December in Minnesota is usually a frozen blur. Thanksgiving fades into free-falling mercury. After the third or fourth shoveling it gets hard to walk anywhere and especially in thick pheasant cover. These are the days when sportsmen feel attracted to football. One more log on the fire and another drink. Remote in hand and a quick glance out the window at blowing drifts kill motivation to put on boots and summon the dog.
El Nino does weird things though. Last Saturday morning the dog was whining and pacing at 4 a.m. I hit the mental snooze button once and then crawled out of bed. If I waited another five minutes she would leave a puddle on the kitchen floor. When I opened the back door the breeze didn’t feel anything like Midwest December. It was more like Northern California. A damp, chilly push. Not the razor sharp blast that cuts through your boxers and makes you turn your back to the door. While the dog did her business I stepped out in bare feet onto the cement sidewalk. It must be 40 degrees. A guy has to walk ditches on a day like this.
I went inside and started the coffee maker. Ten cups is enough to get me going and fill the green Stanley thermos. The dog went back to her bed but kept one eye open. Even though I was moving around instead of ascending the bedroom stairs her demeanor was more suspicious than enthusiastic. While the coffee was brewing I went downstairs and opened the gun safe. I slipped my old Remington 12 gauge into a camouflage case. I pulled on Carhartt jeans and waxed cotton chaps that are crisscrossed with thorn scratches. I dumped a couple handfuls of high-brass number fours into the pocket of my game vest. Even the gun case wasn’t enough to get the dog excited. She eyed me with her chin on the floor. How many times in November had I slipped out the door before dawn, gun in hand, to chase deer? Leaving the dog on her bed with the dreaded two words: “Ruby stay.”
I filled the green thermos and headed for the door, pausing on the threshold to whistle. Ruby exploded from her bed. All of her 40 pound body was shivering and dancing. Her toenails clicked on the hardwood floor like a tap dancer. I looked at her and uttered the words she wanted to hear: “Bird Ruby?” Her doggy grin was as wide as a clown’s. She pressed her shoulder against my leg until the truck door opened. Ruby assumed her spot on the passenger seat.
We drove away from the urban glow of Minneapolis, through the suburbs, past the ethanol refinery and south on the state highway. When dawn started showing in the Eastern sky we were passing through small towns. Slow down, gas station, church, tavern, speed up. Just before nine a.m. we pulled off a county road into a state wildlife management area. A couple minutes later a blue Chevy truck pulled alongside my gray Ford. Jerry was in the driver’s seat with Doug next to him. Jerry’s 12 year old son Ted and their dogs were in the back seat. These men are cousins and grew up on nearby farms. Jerry carries a worn Winchester pump and doesn’t ever miss a rooster. Doug has a fancy Benelli automatic. I saw him miss a bird last year.
We started walking ditches. There is a lot of agriculture cover in this part of Minnesota. Not as much as there was before corn prices went through the roof. A lot of fence lines were trimmed back. Bulldozers pushed tangled groves into piles where they burned under watch of volunteer firefighters. Pheasant cover turned into tillable soil one honey hole at a time. But the price of corn is back to earth and there is still plenty of pheasant cover. We trudged through it one patch at a time. Everyone moving at a quick pace. Four guys, three dogs. Enough disruption to move the birds. Hit the cover, back in the truck, hit the next one.
Jerry and Doug’s dogs are pheasant connoisseurs. They know fine details of how the late-season wild rooster game is played. You have one option: keep up. Lucky is a Brittany--a little white firecracker and a canine feminist. No man with a gun tells her what to do. The radio collar just pisses her off. Jerry finally broke down and bought a GPS unit this year. Increases the odds when Lucky throws a 200 yard point. Molly is a German shorthair. Her aggression in the field rivals a young bull running at Pamplona. She hunts with the finesse of a matador. Mid-morning I watched Molly run a hen to the edge of a field. Crouching and creeping. Feigning angles until the bird was pinched into cover that shouldn’t hide a mouse. If she had a red cape I think that bird would have charged. Doug walked in to flush. Molly’s evil eye when he yelled “no bird” turned my blood cold.
Ruby is a Vizsla. She’s my first pointer and we are in our third season together. Hunting with Molly and Lucky was better training for Ruby than anything I’ve done. All morning she was on Molly’s heels or darting in to steal a point from Lucky. It was almost noon and Jerry had a rooster in his vest. Doug had two. I shot at the same time he did on the second bird. His dog pointed it and retrieved it. By any hunter's code it was his bird. But I tried to take some satisfaction in being certain that we both hit it. Ruby was working close, sometimes breaking into a sprint to keep up with Molly. After hours of playing second-fiddle to the older dogs a light went off in her little red head. She struck out on her own. When it comes to covering ground, Ruby has no equal. Her youth and agility are a thing of beauty. Long legs stretch out like a Cheetah. Her 40 pound frame has not an ounce of fat. She melts miles with the ease of a fast marathoner. Ruby angled across a sorghum plot into the grass beyond. She was 100 yards out and I put the whistle between my teeth. Instead of issuing a series of sharp tweets I decided to act like she knew what she was doing and closed the distance at a trot. When I was thirty yards away, Ruby turned on a dime and started to creep. She lifted her head, gave me a sideways glance and took off like a lightning bolt. I followed suit and sprinted seventy yards to where she cast left. I was almost on her heels when she locked up. Not the nose down tail wagging grin on her face point that means she’s on a mouse or rabbit. This was a head half sideways trembling every muscle taught as a stretched guitar string point that means a bird is damn near under her nose.
I flicked the safety and was about to take a step when a rooster exploded in full technicolor cackle from the cover. It flew straight away. This is the kind of easy shot that I tend to screw up when guys that never miss are watching. So I took an extra split second to be sure that my cheek was tight to the stock and focus on the back of the bird’s head. I tapped the trigger. The Remington barked. The bird dropped like a stone. A handful of feathers drifted in the wind. Ruby had the rooster in her mouth and brought it to hand. She skipped the stop five feet away and pull tail feathers routine in which she expresses great canine joy. This was a legitimate performance. A real, wild, skittish rooster that she outsmarted. I felt great pride.
The sun was setting at 4:30. I had a second rooster. Jerry looked at his Fitbit and announced that we had walked 13.75 miles. There was cold beer in the truck 100 yards away. My mind already was at the tailgate. The guns would be cased and cans would pop and dogs would curl in tight balls on the seats. We would watch the sun go down and tell hunting stories. Ruby trotted to the fence twenty feet to my left. The soil was tilled almost up to the posts. She eased into a point. I walked up in time to see a rooster streaking like a rabbit down the opposite side of the fence. Ruby saw it at the same time and uncoiled like a spring. When her nose was three feet from the long tail the bird decided to make his bet in flight. I snapped a shot into the sunset. Fifty steps from the best happy hour in the world, Ruby dropped the last of my three-bird limit at my feet. The Michelob in my hand five minutes later was one of the finest drinks I’ve ever had.
