My dad took me sage grouse hunting on opening day, 1971, when I was nine. We found a lot of birds, and we each got our limit of three.
After the hunt, dad laid the birds out carefully and took a picture because it was my first hunt for anything. The photo went in the family album, one of the milestones that define life together as a family. Firsts and lasts are important.
With dogs it all happens so fast. The opening day of the season becomes the closing day. The puppy on his first retrieve becomes the old guy who needs help getting into the truck. It’s ironic that Frank’s last bird was a sage grouse, because he was not a fan of hunting sage grouse. The season is in September, when it’s still hot, and Frank hated hot days. His thick, chocolate Lab coat was designed for swimming in icy waters, not running though dusty summer sage brush. But the first day of the sage grouse season is the opening day of the hunting season as a whole for us, so we always went.
There aren’t as many sage grouse now as there were back on my first opening day.. Human encroachment has threatened them. The Game and Fish cut the season down to two weeks, and the daily limit down to two birds, and the season limit down to four. I never take that many. I could take more, but I don’t want to.
On the day of Frank’s last bird, I didn’t start early. The birds would either be there or not, so there was time for coffee and breakfast. About ten in the morning we drove up to a draw that usually holds a flock of twenty-five or thirty grouse. I thought I could take two there without hurting the population.
It’s the kind of country that dumb people call “nothing,” as in “there is nothing there.” Miles and miles of wide open spaces, sagebrush, sage grouse, antelope, coyotes, rattlesnakes, prairie dogs, eagles, deer, elk, and big blue skies. And they call it nothing.
I pulled off the highway, on to the dirt county road, and then on to the two-track that parallels the draw I wanted to hunt. I checked the wind, because you want to hunt into the wind if possible, so the dogs can smell the birds.
I didn’t usually hunt both my dogs at the same time. It’s a lot of work to keep track of two dogs, and also they had very different styles. Hunting with my black Lab Pete annoyed Frank because Pete got in his way. I knew I was going to hunt Frank first, like I always did once he was diagnosed with cancer. He’d been on chemotherapy the previous season.
I stopped the truck, let the dogs out to pee and sniff, and I stretched my legs and smelled the sagebrush. It smells like sage, and sun, and dust, and, to me, home. It smells even better during a rain. Sometimes, when I lived in Long Beach California, I would be driving on the freeway in the rain, and I would catch a whiff of sagebrush and almost cry with homesickness.
I reached into the center console, for the bag of tobacco I use to pray and give thanks before a hunt. It’s something I learned from Arapaho and Shoshone culture. The Wind River Indian Reservation is a big part of our lives, and I have learned to respect being a guest on the land. I made a quick prayer, and then put Frank’s e-collar on him.
I always feel bad for the dog I leave behind on the first hunt of the day. I discovered if I leave Frank in the cab whenI hunt Pete, he gets so frantic he completely trashes the cab while I’m gone, so I have a nice, two-dog kennel in the back of the truck. I only use it when I leave a dog behind while I hunt the other one, or if they are exceptionally muddy. It’s well insulated and ventilated, and much safer than leaving one in the cab of the truck. .
I told Pete to kennel, and he looked at me, wounded that I would banish him like this. “Kennel” I insisted, and he kennelled.
Frank and I walked downwind toward the head of the draw. I noticed that he had lost a step over the summer. He didn’t cover as much ground as he used to, trotting rather than running. The eighty degree temperature played a role in that, but he had clearly slowed down. I made a mental note to not push him too hard, and get him plenty of water.
We turned and headed upwind into the draw. It’s not easy to walk in sagebrush, but the grouse will be towards the bottom, and there is usually a cow path. I kept an eye on Frank, but also looked at the fascinating litter of bone fragments, antelope dung, rusted bits of metal and other stuff in the bottom of the draw.
We had walked a quarter of a mile or so into the draw when Frank’s last bird got up, big as a house, and only twenty yards out. Frank didn’t put it up, it just flushed between Frank and I. It was an easy shot, which I find easy to miss, but I dropped it with the first shot.
I could tell Frank was having trouble with his vision, because he always was very good at marking birds down, and he just couldn’t see this one. I started walking toward the bird and it flopped a little, and Frank saw it. He picked it up and brought it to me.
I want to celebrate getting a bird, but Frank tends to see it as just another day at the office. I took the bird from him, and reached out to pat his head, but he sidled away, and said “let’s go find some more.”
I stood up, holding the warm bird in my hand. I looked at it as I smoothed the ruffled feathers back into place, like I always do. I looked at Frank, and thought, as I had a number of times during the previous season, “this might be Frank’s last bird.” I thought about myself at nine, holding my first bird,after dreaming about that moment for so long, with a lifetime of hunting ahead of me. It seemed so long ago now. At sixty I live in a completely different world, and so many of the people I loved back then are gone. I looked at the mountains in the distance, and thought about how long they had been standing watch over sage and sky, dust and bone, birth and death.
I put the bird in the game pocket of my vest.
Since I had a bird for Frank, it was Pete’s turn. Frank and I had only hunted half of one side of the draw, so there was a lot left for Pete. We left the draw and headed for the truck. The game warden drove up to check my license while I was giving the dogs water, and we chatted a little.
When he left, I took Frank’s e-collar off, and put Pete's on. I opened the dog box door and pointed.
“Frank, kennel.”
He looked at me, and then down at the ground
“Frank, kennel.”
He looked at me and said “I want to hunt some more.”
I thought about it. “You’ll have to hunt with Pete.”
“Okay.”
I put his e-collar back on and the three of us headed to the bottom of the draw.
We hunted the near side of the draw without finding anything. When we turned to hunt the far side, the wind picked up and switched directions, blowing from our right to left. I watched Pete work with pleasure, as always, at his energy and enthusiasm.He quartered in front of me, covering lots of ground but staying in range. Frank seemed tired and hung back a little. I was thinking it might have been a mistake to bring him along, when Pete went birdy, circling for scent and acting more excited, and then pounced and put the bird up.
It flushed to my left, about twenty-five yards out. It caught the wind and streaked away behind me so that I had to move my feet (which is always bad for my shooting) and I lead it a lot and fired, missed, lead it even more, fired, and the bird dropped somehow, wounded and running, but Pete was immediately there, like a baseball outfielder running to the spot where the ball will drop, and he had it. Frank never even saw it.
Pete brought me the bird with pride and happiness. I thumped his sides and told him what a good dog he is, and he barked and jumped with joy at having pleased me.
Back at the truck, after watering the dogs, I started working on setting up the picture. No question, I wanted a picture of this one, just like dad knew he wanted a picture of my first bird, to go in the family album with my baby pictures and mom and dad’s wedding photos. I took it with care, focusing on today, and not thinking of what tomorrow might bring.
