First Hunt In The Elephant Grass

By Anthony Buccino

He fastened the dogs' leashes to opposite bumpers. I started to shiver. "Get your coffee and wait in the car," he said, "it's not so windy in there."

I lumbered out the back seat, legs stiff from my dog sleeping on them. I stretched a great big stretch and inhaled the view. The hunting club property was all that Harry had promised.

It could have been a calendar painting. Fallow fields of unfarmed land stretched ahead and rolled out of sight into the purple mountains majesty.

 White barns and modest farmhouses seemed placed like dollhouses amidst the gray trees, their tangled branches bare of leaves facing the winter naked.

Along the field lines the hedge rows stood in knee deep fallen brown leaves. In the fields the weed tops and briars bustled in the breeze daring winter to do its damage.

The mountain wind mugged my cheeks like being whipped with a pine branch. I had to stop sucking in the view to rub my warm palms on my face.

Harry had invited me to join his hunt. He and his liver-spotted English Setter Maggie would do the hunting, while my Lab pup and I would walk try to keep up.

Maggie could find a pheasant a mile away, Harry boasted. Although, it wasn't a boast if it was true. Harry tended to exaggerate when he talked about his dogs, this one and the ten or so he had hunted with in the past 50 years. Those stories charmed me into this day afield.

My Lab was all black except for a small white spot the size of a quarter on her left side. I had been tempted to name her Spot or Midnight or Coal, but since we always had to call her three times, we went with Libby! Libby! Libby!

Neither she nor I had ever been hunting. I was curious to see how much of her hunting would be instinct and what, if anything, I would have to show her.

I hoped that she would show me where the birds hid and how deep the mud puddles were. Perhaps she'd even give Maggie a run for her money.

Would Libby find and cradle a downed bird in her gentle mouth? Then proudly return it to me as a one man dog should?

Did she share her breed's gentle mouth when it came to game?

Or would she wander the fields lost to the purpose of her ancestry and stumbling on a downed bird, pick it up, then run around the wide open fields with her trophy flagging in the country breeze?

Harry loaned me his old hunting clothes for the day. I had to hold my breath to zip closed the worn and tattered pants.

My own belt fastened my gut inside straining seams. The jacket was old too. Harry guessed it was about 25, just like me. It had patches where sticks pierced through the canvas and just enough buttons to keep it closed in the middle.

 Harry even loaned me his old blaze orange hunting cap. It fit fine but I felt silly wearing it for the first time.

Groping in the alien pocket, unsure of what might be there from years' past, I plucked a long brown speckled feather and waved it across Libby's nose to give her the scent.

For the moment, she was more interested in any cakes that might accompany the coffee in my other hand. "You never wash a hunting coat," Harry said, "then it won't be waterproof."

Why would anyone hunt in the rain, I asked myself. Only diehard starving cavemen would hunt in the rain. Even I knew rain and snow are God's way of saying, "Sorry, boys, no hunting today. Everybody go home and sit in front of the fireplace, read a newspaper or a good book or tell a few hunting tales."

The jacket had a distinctive scent of its own. I knew I would be better off not asking Harry, but I did. He said he couldn't smell anything unusual, especially with the two dogs in the car. He had a point. I had never been cooped up for so long inside anywhere with two outside dogs.

Outside dogs smell much differently than inside dogs. That is, they both use their noses. Outside dogs smell better in the woods. Inside dogs smell better in the house.

The sun had risen during our ride up. Jack popped the sedan trunk and directed me to the coffee and snack cakes.

In the nearly warm car, I sipped hot coffee and watched Harry and two other men load four-foot long crates of pheasants onto the back of a pick-up truck.

Harry and one guy sat on the tail gate and rubbed their hands as the truck rumbled along the gravel farm road.

About 50 yards down, the truck stopped and Harry and the other hunter hopped off, reached in the crate and each pulled out a pheasant to stock.

 Harry held the bird by its body, legs and tail and dizzied it by swinging it in a wide circle a few times. He crouched down and released it into a hedge row.

Slowly, the bird walked out of sight. They repeated the routine till the truck disappeared around the bend.

The coffee felt good going down. I could feel it heat my chest from the inside.

I wolfed down a package of chocolate Tastycake cupcakes and some butterscotch Krimpets too. Then I chugged the rest of my coffee as a chaser.

By the time Harry returned with the guys in the truck, five more cars of hunters had arrived. They peeked at the car, saw me sitting there, then proceeded to pour their own coffee from Thermos bottles.

When I emerged from the car, Maggie strained from the front bumper and Libby lumbered from the rear bumper as both dogs converged on me like I was a chocolate bunny.

"If those dogs were pulling in the same direction, you and that car would be halfway home by now," somebody said. The other guys laughed.

They all looked the same, wearing blaze orange hats, boots strapped up half-way to the knee, thick khaki pants, and heavy coats with special shoulder pads where shotgun butts recoil.

And in a minute I knew that anyone stopping by on a winter morning would have said I looked just like one of the guys.

Harry led me and the dogs toward a swamp area away from where the rest of the club members headed. He said that by going another direction from the other guys, he wouldn't worry about me being in anyone's way.

I followed Harry and the dogs down a deer path. He pointed to scrapes on a sapling and estimated how big the deer was by how high the scrapings were.

"This would be a good place to wait for deer during the season. Right now, we've got to find pheasant. That's what we're here for. Come on, Maggie, find the bird! Come on, Libby, show us what you can do!"

Harry had loaned me a bell and we put it on Libby. That way we'd have some idea of where she was. Maggie didn't need a bell, Harry said, she would always stay within earshot of his whistle.

There was a creek running alongside the swamp deer trail. We heard the sound of a toilet flushing and saw Libby doggy paddling in the rushing stream.

We were so busy laughing we hadn't noticed Maggie disappeared. Harry whistled. She didn't come.

"She must be on point. Keep your eyes open. She's probably in the tall stuff," Harry said. "Call Libby over. Maybe she can find Maggie."

He beat against the weeds looking for a dog the same color as the dried grass and just as likely pointing to a bird with mottled brown feathers that blended perfectly into the muck and mulch. "You could hide an elephant in this grass."

Libby clawed her way up the muddy bank and shook herself in a rocking cadence from her square head to her webbed feet to her thick otter-like tail.

"Libby!" I called. She ran to Harry.

"C'mon, girl. Find the bird."

"What should I do."

"Just walk around in that tall elephant grass. If Maggie's on point, you'll have to kick the bird or the dog to make them move - but don't kick the dog, she's too expensive!"

I walked around, like he said. If I didn't have to bring my feet so high up when I walked, I wouldn't have been able to see my borrowed boots at the end of my own legs.

"It's hard to tell your dog from the grass. Maybe you should put Maggie in an orange coat like the rest of us wear."

"Here she is, Ant. I almost stepped on her. Come over here. Look at this. She's on perfect point."

I huffed and puffed across the dry grass jungle. Harry peeled away the tall grass and there was Maggie.

Her tail was straight out, her face pointed ahead like in a painting.

It was hard to tell if she was breathing.

She didn't even twitch.

"This bird is either under her nose or she's catching the scent on the wind.

"All right, Ant. Come here, Libby! Come see what a pheasant looks like.

"I'm going to kick the grass ahead of the dog. You watch for the bird."

Harry inched slowly, gingerly in front of the dog. Maggie startled as if roused from a beautiful

dream, then scooted around Harry's leg, then froze up again.

"I know where that bird is now.

"See, Ant? Maggie's pointing right at it. Follow the line from her nose. The bird is right there.

"It's sitting in so tight in this elephant grass. That stupid bird doesn't have anywhere to go.

"What did I tell you about Maggie's nose? Huh! It's something else, isn't it.

"Right here in the middle of this thick stuff, Maggie caught that bird on scent and she wouldn't budge. That's amazing! Boy, I tell you, a sight like that makes it all worthwhile.

Adapted from:

A Father's Place, An Eclectic Collection

By Anthony Buccino

Published by
Cherry Blossom Press
PO Box 110252
Nutley NJ 07110

Copyright © 1991-2005 by Anthony Buccino. All rights reserved.

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