fallen between midnight and dawn. Even though the past week had been consistently cold, I was surprised to see snow this early. I was a bit jaded toward New England weather after a series of mild winters, but the calendar reminded me that there was nothing early about a mid-November snowfall.

          I was mixing pancake batter when my daughters came downstairs. "Hey Dad! Did you see? It snowed out!"

          "What! You're kidding! Holy smokes look at that! I didn't even notice!" My humor played to appreciative giggles.

          "Can we go skiing at the golf course?"

          "The radio says that the schools aren't closed..." (Frowns) "...and there's really not enough snow to ski on..." (Deeper frowns) "...and it'll probably all be melted by lunchtime, anyway." (Utter gloom)

          As she combed the youngest's hair, my wife offered, "You girls don't seriously think your father would take a day off from hunting, do you?"

          I spooned the first pancakes onto the grill before addressing the gloom. "I'll tell you what; If there's still snow on the ground this afternoon, I'll have the skis on the car when you guys get home and all you'll have to do is jump into your knickers and we'll all be skiing in five minutes. Okay?"

          "Okay." The gloom lifted only slightly.

          A flock of evening grosbeaks chose that moment to make their first appearance of the season at the window feeder, and the subject of skiing was suspended as we crowded for a close-up look at the strange and colorful birds.

          I step across a low stone wall where only the leafless stems of poison ivy break the surface of the snow. Winter is a simple, uncomplicated season. The wind-less snowfall has left an inch-high ridge on every exposed twig and blade of grass, and the white expanse of the forest floor is filigreed with blue shadows in the slanting morning sunlight. A rabbit bounces away at the head of a lengthening series of tracks on the unblemished surface. As through a liquid, tiny shock waves radiate out through the snow at each of his bounds.

          I should have spray painted the dog day-glow orange. In the white landscape my nearly all-white setter is a fast-moving shadow that my eyes refuse to remain focused upon. If the snow were wet, her bell would clog and I'd really have a problem keeping track of her. She checks back after each cast, but in her third season she has finally begun to suspect that I cannot scent birds after all, and she's grown more independent. Rightly so: In her three autumns her nose has processed more grouse data than I've gathered in a lifetime of hunting.

          We follow the stream to the confluence of two brooklets. My ears track Hazel's progress as she skirts the far side of a row of hemlocks. She pops into view immediately in front of me, and my eyes are on her when she skids to an unsure halt just beyond the last evergreen. Her sidelong look is not so much a point as a questioning "What the hell... ?" There is a flurry of movement under the hemlock, then a gray flash on the far side. Muffled by the snow, the grouse's flush is strangely quiet. No shot is possible. Hazel, with a different perspective than I, stands watching the bird's flight.

As I start forward a second bird flushes from the same tree, this one more clearly seen than the first. His retreat hugs the far side of the hemlock row. I swing ahead of the bird and fire, but then glimpse him passing beyond the trees ten yards farther on. Shooting through screening branches is standard procedure in grouse shooting, but today the snow-laden boughs effectively absorb my shot pellets. I would have thought I had him.

          From the far side of the hemlocks I make an educated guess as to where the birds have flown: The valley is fairly open, so they would have flown long and most likely crossed all the way to the thick stuff on the far side. My setter is casting back and forth, searching the snow for a downed bird.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Hazel, but he kept going." I start off, but she continues her search, and it isn't until the third time that I whistle to her that she joins me. All the commands I've taught her are positive, and I have no way of telling her "Whoops, I missed."

          When last I hunted this valley the trees seemed aflame. Today the only color is an occasional sprig of princess pine that peeks through the snow and in the ruddy bark of the chokecherries. December is coming: The color is gone and the grouse have grown wilder and smarter. Most are birds-of-the-year that have never known the defoliated world of late autumn, which explains why the weeks immediately after the leaves are down are the grouse hunter's favorite time of the year. But the birds soon learn what they must if they are to survive in a leafless woodland, and by early winter the hunter finds that a box of shells lasts a lot longer than it did just a few weeks before.

          Hemlocks are a favorite winter retreat for grouse. My guess that the birds flew here is confirmed almost as soon as we enter the stand on the far side of the valley. Twenty yards in I feel as much as hear an overhead grouse flush, close by but unseen. There is no telling his direction, so we push on in the hopes for a chance at the second bird. There is a continuous cascade of snow from the thick evergreens created by my passing. I brush the accumulations from the gun barrels, thinking I've found yet another reason to shoot with both eyes open.

          We work the rest of the length of the brook course without moving another bird, and emerge below the little dam that forms Mister Kulig's pond. There are often grouse in the swampy area along the outlet, but Hazel reports that they are feeding elsewhere this morning.

          Laurel has taken over the timbered hillside along the pond's edge. As usual, the brakes are littered with deer sign, but today there is a profusion of grouse tracks mixed among the cloven deer prints. Below me, at the very edge of the frozen pond, the dog's bell goes silent in a laurel thicket. A grouse flushes far ahead of her point as soon as I start downhill, and it sails 200 yards just above the snow-covered ice paired with his blue shadow immediately below. From my elevated vantage point I am able to watch the bird climb over the treetops on the far shore, then fly another 200 yards before dropping down into the woods. Grouse, of course, never fly more than 150 yards when flushed. I wrote that in an article once.

          Later, I sit with Hazel at the far end of the covert, feeding her dog biscuits as I pull the ice balls from between her pads. Although we hunted the laurel thoroughly, the far-flying grouse must have been the last of a group that departed before we arrived. Or else he had spent a very busy morning making footprints all by himself.

On the return we'll cross Sam's swamp, named for a friend from Texas who traveled 2000 miles to shoot a grouse then blew the only good chance he had in a week of hunting. We'll work the other shore of the pond, then follow another brook course down into the valley. When the dog biscuits are all gone Hazel is eager to go, but I sit a while longer and watch the flock of waxwings that seems intent on gleaning every last berry from the shrubs around the deadfall where I sit.

          Hunting again, I hear a flock of crows beyond the next hill.  I stuff my orange hat into my gamebag, whistle in the dog, and hide on the shadowed side of an old oak tree. The first series of long "Crawww's" I play on the wooden call only serves to silence the flock, but the initial squawk of the next set brings a raucous chorus of answers. Hazel's tail begins to fan the snow as she sits at my feet, watching the treetops. Although I like to think I know just when to shut-up, I almost always call too much, so when the first of the oncoming flock appears I let the call dangle on its lanyard. They circle widely without dropping altitude, asking crow questions that I itch to answer. After waiting a very long minute, I have the call at my lips when a crow silently passes overhead from behind me, barely 50 feet up. I scramble to rush a pair of shots, both of which pass behind the bird. The calls of the flock change to short warning cries that fade into the distance. I tuck the call back inside my shirt, put the empties into my pocket, and smile an "Aw-shit" grin to myself.

          I like crows. They're handsome birds in their own way, and I admire their ability to survive by cooperation in a winter world most other species choose to abandon. But mostly they're fun: In a contest of wits, I seldom win out.

          If the day has warmed-up, I haven't noticed it. The sun is coldly bright as it climbs slightly higher along its shallow winter arc. A wisp of breeze begins blowing snow off the trees, and the effect is lovely. The Finns, I think it is, have no single word in their language for the general term snow. Instead, living as they do in a world of sleighs and skis, they have a multitude of nouns for the various types and conditions of snow. Today's powdery stuff is certainly a far cry from the heavy wet snow associated with suburban driveways and coronaries.

          When last we hunted this stretch, Hazel pointed a half-dozen woodcock. What most stands out in my memory is that I had seen one bird on the ground ten feet in front of the dog's point, obvious because its normally perfect camouflage was too dark for the pale beech leaves matted on the ground. The woods—or perhaps it's just my expectations—are different now that the woodcock are gone. Not worse, and certainly not better. Just different.

          I look up at the sound of a grouse flush. The bird breaks from the pines 20 yards ahead of me, already in full flight, passing to the rear beyond my right shoulder. I see him clearly, but my fastest response can't catch up with the bird and my shot passes behind him. He dips and curves left and is gone. The moment is quickly over. As I stand staring at the spot where he disappeared, a hemlock bough releases its weight of snow and springs upward, almost like an "amen" to the event. I had grinned at my muffed shot at the crow, but this one leaves me tight-lipped. Shots like that are a challenge to my abilities, and too frequently, I miss. I have no excuse—I'm simply not good enough to make fast cross shots with consistency.

 The dog checks back, and I whistle her in. For a moment I stand with the gun open and see again the bird hurtling through the dappled sunlight in the clearing, and once more feel the twinge of panic at not being able to catch up with him. What was spectacular was not the shot, but the chance. And afterward what is full is not my gamebag, but my memory. I drop a fresh shell into the barrel and wave Hazel ahead.  My grimace fades into a smile, more of appreciation than amusement.

          We pursue the grouse to the far side of the ridge. There is an open field below, so he must have flown into the scrub on the near hillside. I tell myself that I am sure the bird is here. When we've hunted farther along the ridge side than I estimate he flew, we loop downward and work back closer to the edge of the field. We've already covered a lot of places where he's not, so each step brings us closer to the moment we'll find him. Some folks call that sort of thing faith. I like to think of it as a combination of applied experience and positive thinking.

          Ahead of me the dog's bell goes silent. I move up, but can't see her in the brushy pines and oaks. I wait, gun at ready. Nothing. I move forward another cautious fifteen feet, but still cannot see her point. I whistle to her softly, and she replies by allowing her bell a single "...ding...". Ah, she's in the heavy stuff at the edge of the field, directly in front of me. I move toward the sound of her bell, and then hear the grouse flush. The gun comes up, but I have no target. The first I see of the bird is as he enters the trees 50 yards away. The grouse we moved at the pond edge was the exception: Grouse don't normally cross open spaces unless they're pushed. This one has skirted the edge of the low cover rather than cross the open field.

          Hazel comes in. In her eyes is the wild look that says she's been "in birds". I scratch her ears in reward for her productive but unseen point.

          We hunt our way back along the little valley, and re-cross the stream where the two feeder brooks join. At the wall I find my own bootprints, still looking as fresh as when I made them. A squirrel has left his tracks along the stones, and there are several tiny prints made by songbirds. And here, just beyond the shadow cast by the old wall, a line of grouse tracks crosses over my own. I had been entertaining thoughts of the lunch that waits back at the truck, but suddenly all that seems far away. Daniel Boone, tracker of the untamed wilderness, crouches low to examine the animal spoor. All that the tracks in the snow tell me is that a grouse walked along the wall heading that-a-way, and since they pass over my own, it was sometime after I passed here four hours ago. Tracks are fun to look at, but I've never had much luck following them. I'm hardly good enough to tell the age of a print in terms of hours, and more often than not they only confuse me as a feeding bird crosses and re-crosses its own path. I'm better off putting my trust in Hazel's nose.

          Paralleling the brook and the old wall, we start off. Lunch can wait. My positive thinking goes to work again: The grouse was strolling down to the overgrown orchard at the bottom of the valley for a snack. There's plenty of cover and food among the junipers and bittersweet that have taken over the place, and he's probably feeding there right now. My setter casts through the cover as she should, but I find that I keep stretching my neck to be sure the grouse tracks are still following the wall, just as someone might peek at the covered cards in a game of solitaire. I whistle to Hazel and curve up onto the sidehill, mostly to take my eyes off the trail of grouse prints. A hundred yards farther along we slant down into the overgrown apple trees.

          Hunting through the orchard, we reach the wall. I look for the bird's tracks, but the snow where the grouse's trail should be is undisturbed. I whistle to the dog and turn to the left, back up the valley, and find that the grip on my gunstock has unconsciously tightened in expectation. Hazel's cast takes her as far as the edge of the brook. As she turns and starts back she stops abruptly in mid-stride, head and tail high and her eyes bulging in a look that announces "Your bird is right here!"

          Under the juniper, the grouse realizes it is trapped and takes wing before I've advanced three steps in his direction. It comes out in an explosion of snow, heading across the brook. My shot catches the bird as it passes behind a small pine sapling, and it tumbles in a second shower of snow. The distance can't be more than 25 yards, but the stream runs between Hazel and the bird. She tip-toes across the shelf ice with only one hind foot breaking through, then runs to make the retrieve.

The trackless snow is littered with bits of gray fluff. Every other hit must draw a like amount of feathers, but they normally go unnoticed in the fallen leaves on the forest floor. Hazel brings the steel gray bird to me and I know the day is complete.

          I'm not so old or so long out of school that I don't recall the theme papers we were required to write; "How I Spent My Summer Vacation", or "What Thanksgiving Means to Me". Today's composition, class, will be entitled "What Hunting Season Means to Me". In a story-book setting like this, chewing a sweet birch twig as I follow a bird dog back to the truck, that one is easy, Ma'm: Grown men spend too much of their lives in a world of asphalt and concrete, or in my own case, in the engine room of a steel ship where the only contact with nature is the marine growth that fouls the strainers. When even the decorative plants are plastic, it's tough to see yourself as one of Nature's children. But here, with wisps of wind strewing diamonds into the sunbeams and the not-unpleasant sting of snowflakes against my face, I can believe again that the weight in my gamebag is more important than any other kind of success that life has to offer.

          What does the hunting season mean to me? I live for it. I recall hearing a famous circus aerialist state that life for him was a series of waits between performances. At the time, I thought to myself, "How shallow." Yet, I find I've begun to think of my own life in terms of autumns and the months spent waiting for the next one. Others may think of that as being superficial, but I know better.

          I let Hazel into the truck and brush the wind-strewn snow from the windshield. Next to the driver's door are the footprints I made several hours before. I think back to my pondering thoughts at the time, and reflect that among the items I am returning with are a full limit of memories. That the snow may soon melt or re-freeze into something less lovely than it has been this morning only makes my limit all the more precious. Hazel peers out the window at me. Her tail clearly says that she is eager to be on our way to the next covert.

I smile to myself.

Tomorrow is yet another fraction of a season that is divided among all too-few days, but right now I've got just about an hour to return home and break out the skis from storage and get the carrier rack onto the car.

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