Two Minutes with Maddie

After three very wordy posts this week, this one will be done in 2 minutes or less.

I took Maddie into the woods this morning, where she encountered 13 birds in just under an hour.

Maddie points a grouse in heavy cover

I captured one woodcock point on video.  The bird and dog footage aren't the greatest, but if you're not familiar with the grouse woods, this will give you some idea of what you're missing:

Maddie runs in the SE MI RGS fun trial at 2:30 tomorrow.

South Point (Part Two)

Note: This is a continuation of Thursday's South Point (Part One)

I'm not a pro.  Maybe this will come to a surprise to some, but there are dog training pros out there.  There are dog trialing pros.  Arguably, there are some bird hunting pros.

Due to limited resources, limited life experience and limited opportunity, not to mention personal choices, priorities, and commitments to other things; I am not one of them.

To put things in perspective, I got into dogs before I got into hunting.  I grew up with dogs and as a young twenty-something, I wanted a pet.  So learning of a litter, I worked the hunting angle to secure an alliance with my father-in-law, and we mutually petitioned our wives to let us bring home a puppy.  I went to the woods with the dog and became fascinated by her pointing instinct.  Thus, the blame for my current hunting affliction rests squarely on the shoulders of a quirky cross-bred pointing mutt named Connie.

Right off the bat, I took on Connie's training as a purely personal endeavor.  I did some reading, chatted on some internet forums, and took (take) considerable pride in showing her the ropes myself without employing professional assistance.

Then came Maddie.  Maddie was an orphan -- a rescue pup of probably purebred English Pointer lineage.  Maddie was an enigma of a dog.  She was (is) a dog of certain neuroses, but an incredible bird finder.  With Maddie in the mix however, Connie gradually came unwound.

It was almost like Maddie absorbed Connie's pointing instinct.  Connie started chasing birds.  Forget about bagging birds.  The gun never got close.  So long story short:  Connie went back to school.  Enter new reading.  Enter new training techniques.  Enter a pigeon loft in my backyard.  Enter new training partners.  And over a period of 3 months or so, enter a renewal of Connie's manners in the woods.  As a result, 2010 ended up being Connie's most productive hunting season to-date.

Fast forward to this week.  This Saturday is the SE Michigan Ruffed Grouse Society Fun Trial.  The trial is a low pressure opportunity for casual hunters have their dogs evaluated in a friendly hunting competition while supporting a great conservation organization.  I've run both dogs in past years, but this time around opted to go with Maddie.

At the same time the woodcock (a migratory game bird) are hitting the area with force, creating a great opportunity for off-season dog training.  I've been in the woods every day for about a week.  In a stunning role reversal, Maddie has been the one struggling, and Connie has been finding birds with the polish of a trial champ.  This prompted me to reconsider my trial entry.  I bragged up my old buddy Connie, and this morning took her out to a friend's house for one last run before the trial.

Sparing you the details, things did not go well.  Her bird work was terrible.  Her obedience was terrible.  I woke up this morning with all the confidence in the world, in eager anticipation of the trial, grateful for the opportunity to show off my handiwork with Connie.  I left convinced that Maddie's natural talent trumps my hard work and is the logical choice for the trial.

On a side note, I was pleased to find on Wednesday that for the first time since first keeping pigeons about a year ago, I had a hen on the nest with a single egg laid.  I returned home tonight to find that a hawk somehow managed to slip a talon into the pigeon coop and the hen is dead -- the nest is lost.

Overall, my Thursday was one steamer of a south point.

South Point (Part One)

Serious bird hunters employ serious hunting dogs, and no hunting dogs are as serious as those in the class known as the pointing breeds.

Pointing dogs possess a unique instinctual characteristic.  As is virtually universal among canines, pointers use their keen sense of smell to aggressively and enthusiastically locate game.  When a pointer senses quarry in his immediate vicinity however,  a counter-intuitive reaction occurs.  The dog freezes.  Every muscle the dog's body goes rigid.  His tail stands up fire-poker straight, and his whole body remains stone solid ("on point" we say) -- locked in a standoff with the bird's indecision over whether to stay and hide, or flee.  The hunter's job then is to interrupt this standoff, step in, compel the bird to fly, and take his game on the wing.  Alternately, (if the hunter is yours truly) his job is to step in, compel flight, and salute the spirit of wild freedom with twin shotgun blasts, as his quarry glides away to safety!

A dog on point in a thick field or forest presents certain difficulty: namely finding the dog!  A hunting dog doesn't do us much good by knowing the location of a bird if we don't know the location of the dog.  Fortunately, human ingenuity stepped in with a marvelous piece of technology known as the "beeper/locator," or "beeper collar."  This simple device contains a toggle switch which, when the dog is in motion, keeps the beeper silent.  However, when the dog freezes, the toggle stops moving and the device begins to beep, indicating the dog's (and hopefully the bird's) location. There is nothing, NOTHING that quickens a bird hunter's pulse like the silence of the wilderness interrupted briefly but suddenly by the beep of his dog's locator collar.

While undoubtedly a thing of genius, there is one significant shortcoming in the design of the beeper collar.  It lacks discernment.  A pointing dog's dedication to hunting is an unholy possession.  The dog is fixated on his task, and almost nothing can interrupt his steady and methodical search for game.  That "almost" is (finally!) the subject of this blog entry.

The scene is this:  Hunter and dog move through the woods as symbiotes.  They are keenly aware of their interdependence and keep close tabs on one another.  The hunter tracks his dog with an ear to the moving brush, and the dog periodically "checks in" by momentarily coming close to the hunter before venturing out to resume his search.

Abruptly, the dog's movement stops.  The hunter's breath catches in his chest as the click of a second hand echos through eternity.  Then comes the audible adrenaline jolt.  The hunter's pace quickens, and he looks for a clear path to the source of the beep.  Branches slap him in the face.  Thorns tear at his clothing and the flesh beneath, yet he hardly notices.  He scans the cover for his dog, planning his approach, visualizing the flush, the shot, the recovery, the glory!

As his eyes locate the canine source of his manic searching, the hunter discovers he's been duped.  The tell-tale beeps do not indicate a climax in nature's primal drama of predator vs. prey.  The dog has stopped, and is relatively still.  However, the hunter finds his dog contorted:  nose up, rump down, engaged in another very anti-climactic, albeit very natural process -- the result of which is nothing you want to stuff in your game vest (YUCK!).

It's what members of my hunting party refer to as a "south point."

To have one's high hopes dashed by this unsavory act is, simply put, a unique kind of disappointment.

Timber Whoodle?

It's bound to come up eventually, so lets tackle the obvious question right off the bat...

"What the heck is a Timberdoodle?"

"Timberdoodle" is a colloquial term - a nickname if you will - for the American Woodcock.  This leads us to a GREAT followup question...

"What the heck is an American Woodcock?"

Here we go!

The American Woodcock is a species of woodland bird.  I became aware of it maybe 8 years ago when I first explored an interest in hunting.  On a seemingly ordinary day in October, a naive, young (twenty-something) former version of myself stepped into the woods with the experienced company of my father-in-law.  One might argue that a slow burn was sparked on that day, and that all other aspects of my previous life were soon consumed by the passion to pursue wild game ("one" in this case most aptly refers to my darling wife).  While the Michigan woods have proven to be a positive bounty of game for me (grouse, pheasant, deer, wild turkey, ducks, rabbits, etc.), the Timberdoodle holds a special place in my heart.

In addition to being the first game I ever hunted with success, an upland encounter with a doodle uniquely showcases the talents of a well-bred, well-trained pointing dog.  (Therein lies a major source of my passion for the outdoors:  sharing my home with a couple of pointy mutts, observing their instinct, training them, and journeying into the woods with man's best friend. That's a topic you're sure to see in future posts.)   Further, I can't help but respect the woodcock's unique physical characteristics, which make it remarkably well-suited to its forest habitat.

Folklore holds that the woodcock was stitched together with leftover parts when God was done creating the rest of the forest creatures.  Most notable is the bird's elongated, prehensile beak, which it uses to probe the earth and leaf-litter in search of worms, grubs, and other delicious invertebrates.  In both its daily habits and its annual migrations, the woodcock flies much more than it walks.  As a result, its legs are disproportionally small compared to the rest of its body.  This leads to a characteristic head-bobbing waddle when the bird is compelled to move across the ground in search of food or to evade predators.  Its cryptic plumage of spattered black, white, and gray on russet brown appears haphazard out of context, but perfectly conceals the bird on the forest floor.  Its eyes are place high up and far back on its head (think bullfrog), giving the bird nearly 360 degrees of vision.  In all, it's a freakish, funny-looking, fascinating creature.  Have a look:

Likewise, I expect this blog to be a conglomeration of odds and ends.  I'll write about the things I think about, so in all honesty it will probably be dominated by hunting reports, dog training progress, photos from the field (when I remember to take them!), and general reflections on outdoor events and experiences.  Maybe on occasion I'll dive into fun topics of family, religion, politics, etc, but for the most part I'll try to keep it light, informative and grounded in exploring the uplands.  I'd like to make it a place where comments are responded to and questions are answered, but for now I plan to sit back and see where it goes.  I hope someone will enjoy reading it, but if nothing else I'm sure I'll enjoy writing it.

One final question which frequently comes up...

"How does one get from 'Woodcock' to 'Timberdoodle?'" 

While the exact etymology of "Timberdoodle" is unknown, the logical origin is either a) New England/Puritan, or b) Up North/Smartalec.  "Timber" is synonymous with "wood."  I'll leave the second half of that word puzzle to your imagination!