Casey eagerly quivered on point at the edge of a crazy brown tangle of scrub oak blow downs and twisted green vines.
“What’s in there Casey?”
With the luck I’d been having it was probably a stray house cat or worse, an angry skunk, tail raised, posterior aimed and ready to fire.
Gingerly, I entered the covert. Like the Cheshire Cat in reverse, a long-tailed, cock pheasant took shape at the base of a rotting log. Launching straight up with a cackling flush, its red, white and blue/green iridescent feathers silhouetted black against the high noon December sun. I fired once, freeze framing the cock in the shot stream.
SUCCESS!
“Good girl Casey!”
Five hours of hunting in my favorite haunts with one bird found and taken. Not like the old days when this area of prime upland bird coverts held plenty of game. These days, it seemed that the forests and fields held few wild birds. A fact most often attributed to avian and four footed predators, suburban sprawl and the desire of aging farmers to cash out to voracious developers and retire in comfort to Florida.
By 2 p.m. our hunt was over. Casey and I followed a sandy track back to my SUV and split a ham sandwich (with lettuce and tomato a slice of pepper jack cheese and a dollop of mayo on whole wheat bread…Casey’s favorite) before heading home.
Just as I was getting ready to leave, I saw another hunter shuffling down the path toward us. Judging by his tattered buffalo plaid hunting coat and frayed pant cuffs he was a veteran of the coverts. Hanging from his sagging belt, he wore a homemade leather game strap, casually advertising his catch: a pair of pheasants and a brace of quail.
His dog, of nonspecific breed, limped slowly along beside him. The animal’s coat was a patchwork of brown, yellow, and black, long here and short there. Its nose was long, thin, and black; its ears, red, short and floppy. The dog’s legs came in 3 sizes. As it walked it bumbled, stumbled and weaved as if it had spent its days on the deck of a storm swept ocean going tug.
This dog made a junkyard mutt look like a Westminster All Breeds blue ribbon champion, a real mess, except for its eyes. They were animated, constantly darting, shifting, up, down, side to side taking in everything.
“Afternoon”, I said, eyeing the old hunter’s prizes. “You’ve had good luck today.”
“Luck ain’t got noth’n to do with it, he snorted. “The woods are full of birds. You just got to know’m when you see’m.”
“See them? I’ve been all through these fields and forests and my dog only found one pheasant!”
“No offense but that’s cause that Brittany of yours is trying to smell‘m. If you want to find ‘m these days you got to see‘m”, he said with conviction. .
He’d out hunted me and that was the fact. But “See‘m”…what did he mean? I took the bait and inquired further.
“What do you mean “See‘m”?
With that, the old hunter sat slowly down on a nearby stump, his elbows and knees crackling with the effort. Here was a man with a tale to tell and a mission to spread the word. He began…
“In the ‘90s, I started to notice that my German Shorthair, Max, who’d always been a reliable bird finder, couldn’t find‘m anymore. The birds were go’n and then gone. I asked around and other bird hunters were feel’n the same way. It got so that the only birds we was get’n was the stupid ones who tried to hide in plain sight.
That got me thinking. Why are we only get’n the birds that we saw first, or flushed by accident? There could only be one answer. Our dogs couldn’t smell‘m anymore.
“A bunch of us checked with our vets and to a dog all was pronounced to have great noses. So, if the dogs could still sniff’m, the problem had to be on the other end. The birds couldn’t be sniffed!”
“What?” I smelled a rat.
“Hold on, boy. Here me out. I ain’t tell’n you this to pass the time a day. You got to hear this or put up your gun and spend Saturdays hanging curtain rods.
“Now, how could this happen? There weren’t any natural disasters. Evolution would take too long for this to happen so quickly. Then, I knew it. Man had a hand in this. But who would do such a dirty thing? Only one group had the motivation and the money, the A F P N.”
“The who?” I queried.
“The anti-hunting, anti-fishing fanatics from Animals Forever, People Never. They hate hunting and would do anything to stop our beloved sport. So, I infiltrated the group’s local chapter, claiming to be a convert, swearing to sin no more. After awhile they started to trust me and let me in on their plan.
“In November ’64 they got the idea that they could stop bird hunting by breeding game birds with no scent. Dogs couldn’t sniff ‘m. Hunters couldn’t find‘m. We’d get bored and stay home. They read in that month’s issue of National Geographic how young birds and other animals gave off no scent, protecting them while they were too young to run or fly. The same article told them that through a thing called neotany, some birds stayed that way even when they grew up.
They’d found their angle. They bought pheasant and quail chicks from breeders. Smell tested them and bred non-smelly birds to one another. After a few years, they started to release their unnatural avians in the coverts. The birds thrived. Their non-smelly nature helped them survive sharp nosed predators like foxes and coyotes though birds of prey who hunt by sight still took a few. After a while, the non-smelly birds took over the fields and here we are today.”
“I’m beginning to see. What happened next?” I asked.
“I decided this horrible situation called for an eye for an eye response. I’d beat‘m at their own game by breeding a dog that could hunt birds by sight, not smell. I went to dog rescue organizations and found keen eyed Greyhounds that couldn’t run too fast and English Pointers with lousy noses. Even with using them slowish Greyhounds, the hard part was get’n the new breed to work close. So every 3rd or 4th generation, I’d cross breed in a basset hound to shorten the breed’s legs and generally slow‘m down. And here you have the results, Ol Eagle Eye. They get them non-smelly birds every time.
“That’s why I got a limit and you’re looking at poor pickings.”
From the back of my SUV, Casey howled like a retired executive with no other interests to pursue. The sky grew dark. My world had changed.
“I see” I said. “Non-smelly pheasants and quail, sharp eyed dogs. It makes complete sense to me.”
“Of course it does. Now what you going to do about it?” He said. “You still go’n hunt’n with that near sighted Brittany? Or, you ready to get with the times?
“Remember, in addition to being sharp eyes hunters, these Eagle Eyes are great with kids and make fine house pets. How many can I put you down for?”
Casey howled again, and not for the last time.
