The Best Hunting Stories Ever Told

by Jay Cassell

  “Moon. Come back here. Come around.” He hasn’t settled down for the day. Old as he is, he still takes a wild run, first thing.

  I’m pretty well settled, myself (it’s that bird bumping against my leg). Now Moon does come back into the area I want him in, the edge between high grass and low; there’s a distinction between following your dog when he’s got something and trusting him to weigh odds. I know odds better, and here is one of those things that will be a cliché of hunting in a few years since the game-management men are telling it to one another now and it’s started filtering into outdoor magazines: the odds are that most game will be near the edge of cover, not in the center of it. The phrase for this is “edge factor.”

  “Haven’t you heard of the edge factor?” I yell at Moon. “Get out along the edge here, boy.” And in a few steps he has a scent again. When he’s got the tail factor going, the odds change, and I follow him, almost trotting to keep up, as he works from edge to center, back toward edge, after what must be a running bird. He slows a little, but doesn’t stops; the scent is hot, but apparently the bird is still moving. Moon stops, points, holds. I walk as fast as I can, am in range—and Moon starts again. He is in a crouch now, creeping forward in his point. The unseen bird must be shifting: he is starting to run again, for Moon moves out of the point and stars to lope: I move, fast as I can and still stay collected enough to shoot—gun held in both hands out in front of me—exhilarated to see the wonderful mixture of exuberance and certainty with which Moon goes. To make such big happy moves, and none of them a false one, is something only the most extraordinary human athletes can do after years of tanning it comes naturally to almost any dog. And that pheasant there in front of us—how he can go! Turn and twist through the tangle of steam stems, never showing himself, moving away from Moon’s speed and my calculations. But we’ve got him—I think we do—Moon slows, points. Sometimes we win in a run down usually not usually the pheasant picks the right time, well out and away, to flush out of range—but this one stopped. Yes. Moon’s holding again. I’m in range. I move up, beside the rigid dog. Past him. WHIRR-PT. The gun rises, checks itself, and I yell at Moon, who is ready to bound forward:

  “Hen!”

  Away she goes, and away goes Moon, and I yell: “Whoa. Hen, hen,” but it doesn’t stop him. He’s pursuing, as if he could get up enough speed to rise onto the air after her. “Whoa.” It doesn’t stop him. WHIRRUPFT. That stops him. Stops me too. A second hen. WHIRRUPFT. WHIRRUPFT. Two more. And another, that makes five who were sitting tight. And then, way out, far from this little group, through which he must have passed, and far from us, I see the cock—almost certainly the bird we were chasing (hens don’t run like that)—fly up silently, without a cackle, and glide away, across the road and out of sight.

  9:30 “There’s got to be another,” I say to Moon. A man I know informed me quite vehemently a week ago that one ought never to talk to a dog in the field except to give commands; distracts him, the man said, keeps him too close. Tell you what, man: you run your dogs your way, and I’ll run my dog mine. Okay?

  We approach a fence, where the hayfield ends; the ground is clear for 20 feet before the fence line. Critical place. If birds have been moving ahead of us, and are reluctant to fly, this is where they’ll hide. They won’t run into the open. And just as I put this card in the calculator, one goes up. CUK CUK CUK, bursting past Moon full speed and low, putting the dog between me and him so that, while my gun is ready, I can’t shoot immediately; he rises only enough to clear the fence, sweeping left between two bushes as I fire, and I see the pellets agitate the leaves of the right-hand bush, and I know I shot behind him.

  Moon, in the immemorial way of bird dogs, looks back to me with what bird hunters who miss have immemorially taken for reproach.

  We turn along the edge paralleling the fence. He may not have been the only one we chased down here—Moon is hunting, working from fence to edge, very deliberate. Me too. I wouldn’t like to miss again. Moon swerves to the fence row, tries some likely brush. Nope. Lopes back to the edge, lopes along it. Point. Very stiff. Very sudden. Ten yards, straight ahead.

  This is a beautifully awkward point, Moon’s body curved into it, shoulders down, rear up, head almost looking back at me; this one really caught him. As now we’ll catch the pheasant? So close. Dog so steady. I have the impression Moon’s looking a bird straight in the eye. I move slowly. No need for speed, no reason to risk being off balance. Let’s be so deliberate, so cool, so easy. The gun is ready to come up—I never have the feeling that I myself bring it up. Don’t be off balance. He’ll go now. Now. Nope—when he does, I try to tell myself, don’t shoot too fast, let the bird get out a little, but I’m not really that good and confident in my shooting. Thanks be for brush loads. Ought to have them in both barrels for this situation. Will I have to kick the pheasant out? I am within two steps of Moon, who hasn’t stirred except for the twitching of his shoulder and haunch muscles, when the creature bolts. Out he comes, under Moon’s nose, and virtually between my legs if I didn’t jump aside—a rabbit, tearing for the fence row. I could recover and shoot, it’s an easy shot, but not today; I smile, relax, and sweat flows. I am not that desperate for game yet.

  I yell “Whoa” at Moon, and for some dog’s reason he obeys this time. I should punish him, now; for pointing fur? But it’s my fault—sometimes, being a one-dog man, I shoot fur over him, though I recognize it as a genuine error in bird-dog handling. But with the long bond of hunting and mutual training between us (for Moon trained me no less than I did him), my taking a rabbit over him from time to time—or a mongoose, or a kangaroo—is not going to change things between us.

  In any case, my wife’s never especially pleased to see me bring a rabbit home, though the kids and I like to eat them. I pat Moon, who whoaed for the rabbit. “Whoa, big babe,” I say softly. “Whoasie-posner, whoa-daboodle-dog, big sweet posner baby dog . . .” I am rubbing his back.

  10:40 Step out of the car, look around, work it out: the birds slept late this morning, because of the wind and frost, and may therefore be feeding late. If so, they’re in the field itself, which lies beyond two fallow fields. They roost here in this heavy cover, fly out to the corn—early on nice mornings; later, if I’m correct, on a day like this. When they’re done feeding, they go to what game experts call loafing cover—relatively thin cover, near the feeding place, and stay in it till the second feeding in the afternoon; after which they’ll be back here where they started, to roost again.

  The wind is on my left cheek, as Moon and I go through the roosting cover, so I angle right. This will bring us to where we can turn and cross the popcorn field, walking straight into the wind. This will not only be better for Moon, for obvious reasons, but will also be better for shooting; birds in open rows, hearing us coming, can sail away out of range very fast with the wind behind them. If it blows towards me, they’ll either be lifted high, going into the wind, or curve off to one side or the other.

  The ragweed, as we come up close to it and Moon pauses before choosing a spot at which to plunge in, is eight feet high—thick, dry, brittle, gray-stemmed stuff that pops and crackles as he breaks into it. I move a few feet along the edge of the draw, shifting my position as I hear him working through, to stay as well in range of where he is as possible. I am calmly certain there’s a bird in there, even that it’s a cock. I think he moved in ahead of us as we were coming up the field, felt safe when he saw us apparently about to pass by, and doesn’t want to leave the defense overhead protection now.

  But he must. Moon will send him up in a moment, perhaps out the far side where the range will be extreme. It will be a long shot, if that happens, and Moon is now at the far edge, is turning along it, when I hear the cackle of the cock rising. For a moment I don’t know where, can’t see him, and by the time I do he’s going out to my right, almost back towards me, having doubled away from the dog. Out he comes, already in full flight and low, with the wind behind him for speed. And yet I w
as so well set for this, for anything, that it all seems easy—to pivot, mounting the gun as I do, find it against my cheek and the bird big and solid at the end of the barrel, swing, taking my time, and shoot. The bird checks, fights air, and tumbles, and in my sense of perfection I make an error: I am so sure he’s perfectly hit that I do not take the second shot, before he falls in some waist-high weeds. I mark the place by keeping my eye on a particular weed, a little taller than the others, and walk slowly, straight towards it, not letting my eye move away, confident he’ll be lying right by it. Moon, working the ragweed, would neither see the rise nor mark the fall and he comes bounding out to me now, coming to the sound of the shot. I reach the spot first, so very carefully marked, and there’s no bird there.

  Hunters make errors; dogs correct them. While I am still standing there, irritated with myself for not having shot twice, Moon is circling me, casting, inhaling those great snuffs, finding the ground scent. He begins to work a straight line, checks as I follow him, starts again in a slightly different direction; I must trust him, absolutely, and I do. I remind myself that once he trailed a crippled bird more than half a mile in the direction opposite from that in which I had actually seen the bird start off. I kept trying to get him to go the other way, but he wouldn’t; and he found the pheasant. It was by the edge of a dirt road, so that Max Morgan and I could clock the distance afterwards by car speedometer.

  Our present bird is no such problem. Forty feet from where the empty shell waves gently back and forth on top of the weed, Moon hesitates, points. Then, and I do not know how he knows that this particular immobile pheasant will not fly (unless it’s the smell of fresh blood), Moon lunges. His head darts into matted weeds, fights spurs for a moment, tosses the big bird once so that he can take it by the back, lifts it; and he comes to me proudly, trotting, head as high as he can hold it.

  11:00 Iowa hunters are obsessed with corn. If there are no birds in the cornfields, they consider the situation hopeless. This may come from the fact that most of them hunt in drives—a number of men spread out in line, going along abreast through standing corn, with others blocking the end of the field. My experience, for I avoid that kind of hunt every chance I get, is quite different; I rarely find pheasants in cornfields, except along the edges. More than half of those I shoot. I find away from corn, in wild cover, and sometimes the crops show that the bird has not been eating grain at all but getting along on wilder seeds.

  But as I start to hunt the popcorn field, something happens that shows why driving often works out. We start into the wind, as planned, moving down the field the long way, and way down at the other end a farm dog sees us. He starts towards us, intending to investigate Moon, I suppose. I see him come towards the field; I see him enter it, trotting our way, and the wind carries the sound of his barking. And then I see—the length of a football field away, reacting to the farm dog—pheasants go up; not two or three, but a flock, 12 or 14, and another and another and another, cocks and hens, flying off in all directions, sailing down wind and out of sight. Drivers and blockers would have had fast shooting with that bunch—but suppose I’d got up? Well, this gun only shoots twice. And, well again, boy. Three’s the limit, dunghead. And you’ve got two already.

  11:30 Two birds before lunch? I ought to limit out, I ought to limit out soon. And stop looking for pheasants, spend the afternoon on something else. Take Moon home to rest, maybe, and know that the wind’s going down and the sun’s getting hot, go into the woods for squirrels, something I like but never get around to.

  Let ’s get the other one. Where?

  We are walking back to the car, the shortest way, no reason to go through the popcorn field after what happened. Where? And I think of a pretty place, not far away.

  11:45 Yes, it’s pretty. Got a bird here last year, missed a couple, too, why haven’t I been here this season? It’s a puzzle, and the solution, as I step the car once more, is a pleasure: I know a lot of pretty places near home, 20 or 30 of them, all quite distinct, and have gotten or missed birds at all of them, one season or another.

  There are no pheasants this time, only signs of pheasant: roosting places, full of droppings. Some fresh enough so that they were dropped this morning. A place for the next windy morning: I put that idea in a safe place and move back, after Moon—he’s pretty excited with all the bird scent, but not violently; it’s not that fresh—towards the fence along the soybean field. We turn from the creek, and go along the fence line, 20 or 30 feet out, towards an eight-acre patch of woods where I have often seen deer, and if I were a real reasoner or a real instinct man, not something in between, what happens would not find me unprepared. Moon goes into a majestically rigid point, foreleg raised, tail out straight, aimed at low bushes in the fence row. I hardly ever see him point so rigidly without first showing the signs he gives while the quarry is still shifting. I move in rather casually, suspecting a hen, but if it ’s a cock rather confident, after my last great shot, and there suddenly comes at me, buzzing angrily, a swarm of—pheasants? Too small—hornets? Sparrow? Quail! Drilling right at me, the air full of them, whirring, swerving to both sides.

  Much too late, surprised, confused—abashed, for this is classic quail cover—I flounder around, face back the way I came, and pop off a pair of harmless shots, more in valediction than in hope of hitting. Turn back to look at Moon, and up comes a straggler, whirring all by himself, also past me. There are no easy shots on quail, but I could have him, I think, if both barrels weren’t empty. He’s so close that I can see the white on neck and face, and know him for a male. Jock though I am, at least I mark him down, relieved that he doesn’t cross the creek.

  Moon works straight to the spot where I marked the straggler, and sure enough he flushes, not giving the dog a chance to point, flushes high and I snap-shoot and he falls. Moon bounds after him and stops on the way, almost pitching forward, like a car when its brakes lock. Another bird. Ready. I hope I have my down bird marked. Careful. Whirr—I damn near stepped on him, and back he goes behind me. I swing 180 degrees, and as he angles away have him over the end of the barrel. As I fire, it seems almost accidental that I should be on him so readily, but it’s not of course—it’s the one kind of shot that never misses, the unplanned, reflexive shot, when conditioning has already operated before self-consciousness could start up. This quail falls in the soft maple seedlings, in a place I won’t forget, but the first one may be hard.

  He’s not. I find him without difficulty, seeing him on the ground at just about the same time that Moon finds him too. Happy to have him, I bring Moon back to the soft maple seedlings, but we do not find the second bird.

  12:30 Lunch is black coffee in the thermos, an apple and an orange, and the sight of two quail and two pheasants, lying in a neat row on the car floor. I had planned to go home for lunch; and it wouldn’t take so very much time; but I would talk with my family, of course, and whatever it is this noon that they’re concerned with, I would be concerned with. And that would break the spell, as an apple and an orange will not.

  12:45 Also

  1:45 and, I’m afraid

  2:45 these hours repeat one another, and at the end of them I have: two pheasants, as before: two quail; and an afterthought.

  The afterthought shouldn’t have run through my mind, in the irritable state that it was in.

  The only shots I took were at domestic pigeons, going by fast and far up, considered a nuisance around here; I missed both times. But what made me irritable were all the mourning doves.

  There are doves all over the place in Iowa, in every covert that I hunt—according to the last Audubon Society spring census at Des Moines, doves were more common even than robins and meadow larks. In my three hard hours of barren pheasant hunting, I could have had shots at 20 or 25 doves (a game bird in 30 states, a game bird throughout the history of the world), and may not try them. Shooting doves is against the law in Iowa. The harvesting of our enormous surplus (for nine out of 10 will die before they’re a year old a
nyway) is left to cats and owls and—because the dove ranges get so crowded—germs.

  Leaving the half-picked cornfield, I jump yet another pair of doves, throw up my gun and track them making a pretended double, though I doubt that it would work.

  Three hours of seeing doves, and no pheasants, has made me pettish, and perhaps I am beginning to tire.

  A rabbit jumps out behind the dog, unseen by Moon but not by me. At first I assume that I want to let him go, as I did the earlier one; then he becomes the afterthought: company, dinner—so you won’t let me shoot doves, eh, rabbit? He’s dead before he can reach cover.

  3:00 Now I have only an hour left to get my final bird, for pheasant hunting ends at four. This is a symbolic bird: a good hunter gets his limit. At noon it seemed almost sure I would; suddenly it’s doubtful.

  I sit in the car, one hand on Moon who is lying on the seat beside me. We’ve reached the time of the day when he rests when he can.

  3:10 On my way to someplace else, I suddenly brake the car.

  “Hey, did you see that?” I am talking to Moon again. He has a paw over his nose, and of course saw nothing. I look over him, eagerly, out the window and down into a big marsh we were about to pass by. We were on our way to the place I’d thought of, an old windbreak of evergreens near an abandoned farmhouse site, surrounded by overgrown pasture, and not too far from corn—It’s an ace in-the-hole kind of place for evening shooting, for the pheasants come in there early to roost; I’ve used it sparingly, shown it to no one.

  Going there would be our best chance to fill out, I think, but look: “Damn, Moon, snipe. Snipe, boy, I’m sure of it.”

  On the big marsh, shore birds are rising up and setting down, not in little squadrons like killdeer—which are shore birds about the same size, and very common—but a bird here, a bird there. Becoming instantly invisible when they land, too, and so not among the wading shore birds. I get out the glasses and step out of the car, telling Moon to stay. I catch one of the birds in the lenses, and the silhouette is unmistakable—the long, comic beak, the swept-back wings.