The Best Hunting Stories Ever Told

by Jay Cassell

The sun was bright on the sedge and pines now, and the air winy-crisp after the rain. Mack was a bouncing flash of white as he worked through the sedge and low pines. Once he started over the fence into the field, but I called him back. I wanted him to keep working down the edge. While the bean field seemed a tempting place to catch a breakfasting bevy, the cover bordering it offered much better chances—at least three to one, according to the quail-hunting education I had received here as a youngster. I could still imagine the sound of my grandfather’s voice as he preached:

  “Never mind all them picturebook covey rises in those magazines you read. It’s only now and then you’ll catch these old open coveys in the open. Birds once had to range wide and root for their keep. Now all the work’s done for ‘em. Combines and cornpickers leave so much feed scattered in the field the birds an feed in a few minutes, then leg it back into the cover. That’s where you want to work. First, if they haven’t gone to feed, you’re likely to find ‘em. If they’ve walked into the field, the dog’ll trail ‘em out. If they’ve already been into the field and fed, you’ll still find ‘em. Only time you’ll miss is when they’ve flown into the field and are still there.”

  I had seen this simple philosophy pay increasing dividends as the years wore on. As the cover became thicker and the coveys smarter, the clear covey shot had become a rare, treasured experience. To spend a lot of time working through the fields was to be a dreamer of the highest order.

  Still in the cover, we rounded the end of the small field and headed up the other side. I was beginning to feel the bite of the day’s first disappointment; Mack had picked up no scent at all. Where were they? This covey had always been easy to find. Maybe they had been shot out, I thought. Maybe the whole place has been shot out.

  I decided to play out a hunch. I pulled down a rusty strand of fence and stepped out into the field. Mack leaped the wire and raced away at full gallop. Far downfield he turned into the wind and suddenly froze in one of the most dramatic points I’ve ever seen. I knew he was right on top of those birds, his body curved tautly, his tail arching. “Oh ho!” I said aloud. “So you beggars did fly to the field.”

  My strides lengthened and became hurried. I snapped the gun open and checked the shells in an unnecessary gesture of nervousness. Normally steady hands seemed to tremble a little and felt very thick and uncertain. My heartbeat was a thunderous throb at the base of my throat.

  My tangled nerves and wire-taut reflexes scarcely felt the nudge of a thought that said, “Relax. You’ve done this before.” The case of shakes I undergo every time I step up to a point makes it difficult to attach any importance to that idea. Covey-rise jitters are known to have only one cure: action.

  On my next step, the earth seemed to explode. The air was suddenly filled with blurry bits and pieces of speeding fragments, all boring toward the pines that loomed ahead. I found myself looking at one particular whirring form, and when the stock smacked against my face, the gun bucked angrily. The brown missile was unimpressed. He faded into the swamp, along with a skyful of surviving kinsmen. My loosely poked second shot failed to drop a tail-ender.

  Mighty sorry gathering up of partridges, I thought, using the expression that was my uncle’s favorite on the occasions when we struck out on a covey rise. “Sorry, boy,” I called to Mack, who was busy vacuuming the grass in a futile search for downed birds.

  My elders would have thought that bevy’s maneuver of flying out to the field was the lowest trick in the book. But now the practice had become so typical among smart southern Bobs that it was hardly worth lamenting.

  I called Mack away from his unrewarding retrieve and headed after those singles. The woods ahead looked clear enough for some choice shooting if I could keep Mack close.

  Thirty minutes later I emerged from those woods a frustrated, angry man. My estimate that the birds had landed in the grassy, open pinelands was about two hundred yards wrong. Instead they had sailed on into one of the thickest, darkest sweet-gum swamps I’ve ever cursed a bird dog in. It took Mack all of fifteen seconds to get lost, and when I found him on point after ten minutes of searching I proceeded to put the first barrel into a gum tree and the second into a screen of titi bushes. Then the heebie-geebies really took over as I walked over two separate singles that jumped unannounced. Finally, Mack pointed again, but as I fought through the tearing clutches of briers and vines to get to him, I bumped another single, which I shot at without a glimmer of hope. That action caused Mack to take matters into his own hands and send the bird he was pointing vaulting away through the trees. Then followed a lot of unnecessary yelling, and we headed for the clear.

  I should have known better. Single-bird hunting in that part of Georgia had become a sad business. Now I was discovering that my old hunting grounds were in the same shape as the rest of the county. If you were going to mess with singles, you had to wait for the right type of open woods. Most were just too thick to see a dog, much less a six-ounce bird. The day’s shooting was certainly not going to follow the patterns of the past when it came to singles. I would have to wait until I got a bevy scattered in a better place.

  We cut away from the field into a section of low moss-draped oak trees. Mack ranged ahead, working smartly. My frustrations of the first covey slipped away as I began considering the coming encounter with the next set of old friends. This covey, if they were still in business, would be composed of dark swamp birds that lived in the edge of the creek swamp but used this oak ridge to feed on acorns during early mornings and late afternoons. They were extremely hard to catch in the open, sometimes running for hundreds of yards in front of a dog on point. But what a sight they always made as they hurtled up among the moss-draped oaks on the lucky occasions when we did get them pinned nicely.

  This oak ridge was fairly open, so I let Mack move on out a little bit. When he cut through one thickish cluster of trees and did not come out right away, I knew he had ‘em.

  Incredible, I thought. The first two coveys are still here, and we’ve worked ‘em both. Then the words turned into brass in my mouth as I eased up to the dog and past him. The thunderous rise I had been expecting failed to occur. I let Mack move on ahead to relocate. Catlike, he crept through the low grass for a few yards, then froze again. I moved out in front once more, and still nothing happened.

  Then, suddenly I heard them. Several yards out front the dry leaves rustled under the flow of quick-moving feet. The covey was up to its old trick of legging it for the sanctuary of the swamp.

  I hurried forward, crashing through the briers. Just ahead, the low cover gave way to a wall of sweetgum and cypress that marked the beginning of the swamp. Too late! I caught the sound of wings whirring. The birds had made the edge and were roaring off through the trees. They seemed to get up in groups of two and three. I caught an occasional glimpse of dim blurs through the screen of limbs and snapped a shot at one. Leaves and sticks showered down as Mack raced forward. Seconds later he emerged from the brush carrying a plump rooster bobwhite.

  Had you seen me grinning over that bird, you might have thought I hadn’t scored in five years. But the shot seemed mighty satisfying under the conditions. A few moments like this could make the day a lot more glorious than a coatful of birds ever could.

  Now we followed an old lane that led down across the swamp and out beside a tremendous cornfield surrounded by pine and gallberry flats. I expected to find a couple of coveys here—and did, too, as the morning wore on in a succession of encounters with my old friends. A heart-warming double from a bevy Mack pinned along a fence row was followed by a succession of bewildering misses when we followed the singles into an open gallberry flat where I should have been able to score. Then we had the fun of unraveling a particularly difficult relocation problem when Mack picked up some hot scent in the corn but could not trail out to the birds. The edge of the field sloped down a grassy flat to an old pond with pine timber on the far side. I just knew those birds had flown across that pond to the woods to hole up for the da
y. When I took Mack over he made a beautiful point, standing just inside the woods. I wish I could always dope out a covey like that.

  We spent the middle of the day stretched out on the grass on the pond dam. The sandwiches and coffee couldn’t have tasted better. The sun was warm, and crows and doves flew against the blue sky. I thought about old hunts and old friends and couldn’t have felt better.

  In the afternoon we had a couple of interesting pieces of action, but failed to find some of my old neighbor coveys at home. My thoughts kept reaching ahead to the lateafternoon time when I would near the old now-deserted house by the lane and see the sundown covey again. Surely they would still be there. After all, we had been finding most of the old coveys. Who says you can’t go home again? Who’s afraid of you, Tom Wolfe?

  The sun was dipping toward the pines and a sharp chill had come on when I skirted the last field and entered a stretch of open pine woods where I was counting on finding the covey of birds that I had carried in my mind all my life. Before I had gone fifty yards I came on something that shocked me as though I’d walked up on a ten-foot rattlesnake. A newly cut stake had been driven in the ground, and a red ribbon tied to the top of it. Farther on there was another, then another.

  I had known that the new Savannah-Atlanta-Super-High-Speed-Interstate-Get-You-There-Quick-Highway was to pass through this general area. But surely, a couple of miles away. Not here. Not right here.

  Gradually, my disbelief turned into anger. I felt like heading for the car right then and getting the hell out of there. Then suddenly three shots boomed in the woods some distance ahead.

  Well, it was apparent that the sundown covey was still around. But an intruder had found them. I decided to go on up and talk to whoever it was. Actually, he probably had as much right to be here as I did now. I couldn’t believe he was a regular hunter on this land, though. The coveys I had been finding all day were too populous with birds to be gunned heavily.

  I walked slowly through the pines for a few minutes without spotting the other hunter. Then his gun thudded again, this time from farther down in the swamp. He’s after the singles now, I thought. I called in Mack and waited there opposite the swamp. The other fellow would have to come out this way.

  During the next few minutes two more separate shots sounded. The sun sank lower, and the breeze blew harder in the pines. Finally, I heard the bushes shaking and a man came out of the cover. When Mack started barking he spotted me and headed my way. As he came up I saw that he was young, carried an automatic and wore no hunting coat. He had some quail by the legs in his left hand.

  “Looks like you did some good,” I said.

  “Yea, I got six.”

  “Where’s your dog?” I asked.

  “Oh, I don’t have a dog. I spotted a covey crossing the road down there by the lane. I had the gun in the truck, so I went after ‘em. Got three when I flushed ‘em and three more down in the branch. Tiny little covey, though. I don’t think there were more than six when I first flushed ‘em. I imagine people been framin’ into this bunch all the time.” My heart sank when he said that. I didn’t know what to say. He paused a minute, looking at Mack. “That’s a nice dog. He any good?”

  “Fair,” I said. “Maybe you shouldn’t have done that.”

  “What?”

  “Shoot a small covey on down that way.”

  “Don’t mean nothing. There’s always a covey of birds along here. Every year. But there won’t be for long. Interstate’s coming through.”

  “Yea,” I said slowly. “I see it is.”

  “Well, I gotta run. That’s sure a nice-looking dog, Mister. See you around.”

  I watched him walk away. Then I leaned back against a pine, listening to the swamp noises. The wings of a pair of roost-bound ducks whispered overhead. An owl tuned up down in the swamp. Somehow I kept thinking that I would hear some birds calling each other back into a covey. Perhaps two or three had slipped away unseen from the roadside.

  The night pressed down. Trembling in the cold, I started for the truck. Orion wheeled overhead. I started thinking about some new places I wanted to try. But never again did I hear that flutelike call that had sounded for me from that swamp so many times before.

  Bobwhites in the Shinnery

  GEOFFREY NORMAN

  “You gotta make it,” Ted said.

  “I don’t know . . .” I said into the phone.

  “It’s the kind of quail hunting you dream of. You’ll think you’ve died and gone to heaven.”

  It wasn’t the best image he could have used. And he seemed to realize it.

  “Really, man,” Ted said, more soberly. “After what you’ve been through, hell, you owe it to yourself.”

  It is always hard to turn down an invitation to do a little quail hunting, but I had prudent reasons for saying “No.” I was only a couple of months past a little “minor” surgery that had turned into a major medical event. My heart had stopped—“cardiac arrest,” they’d called it—while I’d been in the recovery room. The people attending to me had been quick to slap the paddles on my chest and shock my heart back into normal rhythm, and I am profoundly grateful for their professionalism, which prevented any permanent damage. Still . . .

  All this had occurred at the end of the summer, so, naturally, one of my first concerns was that I’d be laid up during hunting season. But I’d rallied pretty quickly and had gone out after grouse and woodcock around home a few times since my scare and was fine. No trouble walking or climbing hills. I’d been in pretty good shape to begin with, and now I had a little metal box implanted in my chest that would shock me, automatically, if there were another arrest. The doctor who had put it in said he would bet money. The box felt strange, resting there under the skin just below my left shoulder. Strange and reassuring at the same time.

  Even so, the doctors wanted me to stay close to home—which was Southern Vermont—for at least the first three months after what they liked to call “the event.” And I was inclined for the first time in my life to accept? medical advice.

  “Wild birds,” he said. “Twenty coveys a day. Sometimes more.”

  “Where is it again?”

  “Oklahoma. Not far from Amarillo. You fly into Oklahoma City, and I’ll pick you up. We stay at a motel in Elk City.”

  “I don’t know . . .” No matter how I stretched it, flying off to Oklahoma to hunt birds did not qualify as “sticking close to home.”

  “It’s opening weekend,” Ted went on, and I knew the voice of temptation in all its Biblical force. “Todd has whole sections of land leased up.”

  “I hear you.”

  “Wild birds,” he said again. He knew my weakness—not just mine, any bird hunter’s. And he was mercilessly exploiting it.

  “What about dogs?” I said. Birds are not the only essential in bird hunting.

  “Todd has a line on some that he says are pretty good. But I was hoping you’d bring Jeb.” I could tell by Ted’s tone that he knew he’d made the sale.

  “He’s never been to Oklahoma.”

  “Well, we need to fix that. I’m sure he’ll find it to his liking.”

  “OK,” I said, sounding like a man who just didn’t have any alternative. “You talked me into it.”

  Getting ready to go was easy enough. The hard part was convincing my wife that I’d pace myself, quit if I started feeling bad, get plenty of sleep, watch what I ate and drank, and so on, and so on . . . I packed the necessary gear for me and for Jeb, my pointer who had just turned 12 but still had plenty of drive. Brush pants and boots for me. Leather booties for him, to guard against the sand spurs. Dog bowl, shock collar (which I seldom used any more), pad medication, vest, shotgun and so forth. We left in plenty of time to catch the plane, which meant four hours before departure. One and a half to get to the airport, and the balance for everything we had to deal with before departure. Halfway to the airport, I pulled over and gave Jeb a pill: a tranquilizer that a vet had prescribed. Although he is great on t
he highway—loves road trips—Jeb is not down with flying. If he is not sedated, he will howl from the time he goes into the traveling crate until he is rescued at the baggage claim. On one flight, everyone on the plane could hear him crying right up until the engines spooled and drowned out the noise. When we landed and the pilot cut the power, we could hear him again. He may have been howling through the entire flight. Other passengers looked at me with expressions of either pity or disapproval. Pity for the dog, no doubt. Disapproval for his cruel master.

  We’d flown several times since that trip, and the tranquilizers had seemed to do the trick. When he went off in his crate with my duffel and my shotgun case, Jeb was lying down with his eyes closed.

  “See you in Oklahoma City, bud,” I said.

  He didn’t answer.

  I went on up to the security checkpoint, where I notified one of the agents that I had an implanted device and endured my first pat-down search. One more thing to get used to, I thought.

  It was late afternoon when we landed. Ted met me at baggage claim.

  “You look pretty good for a man who’s had a heart attack,” he said.

  “Kind of you to say.”

  “Don’t mention it. Where’s old Jeb?”

  “He’ll be coming along,” I said. “He’s the real reason you invited me on this trip, right? You didn’t need me; you needed my dog.”

  “Well, hell, of course that’s the reason. Don’t tell me you were confused about that.”

  Ted has a weakness for pointers, and he was between dogs. Also, he’d hunted with Jeb before and liked his style, which might be characterized as “confident.” Maybe even “aggressive.” Ted also admired Jeb’s sense of mischief. He’d witnessed some of his stunts, including the time Jeb charged into a packrat den and emerged with a full-grown skunk.

  We recovered my bag, my gun and my dog.

  “Three for three. Not bad,” Ted said. He opened the door to the dog box when we were outside on the airport curb.