Happy to be hunting again

The campground was nearly empty when we pulled in and by the next after-noon, we had the place to ourselves.

Our camp was set up in the quakies near an old Forest Service horse barn. Except for its green metal roof, the chinked log building with cedar shake ga-bles looked straight out of the 1880s.

I had hiked up the main trail that morning far into the burn with Jem and Ace. We didn’t find a bird. Jem did get stuck behind some downfall and in true hon-ey badger fashion kept trying to jump over the high log in front of him instead of going around. He fell twice before his claws found purchase and he pulled himself up and over. Ace paid little attention to the commotion.

Later that day we hunted different cover closer to camp and the dogs flushed a grouse that flew over the trail behind me. I swung and shot, my aim too far behind, and the bird vanished into the trees.

Back at camp Barb asked if I’d hunted all my favorite spots yet. “No,” I told her. “I haven’t been up there,” pointing to the top of the ridge to the south.

“Isn’t that too far to take the dogs this early in the season?” she asked.

“Yeah, that’s it,” I said. “It’s the dogs.”

The next morning, however, found me trailing my spaniels up to the ridge. We followed the trail for the first mile, then left it at the third switchback, taking an old game trail instead.

Picking my way through the steep timber, I’d stopped to catch my breath when I heard a grouse flush. The dogs, in no need of a breather, had kept hunting. The bird flew straight away and I made the shot. Jem went to fetch and anoth-er grouse flushed. I swung on the bird as it flew through the trees, shot found feathers and I had two thirds of a limit in the bag.

I was tempted right then to turn back and try to get a third grouse on the hike down, but I was too close to the top of the ridge to quit.

I side-hilled through the timber, broke out into a meadow filled with waist-high yellow grass and crossed it to reach a trail on the other side. But either time or the fire that swept through this country a few years back had wiped out any trace of a trail. Instead, for the next hour we fought our way through downfall and thick aspens up and over the top finally regaining the main trail at the edge of the burn.

We didn’t flush another bird on top or on the way back.

A storm blew in shortly after we returned to camp, and it started to rain. When it stopped we could hear the river.

I was glad to be hunting again.

Parker Heinlein is at

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