The Judge lugging back a rooster pheasant somewhere north of Ashley.
When you’re nearly 84 and your doctor tells you, “Sorry, Harry, but you’re not going to be able to go” a few days before a scheduled hunting trip with your son, two of your grandsons, and your lifelong buddy, well, that doesn’t light up your day. That’s what happened to my old man about a week ago. He and I went down to the Eleanor Mondale Memorial Service in the Twin Cities so he could pay his last respects to the daughter of one of his oldest fishing pals, former Vice President Fritz Mondale. Somewhere along the way, grandpa caught a nasty bug that turned into pneumonia serious enough that it landed him in St. Luke’s Hospital for a week and ended his hopes of joining me, my sons Chris and Matt, and Bruce out in Ashley, ND for our annual pheasant hunt. It was a bummer but, when your doctor, a guy who’s saved your life a few times, tells you, “No”, you have to listen.
The Munger boys aren’t the best shots. We aren’t the smartest or the hardest working hunters. But, over the past five years that we’ve joined my old man out on the Dakota prairie, we’ve always managed to find a few rooster pheasants, the odd sharptail grouse or two and even hit them on occasion. We’ve watched innumerable sunrises and sunsets over soybeans, corn, and sunflowers. We’ve tromped through ditches and hedgerows and swales until our boots were caked in mud and our wool socks were soaked. We’ve tried to sneak up on ever-elusive and diminutive Hungarian partridge, blue-gray birds not much larger than pigeons that favor open fields devoid of crops. We’ve watched wave after wave of sandhill cranes circle high above us, geese soar in gigantic ballet-style formations, and flocks of fast flying mallards and teal race with the wind to the next prairie pothole. This year didn’t prove to be any different even without Dad: Our aim hadn’t improved and, despite a sense of bitter-sweetness to the trip without grandpa, we had a whale of a good time.
Matt, my eldest son, was our chef. He and his wife Lisa (newly expecting my first grandchild: I call her Emily but I doubt that’s gonna stick) did all the grocery shopping for us. Chris was assigned the job of cleaning any birds we managed to shoot. I was the dishwasher. And Bruce? Absent his perennial hunting partner, Bruce continued on in his role as philosopher and guide, pouring over the public lands maps depicting places near Ashley available to hunt. After a day of seeing virtually no birds, we used Bruce’s expertise to find other spots to hunt: We found success, even in a year of poor rooster production (the result of two bad winters and a very wet spring), at least, success in the Munger sense of the word. We shot enough roosters to keep Chris plucking every night when we returned bone tired to the little frame house we rented in the center of town. We ate well, had a couple of cold Leinnies, swapped stories, hit the rack early, and, in the morning, got up to go at it again.
Chris brought his pal’s Springer spaniel, Windsor, along for the hunt. Matt brought his beloved Lexie, a spoiled, but well-mannered bronze colored Labrador retriever. Hunting over dogs in a stiff autumnal breeze beneath the open skies of the North Dakota was a pleasure. There’s nothing like watching a good dog like Windsor lock up tight on a rooster sitting in a patch of sedge grass no bigger than a loaf of bread. The human eye can’t see the bird: But you learn to trust the dog’s nose. Windsor was unrelenting, a bundle of nervous energy, bounding over high grass, cattails, and weeds on the trail of birds. Lexie was methodical but equally effective: In one day, she found, locked on, and retrieved all three roosters we hit. Not that Windsor wasn’t working: Lexie just happened to be the dog of the moment.
Of course, with modern technology, Grandpa Harry kept in touch, calling us every night for a post-hunt update. You could sense the lament, the longing in his voice when he’d call. Though he loves his friend and care-taker Pauline dearly and enjoys her company immensely, he’d waited all summer for our annual trip. Not to be with us was, in a word, heartbreaking. Being that we’re guys, that word was never spoken: You just knew that was the case from the tone of the old man’s voice.
Our last day, we came upon a small covey of Hungarian partridge. We don’t see a lot of Huns where we hunt, though every couple years, we run into them. Usually, the birds are far off, out in the middle of sown crop, nibbling left over soybeans or corn, far out of range. I think we’ve had one or two shots at Huns over the years but never hit one. They are, to use my son Chris’s analogy, my Holy Grail. So when I saw Huns pecking away on remnant beans half a football field away, I wanted them bad. But the birds saw us long before we could get in range. And so, we tromped the edge of a big mown field alongside a huge lake, hoping to coax a rooster out of cover. A mile later, all we had for our effort was the sight of one skittish hen pheasant (off limits to hunters) flying low over weeds.
“I’ll bet those damn Huns are back by Bruce, eating again,” I said aloud, though my two sons were trudging over the wasteland left by the bean harvester too far from me to hear. “And Bruce is likely snoozing in his car.”
Damn if I wasn’t right. Neither of my sons saw them but I did: My little beauties were, as predicted, clucking and picking and eating to their hearts’ content just fifty yards away from Bruce’s Toyota Highlander. Bruce, never one to waste energy, was sitting behind the steering wheel, reading a map, totally oblivious to the Holy Grail just outside his car.
“Huns,” I whispered loudly, gesturing emphatically towards the blue-gray specks ahead of us.
My sons understood. The dogs, though they were working into the wind, hadn’t picked up the scent of the covey. Windsor was by my side though he kept trying to stray. I held him in close by command so as not to spook the Huns. All three of us walked slowly, our shotguns at the ready, making ourselves as small as possible in a completely naked field that rolled to the south for better than a mile. I kept my eyes glued on the birds. The Hun closest to me became skittish, opening and closing its wings as if making ready to fly.
Now or never.
I eased the bead of my 12 gauge over-under on the nearest bird, clicked off the safety, and raised the barrel.
Boom.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The Huns flew away unscathed.
“My fault,” I said apologetically as I joined my sons. “I shot too soon.”
“Damn straight, Pops,” Chris said. “What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t,” I admitted.
There was little reason to continue the discussion. I’d messed up. Not the first time, won’t be the last. But through all the noise and commotion, Bruce hadn’t moved: His eyes were riveted on the map in his hands. He had no idea the Holy Grail had been just outside his windshield.
Later that evening, I had the chance for redemption. We were driving back to the house on a dirt road near dusk when a big rooster pheasant rose from the ditch and settled in a patch of saw grass next to standing corn.
“That’s your bird, Dad,” Chris said. “He didn’t make the corn.”
I exited Matt’s truck, let Windsor out of his kennel and a flock of pheasants ran across the road behind the Nissan headed for open country.
“More birds. You take Lexie after them. I’ll take Windsor after the rooster.”
We split up. Windsor bounded over thick ditch grass and worked the edge of the corn. The dead stalks swayed and cracked in a slow wind. The sun was setting above the horizon in the west, its gold and orange glow casting magic over the land. Windsor stopped dead, his wet nose pushed into cattails. A cackle split the cooling air. A rooster pheasant rose from thick cover next to an open pond. It’s wings glinted in the dying sun. Then another bird, a hen, rose to my left. Another rooster cackled and burst into the declining sky to my right. I kept my eye on the first bird, the bird that we’d been tracking.
Boom.
The rooster tumbled and hit water. Windsor dove into the rushes. A few minutes later, he reappeared with the colorful bird in his mouth.
As I type this story on my iMac in my writing room overlooking the Cloquet River, far removed from pheasant country and the hunt, day is again breaking. Down river, I hear the bark of shotguns. Geese fly above the house, followed by flights of local mallards smart enough at this stage of the season to get the hell out of dodge. The sun is rising in the east and a clear blue sky is replacing night’s veil. I am hopeful, as I end this story, that there’s at least one more good hunt in my old man. Next year, Jack, my fourteen year old son, will come with us to Ashley. It would be great if he could hunt with his grandpa.
Peace.
Mark
