HOLYOKE — It was a Hunter named Robert who originally coined the phrase, “I ain’t often right, but I’ve never been wrong.”
And although it was hardly the intent, it occurred to me the other day that truer words have never been uttered about the weather. At the time, I should add, I was hunting.
The wind howled somewhere north of 25 mph across the plains of Colorado, pushing down from the Arctic and sputtering sporadically with snowfall. I had foolishly grabbed the 20-gauge from the back of the truck, thinking that any pheasant equally foolish enough to be would be holding tight and flushing too near to fire upon with a bigger barrel.
Layered in a random assortment of ski clothes, field pants and my heaviest waterfowl parka, I kicked through a thicket of shoulder-high switchgrass and contemplated the single-digit windchill. It took some time in the brain-numbing cold to recognize that I had lost track of the dog some time ago, and only then after a long-tailed ringneck caught hold of the jet stream and whirred past my watering eyes as a green and gold blur with a cackle that sounded just a little too much like laughter to my muffled ears.
“That ain’t right,” I thought after two token pulls of the trigger. The rooster had already hit the county line by the time I considered how often hunters blame the weather for shortcomings. “Unfair,” I reconciled. “Because the weather’s never really been wrong. Just maybe wrong for hunting.”
That too, I realized, amounted to a rationalization. When conditions don’t cooperate, we need to step up our game. Or call in reinforcements.
I still wasn’t sure what had motivated that single pheasant to fly, but I soon concluded that it had something to do with the little brown dog that suddenly reappeared by my side. Gunfire is as effective as the scent of a bird in calling her to action anymore, but whatever the motivation, my backup had arrived. I dug her orange vest out of my game pouch.
Bailey’s enthusiasm for the hunt has never been stronger than this, her fourth year. Evidence of game and an attempt by her hunting partner to dispatch it kicked the dog into high gear, tail rigid and nose into the stiff wind.
I followed closely as the docked tail began to twitch with excitement, the pace quickened and a vigorous wag indicated that she was onto another scent. Jogging now, we moved toward dubiously thin cover, zigging and zagging between clumps of thicker grass until I was certain she was trailing a rabbit. Three minutes into the chase, no pheasant had flushed, and my own enthusiasm waned. I slowed to a walk as Bailey haunched up and pounced once, twice, three times on what now could only be a field mouse.
“Good,” I thought as I lowered the shotgun. “She’s having fun, and that’s all that really matters on a day like today.”
Still, it took a moment to shake my discouragement. Just a moment longer than it took Bailey to convince the rooster to finally flush and easily evade another tardy pull of the trigger.
To my good fortune, Bailey doesn’t get discouraged. Riding her devotion, we dismissed the deteriorating weather and rousted several more pheasants over the next couple of hours before heading home with one bird in the bag and a few new words to live by.
In dog we trust.
Scott Willoughby: swilloughby@denverpost.com or twitter.com/swilloughby
