And Now We Shall Do Manly Things (22 page)

“Why's that?”

“Because I'll be too busy shooting at it. If you hear people shooting, that's a pretty good indication it's a rooster.”

Mark patted me on the shoulder, and I half expected him to zip up the last two inches of the soft shell fleece jacket I was wearing under my vest like a mom sending her child off to the school bus for the first time alone. There was concern in his voice. Parental concern. He wanted me to be okay. He wanted me to be safe. But more than anything, he wanted me to have fun. You don't go hunting a second time if you don't have fun on your first trip. As he was walking away, he said, “I talked to your dad the other day.”

“Really? What did he say?”

“He told me to watch out for his gun and make sure it comes back in the same pieces he gave it to you in.”

“Did he say anything about me?”

“Nope. Seemed more worried about the gun,” Mark said, a wry grin coming over his face. His joke—and I'm going to maintain that it was a joke—calmed me for a moment, and I took my place on the left end of the line, between Tommy and his friend B.J. Part of me was glad Dad had thought to check up on me, but more than anything, I was glad Mark told me. I'm sure Dad told him to take care of me and Mark didn't need to be told. He's always watched out for me. And in a lot of ways, I was really proud to be hunting with him.

The brief, touching moment passed and we were ready to start. I'm not sure what I expected. A whistle? A loud cowboy whoop? Some sort of bell or a blast from a small ceremonial cannon? But I was underwhelmed by the start of the hunt. Spread out across perhaps sixty yards, we just sort of started walking. Not even a bugle or French horn. Not so much as a flute and we were off marching.

The dogs were working out ahead of us, bounding, bouncing, and leaping through the tall, windblown dry grasses, which were knee high. Within moments my heart was racing and I could feel the morning chill start to burn off my skin. My breathing got shallow and I felt like I was back on the treadmill at the gym, huffing and puffing, realizing thirty yards into the walk that I had managed to fall five yards behind. This was no leisurely stroll through the bucolic countryside; this was a purposeful double-time march up a small incline through seriously unlevel terrain. I was fully aware of the weight of my loaded gun and carried it with both hands, one on the stock and one on the forearm, out in front of me. I looked up the line and saw Mark carrying his gun easily at his side with one hand. Rob had his slung over his shoulder like a hobo's stick. His friend John carried the same way, as did Adam. Tommy and B.J. carried theirs like they were marching soldiers, one hand under the butt, the barrel resting on their collarbone. I couldn't quite make out Ben's form, but it certainly looked easier than mine. I fidgeted several times, trying to find the right balance and comfort, to no avail. I simply was not used to carrying a gun on a walk. There aren't a lot of opportunities to practice in the suburbs—not without drawing the ire of the local police department or, worse, the homeowners' association.

A few minutes in, I found myself watching my feet, trying to find a good place to put each step. Had I not been carrying a loaded gun, I might have had a walking stick, but as it was, my hands were occupied, so every uneven step or deviation from balance required a tensing of my abdominal and back muscles, a subtle correction so as not to trip and fall flat on my face. Fifteen minutes after we set out I realized I hated this field. All fields really. What is so appealing to behold—the long grasses blowing in the early fall wind, rolling over acres and acres of undisturbed openness—from behind the comfort of a picture window is a real pain in the ass to walk through. The guys down at the right end of the line stopped abruptly, and I followed Tommy as he sped up and began turning. I sped up too, trying to maintain my spacing between him and B.J. We began to swing around, like a giant human door closing and the dogs, which had been frantically moving in S-turns across the width of our line, managed to keep up. Truth be told, on that first stretch of walking, no more than a quarter mile, I had not been paying too much attention to the stated task. A pheasant could have popped up and landed in my hat and I'm not sure I would have known it, so transfixed was I with the ideas of not falling behind, not tripping on my face, not accidentally shooting my young cousin or his friend in the head.

I want to take a moment here to explain how hunting dogs work. If you have never seen a pointer work in a field, then you are missing out on one of the great genetic amazements in the man-made world. Let's take Zeke for example. Zeke is a purebred German shorthaired pointer that Mark bought for Tom at the annual “Hillbilly Sale” outside of Mason City. A hillbilly sale is, by way of explanation, basically a pop-up swap meet. Anyone can bring anything they want to sell and anyone can buy it. There aren't a whole lot of rules. The meets take place in wide-open fields and, from what Mark tells me, there is no reason to go with a shopping list, because in order to get the most out of one of these events, buyers are best served by browsing until they find that perfect thing that tickles their fancy. Care for an illegal iguana? There's a man selling them from the bed of a pickup just over the hill. Have a near-complete collection of spoons from all the world's largest truck stops? Jim-Bob probably has what you need to complete your set. The point is, these things often have little rhyme or reason. They just are what they are.

Seven years earlier, Mark had taken Tommy to the sale to look for equipment for his ammunition reloading hobby. They came across a man with a truckload of chickens. They made some small talk and Mark told him that, while he wasn't interested in poultry, he was in the market for a hunting dog. As luck would have it, the man had a single pup tucked away in a crate beneath the tarp that covered the bed of his truck and his cache of chickens.

For many hunters, training a bird dog involves investing hundreds of dollars and a roughly equal number of hours. They invest in shock collars and while away Saturdays hiding pigeons under bushes and among trees for the dogs to sniff out. They work on commands to teach the dog to pin down a bird—meaning to get it to stay in one place—without killing or attacking it. Zeke required none of these things. So strong was the genetic instinct to hunt that Mark and Tom abandoned training after a couple short sessions. The dog simply knew what to do.

I watched Zeke, who was lither and more energetic than the other dogs, trace long arcs back and forth as we walked, our pace finally beginning to slow, his nose to the ground, his tail nub bobbing. If there is such a thing as pure happiness, as unbridled enthusiastic joy, I realized I was witnessing it. Tom and I, in our positions on the far left of the line, were walking down a long slope along a fence line. Zeke, Jaeger, and Ava seemed to be working independently. Jaeger and Ava might sniff next to each other, but Zeke invariably did his own thing. A stiff breeze blew up for a moment from the left and the most extraordinary thing happened: all three dogs, who had been spread across the breadth of our line, converged upon a single patch of scrub grass fifteen yards in front of Tom. It was like looking down into a shark tank and seeing three tiger sharks swimming around on their own, then putting a drop of blood in the middle of the tank and watching them all converge. At first, my inexperienced mind didn't quite register what was happening. But, after a second or two, when all the dogs began sniffing the same four-foot circle, their tails stopped. They froze into a posture that suggested absolutely focused attention. None of them moved and I heard someone shout from the other end of the line, “Get up on 'em!”

When a bird dog stops dead in its tracks like that, there is undoubtedly a bird in the area. When three of them do, you can very nearly triangulate its precise location. The dogs, through training or instinct, will hold the bird in its place and wait for a hunter to come kick the bird up, which essentially means walking near where the dog is pointing to scare the bird into attempting escape. Without a dog, the pheasant's instinct is actually to run, not fly. But with a dog blocking that option and a hunter approaching, a pheasant will pop up and fly away with the wind or sometimes across it, but never into it.

With the wind moving from left to right, that meant as Tommy approached the spot where the dogs had the bird pinned down, it would more than likely pop up and fly directly in front of me. I nervously clutched my gun.

“You ready?” Tommy yelled.

I nodded. “As ready as I'll ever be.”

During my class at L.L.Bean, I got pretty good at these left-to-right shots. My weak eye dominance meant I could keep both eyes open, so I could see the target coming from the left and was able to pick up on it quickly when it moved from my periphery to center view. In fact, of all the different shots we practiced, this was the one I had the easiest time with. As Tommy took another step, my grip tightened and I made sure to keep my face solidly against the stock of the gun. I tried to visualize what was going to happen, put most of my weight on my front foot, and bent slightly forward at the waist. I
was
ready.

A pheasant makes a distinctive sound as it rises from the ground and beats toward safety. It's a sort of staccato exhalation. Imagine spinning a bicycle tire lightly and then holding a piece of notebook paper up to the metal spokes; there's a small, breathy clacking sound as the relatively big bird's wings hammer furiously against the air and its body. I heard the sound for the briefest of moments as the bird, roughly the size (though a fraction of the weight) of a bowling ball popped up as if it were spring-loaded and arched off downwind, directly in front of me. It was such a shock, such a thrill. My pulse quickened and my gun raised instinctively to my cheek. I didn't aim, didn't think about it, just picked up the trajectory of the bird and traced it as it rose and passed in front of me.

“Hen!” yelled Tommy.

“Hen!” yelled everyone but me as the female pheasant traced its exit over the heads and eventually behind our line. I had read about the difference between hens and roosters time and again over the course of my preparation, but trying to distinguish between the two in the field proved much, much tougher. For one thing, a hen is dull in color—brown, taupe, gray. It's smaller, though you would have to know what a rooster looks like to be able to tell, and it has shorter tail feathers. A rooster is a bird of many hues. Black, brown, gray, green, teal, a little bit of red, and a distinctive white ring of feathers around its longer neck. Its tail feathers, too, are much longer and more flamboyant. The idea, according to some of the sources I read, is for the male to distract predators away from nesting females and for the hens to blend in. It worked really well in my case, because I didn't have the slightest clue whether that bird was a male or female. Some things, I guess, come with experience.

“Good job, Jaeger!”

“Great work, Ava!”

“ 'At's a good boy, Zeke,” said Mark. It was so tender and enthusiastic, the closest thing to coddling I've ever heard coming from his lips. It was never fully explained to me, but I understood that applauding the dogs' efforts, even though the bird was a female, was a means of reinforcing both instinct and training.

I had seen my first pheasant and the experience, while not fruitful in terms of bounty, had been thrilling. It was a rush when the bird popped up and flew past. And I felt satisfied, having heard the “Hen!” call and reacting appropriately by not shooting. My gun was trained squarely on the dun and gray bird. Had it been a male, I would have been able to take two quick and well-placed shots. I had done right and found myself feeling more at ease with the situation. I felt, in short, more like a hunter, like I belonged there.

We walked another quarter mile, before gathering on a dirt road to give the dogs water and discuss our strategy. We would turn north—to the right—along the fence line, spread out, and walk a half mile with the wind at our backs before turning to the east and working our way back toward the cars. Rob had spoken to the men who leased a portion of Paul and Roger's farm for crops. They had another field up the road and a patch of it had been left feral, where they had seen pheasant. We'd try there after lunch. With my first drive out of the way, I felt more at ease. As we started north, I didn't feel quite so awkward holding the gun and was able to feel comfortable with it slung over my shoulder. I'm sure that, had I been watching from a distance, it would have been obvious that I was the new guy and therefore the least comfortable among the group, but for the time being I felt good.

We marched through more tall grass and came to a stand of tall reeds at the base of a small hill. I marched alongside the others, keeping my gun in front of me and my place in the line as the spindly stalks slapped against my nylon-covered vest. After a hundred feet or so, we emerged from the reeds and a strange epiphany came to me.

“I'm about to shoot my first pheasant,” I told myself aloud, though inaudibly to the other hunters. I felt my eyes widen and pulse quicken. I had a clear vision of what was to come. The pheasant, with its iridescent and furlike feathers and long spindly tail feathers, would rise in front of me and I would put it down with ease. I began rehearsing in my head as we trudged up the hill. Weight forward. Back heel slightly off the ground. Bend slightly at the waist. Keep cheek firmly against the stock. Move my left hand first and allow my eyes to stay focused on the bird, not the end of the gun. Follow through, don't stop.

We reached the top of the hill and started down across smooth, mercifully short grass. We hadn't taken twenty steps when I heard the breathy flutter of wings against the cold air and looked straight in front of me to see a rooster pheasant rising. He was beautiful—exactly how I had imagined it. He rose straight in front of me and turned his back, revealing a long brown body, black head, the distinct white ring. Green and teal and long tail feathers dragged behind him like a tail on a kite. And, clearly, not a hen. My gun came up instinctively. My weight shifted without thought. My left arm traced the pheasant as it flew directly away from me. I concentrated on the tail feathers and time seemed to slow down. Unlike the first bird, the hen, the dogs had not scared this one up. It had risen of its own accord and directly in front of me. Me! It was amazing, the feeling of absolute focus. I could see individual feathers, make out the shape of the bird's beak, without seeing the end of my gun, without being conscious that it and I were distinct objects, but rather feeling like we were moving in perfect concert. I didn't hesitate to pull the trigger.*