BIRD DOGS
My brother married Marilyn Francis in 1966. Marilyn’s father was the President of the Federal Reserve Bank in Saint Louis, a Catholic, and a wealthy man. The wedding was conducted in St. Louis, and the entire Obermiller clan attended. I even had a small part in the wedding (usher) and wore a tuxedo for the first, and last, time. After the rather extravagant wedding and reception, we all retired to the Francis estate for some family time. It was difficult, though, because Mr. Francis had recently purchased a couple of German shorthaired pointers – bird dogs – who were kenneled just outside the house. These were very noisy dogs, indeed, barking loudly and non-stop the entire time we were there. Later, when we had left for my aunts house in Warson Woods, Dad and I speculated that the noisy dogs were entirely unfit for such a stately and serene mansion, and Mrs. Francis. We figured Mr. Francis had picked up the very expensive dogs for social reasons. We knew he did not hunt birds or anything else. He was a banker after all. The dogs were named Duke and Howley. Mr. Francis let drop that they cost $600 each. An unheard of sum at the time.
A couple of months later Mr. Francis called Dad. Would he like to have the dogs as a ‘wedding’ gift? Apparently, Mrs. Francis had won an argument. Now, I was a long time hunter of everything, but I had never hunted birds – quail – with a dog. Sometimes, Dad hunted with me, but usually my companion was my friend Mickey Leach. Hunting dogs were something for the elite, Mick and I just tromped through the grass and brush kicking up quail at likely spots, shooting lots of rabbits. Mick and I had been hunting together for years, and we were very good at it. Times had changed, however. Mick had graduated from high school a couple of years before me, gotten married, and gone off to Vietnam. I had some newer friends, but they were not hunters or outdoorsmen. When my brother got married, I was getting ready to go into the university, and my shotgun was left in the gun rack in favor of the academic world. The dogs changed all that. What followed was four years of companionship with my father, his friends, and the dogs.
Duke and Howley were, shall we say, somewhat frenetic dogs. Dad had owned an English pointer at some time in his youth, and looked forward to hunting with a birddog again. We built a nice kennel for them off the west side of our barn. We lived on 120 acres north of Columbia where we kept a few horses. The kennel was 300 feet from the house, far enough to mute the constant yodeling of the dogs. I wondered how one trained a bird dog as these guys had obviously not been trained and wouldn’t even hang around when you let them out for a run. Dad was quite sure that hunting and pointing was purely instinctive, and all we had to do was take them out to likely bird areas. I was sure the dogs would just disappear, but the old man was right. The dogs seemed to know what shotguns were and what we were planning to do. It was still summer and the quail season had not opened, but we were going to try to kick up some birds and shoot a couple so the dogs would know what to pay attention to. It was the beginning of an incredible adventure.
So, we let the dogs out and headed south into the valley. Howley promptly disappeared, but Duke hung around sniffing out the surroundings. Down in the valley, Howley’s tail could occasionally be seen wagging above the grass a quarter mile away, a foretaste of things to come. Duke continued to sniff. In a very short while, Duke broke into a point. Tail straight up, nose pointing at the ground. I was just amazed. Walking up on the dog, I flushed a quail from right under that nose, and promptly shot it. The 12-gauge going off over his head did not faze Duke. He watched the bird hit the ground, and with only a little encouragement found and picked it up. I expected him to run off with the bird, or eat it, but instead he trotted back to us and offered the bird to me. I took it, still amazed. This dog had never been hunting, never seen a quail, never heard a shotgun. At this moment, Howley came streaking by. Smelling the dead bird, he put on the brakes, turned, and dashed up to me, and slobbered on the bird in my hand. Then he was gone again, but now he knew what he was looking for. The rest of that first day, we shot several birds. Duke hung around and pointed within a hundred feet or so. Howley dashed around pointing birds several hundred feet away, eventually flushing them when we couldn’t get to him fast enough. But when the shotguns went off, he would come galloping back. Both dogs loved to find the birds we had downed, dutifully bringing them to us. Quail hunting had reached a whole new level.
Now, I have to tell you a bit about my proficiency with my 12-gauge. My Uncle Fred gave me the gun when I turned 12 years old. It was a rickety old Irvin Johnson single shot 26 inch barrel with an improved, that is slightly choked, cylinder. It had no front sight and the hand grip had a tendency to fall off. I had hunted everything with this shotgun for 6 years, and we hunted all the time. I had so much practice with this old gun that I couldn’t miss…never missed. Not ever. So hunting quail with the dogs was destined to turn into simply harvesting birds. The shotgun accuracy tended to fall over into other guns I shot. I was also completely accurate with my Dad’s Browning semi, a gun I had also used a lot. But I could pick up anyone’s shotgun and wreak havoc on the local bird population.
So we started the quail season in November hunting our land. The dogs were superb, but Howley would not hunt close and Duke would not hunt far. We busted coveys and I would quickly get off my shot, generally trying for two birds at once. Dad was quite far sighted by this time, and would let the birds get some distance before firing. This was also desirable because the Browning was a duck gun with a long barrel and full choke. If you hit a bird up close you were likely to simply blow it up. But, Dad was a superb shot. He regularly got ‘trips’, three birds on a rise. They would fall far away. Howley would ferret out the distant shots, bringing back the birds one or two at a time. Duke would find my birds and bring them in. We typically did not go after singles after slaughtering half a covey on one rise.
One Saturday we had the dogs out hunting the east end of the valley. There was frequently a covey found around the edge of a small wooded area, and we had worked around that edge, but with no results. We started west through the deep grass to see if the birds could be found out the in fields. Howley ranged in front and behind us, several hundred feet away. Abruptly, he went into a point. We were learning the pointing characteristics of the dogs, and this was not a ‘bird’ point. Howley’s tail was up and rotating in a large circle. This signal meant he was pointing some animal, but nothing we were interested in. If he pointed with his head level and his tail wagging from side to side, it indicated a loose covey. If he pointed down with his tail rigid, it meant a tight covey or single birds. Dad shouted at the dog, and suddenly, he broke point and lunged at something in the grass, growling and biting. Then, just as suddenly, he recoiled and started running toward us. We could see his white muzzle was completely gray, and when he got a little closer we could see, and smell, why. The stupid dog had jumped a skunk and gotten sprayed at point blank range right in the nose. Well, we had a little discussion about whether this would ruin his sense of smell, and were thankful we didn’t have to go home in the truck.
Howley hunted the rest of the day, pointing bird after bird with the awful reek of skunk following him like an ugly cloud. I don’t know how his ultra refined olfactory nerve could work after being coated with skunk oil, but it did. It didn’t impair him a bit, although it did impair us a bit.
So went the fall of my freshman year at the university. January was too cold and snowy to hunt, but we still took the dogs out to run during the spring and summer. Dad spread the reputation of our wonderful dogs, and the next fall we picked up several hunting partners. The regulars were Jim Butcher, an attorney and Presiding Commissioner for Boone County, Harry Winfrey, an accountant of some renown, and Mike Trombley, another attorney and a playboy. Sometimes Jim’s wife would join us, and sometimes Trombley would bring a girlfriend. Butcher and Trombley were business partners, and my mother was a paralegal who managed their law firm. Jim was a man of substance. He was wealthy and had his own Brittany pointer dog. He was a fair shot. Trombley was also wealthy. He owned a share of a WW2 P-51 Mustang fighter plane and drove a white Jaguar XKE. Mike had fancy guns, but he couldn’t hit much and mostly came along to impress his girlfriend de jour. Harry was also wealthy, and was a very sincere hunter. He bought new and expensive shotguns regularly because he couldn’t hit a bird, and always blamed it on his guns. As I recall, poor Harry never once hit a bird. All three of these guys wore designer hunting clothes and boots, lots of red and buff, and really liked getting out in the colorful fall fields and woods. The women were similarly outfitted. All together, they looked like a bunch of un-horsed English foxhunters. They just needed a little trumpet to complete the effect.
Now, Dad was just as well off as the hunting partners, but he didn’t show it. He wore an old scarred up canvas hunting coat that had game pockets and built in bandoleers for ammo. I wore an old green army jacket with lots of pockets, and had a knapsack for game. He had had his Browning since he was in the university and it showed. I have already described my ancient Johnson single shot. But neither clothes nor guns make the hunter. Dad and I were so much better than the others that it created a little bitterness. Jim took to making sarcastic comments about my shooting…and never missing. He took to waiting and watching for me to miss, which never happened. When we started out into the fields, he would ask me how many birds I would shoot that day. I took to replying by fishing shells out of my pocket and holding them up to him. It would be that many. I never took more than five or six shells, because it just wasn’t fair to the quail.
One day the partners all showed up to hunt, with women. I think there were extras with them as they were quite a large group. I really didn’t like to hunt with large groups. They had brought a couple of longhaired pointers, well brushed dogs that matched their well-dressed masters. Dogs that practically hung out between their legs, completely useless as hunters, but attractive nonetheless. The group tromped off eastward from the house across the apple orchard. Duke was doing his job out front, Howley was long gone. Five hundred feet east there was a small copse of woods with a little creek running through it. Duke promptly picked up birds on the north edge and the well dressed hunters lined up west to east facing the trees. The longhaired dogs went in to check Dukes point and a covey flushed, flying straight into the woods. Gunfire erupted from the hunters, probably 20 shots into the birds dodging the trees. I just stood behind the line waiting. No point wasting a shot into the trees. No birds fell in spite of the hail of shot. As the smoke and falling leaves cleared, Jim turned around to me with a triumphant leer on his face. ‘You missed!’ he shouted. I just smiled at him and opened my breach to show him the unfired round. ‘I didn’t see any point in shooting trees.’ I replied.
It was not going to be a good day. We went on down to the valley lined up like a bunch of pheasant hunters. Mike had a silver flask of booze, probably expensive cognac that he occasionally passed around to fortify the hikers. The grass was deep and the going rough. The dogs were not finding birds. With all the racket we were making, the birds were undoubtedly running on the ground ahead of the dogs, who couldn’t point a moving target. I was on the far south end of the line near the trees when something whacked me on the back. At the same time I heard the boom of a shotgun. One of those idiots, probably Trombley, had just shot me in the knapsack. It was bird shot at a distance and nothing reached the skin, but still… I was seriously pissed off and walked on back to the house. No more hunting with that circus.
On another hunt with just Jim, Harry and Dad, we were working long the ridge line south of the valley. We had gotten into a covey and gotten a few birds. Jim was still waiting for me to miss and making occasional caustic comments. Harry had become my firm admirer, however, and always watched me shoot when he could. Trying to figure out how I did it, I guess. While we looked for dead ones with the dogs, a single took off behind us at least 100 feet off. He was flying three or four feet off the ground and diving over the ridge. I took a snap shot even though the bird was out of my range. I saw the bird twitch, but then it glided out of sight over the ridge. Jim started crowing. ‘You missed, you missed.’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘I cripped him.’ Jim kept it up. About that time Howley came galloping up. ‘Howley’, I shouted. ‘Dead bird,’ pointing at the ridge. Howley disappeared over the ridge and Jim did some more crowing when he didn’t return. We went on looking for downed birds, Duke busily picking them up and bringing them in while Jim kicked his dog trying to get him out from between his legs. I tossed Jim a bird I figured was his and he promptly popped its head off and fed it to the dog. Gross. What? Was he rewarding the dog for hiding from the gunshots. About this time Howley reappeared galloping over the ridge toward us. The crippled bird in his mouth, still alive. ‘Well, Jim, I didn’t miss that one, either.’ Jim grabbed the bird and popped IT”S head off and gave it to his dog. Double gross. I told him to keep it. I didn’t want a headless bird in my knapsack.
After the second year of intensive birddog hunting, our 120 acres was getting seriously depleted of birds. I didn’t like it. This had always been my private hunting preserve. I kept it up and I didn’t do it so city slickers could have a place to hunt. Truth to tell, Jim lived on 400 acres south of town where he raised five star black angus cattle for gourmet restaurants as a gentlemen’s hobby. There were probably lots of birds there, but he never suggested we hunt it. Then, Uncle Don came to the rescue. Don Pickering, his wife Donna (my mothers beautiful sister – I had to admit she was beautiful even though she had to be 40 years old.) and their uncounted brood of kids lived in the woods near Mokane. Don and his boys were backwoodsmen. They fished the Missouri and Osage Rivers, and lived off deer and turkey. They never hunted quail, too effete for them, so they didn’t mind sharing some of their hunting grounds. One of these was Don’s deceased aunts farm called Elkhurst, where the regional airport is located today. This farm was gradually returning to a natural state, and was scarce of turkeys and deer due to Don and the boys. With a low population of turkeys, the quail population had bloomed. The land was simply beautiful and you could hardly walk 10 feet without kicking up birds. We hunted there for two more years.
One day we were all out, two shorthaired dogs, two longhaired dogs, Jim, Harry, Dad and me. These days I was kind of pairing up with Harry. Harry was always full of admiration for my hunting prowess, and my success in engineering school. Not only did Harry really want to be a good hunter, he also was a frustrated engineer who had been forced to move into accounting. So, Harry and I were walking west along the south side of a tree row. Dad and Jim were on the north side. We had birds scattered in front and mostly running, but occasionally one would pop up of its own accord and promptly get shot. Harry was carrying a gorgeous new Browning side by side double barreled 12. He kept banging away, but of course, never hitting. Nearing the end of the tree row, he asked me very diffidently if he could perhaps try a shot with my ratty old gun. Perhaps the magic was in my gun. We traded. In short order a bird popped up and Harry took the shot – and missed. I dropped it with his Browning. Drooping with disappointment, he handed back my gun, careful to keep the grip from falling off. Howley brought us the bird, which I slipped into Harry’s game pocket. I had taken to giving him all my birds so he wouldn’t go home empty handed, and could perhaps justify the numerous gun purchases to his wife.
Dad and Jim had herded a number of birds ahead of them on the north side of the tree row. At the west end, a large grassy field stretched out, and the birds had made for the field, scattered all over. As Harry and I reached the end of the trees on our side, a single bird went winging across from left to right high up and heading for the field. I took a quick shot and saw it twitch but it kept going up high, but now veering west away from us. I got Howley’s attention and pointed at the bird. ‘Dead bird’, I said, and off he went trailing the bird by sight. Then I heard the familiar crowing from just around the corner. ‘You missed him. That dog is never going to run that bird down.’ I ignored Jim, and the four of us started working the big field. All the dogs except Howley, who hadn’t returned, were getting points, and the quail population was quickly diminishing. Duke picked up a point 50 feet from me, Jim’s dog backed him, and I started toward them. About that time Howley came galloping into sight, head up high, and coming right to me. Jim yelled at me to keep the damned dog away before he flushed the point. Howley was almost on the action when he locked up and slid to a stop. He had my bird in his mouth, having found it and brought it back. He carefully set the bird down and froze into a high point. More birds. I walked over and flushed a pair, dropping them both with one shot. Jim had nothing more to say. Howley had found birds while running full tilt and pointed them, all while carrying a dead bird in his mouth. Incredible. To make matters worse, I dropped them both with one shot from my rickety old shotgun. Harry applauded.
That was it for the day. It was late, Jim couldn’t take any more. When we got in the truck, I invited Howley to curl up on my lap. The dog was beat, having run 30 miles or so that day. The tip of his tail was red and raw for the last inch, all the hair beaten off. Howley gave me an adoring and satisfied doggy look, and went to sleep. This was what the dog lived for. I, however, had to live for other things.
Endings are hard to predict. That was the last hunt for the year. The weather turned and the season ran out. It was also my last hunt with the dogs, ever. I was admitted to graduate school in January, a singular distinction for a senior engineering student who had not actually graduated yet. As a graduate student, I received a government stipend, which was sufficient to pay my way without working a part time job. I moved out of the Obermiller estate and into a house trailer. The following fall I could never find the time to go hunting, the demands of school simply too great. The summer after that I took a job in Florida, got married, and started on another path. In the decades since, I have only gone quail hunting once, and missed an easy shot with my pretty Fox double barrel. My sons don’t care to hunt. I don’t have a dog.
I miss those fall days while I studied engineering and hunted with Dad, and Jim and Harry, and Duke and Howley. They are all gone now.
slicesdotlive 