"Doubling Down"...

In an August 2, 2022 blog Greg McReynolds, Mouthfil of Feathers (mouthfuloffeathers.com), announced they were ..."doubling down on the blog, ...recruiting new contributors, and printing the book." The book, Mouthful of Feathers - Upland in the West, was released originally as an e-book and, is no longer in print. However the print edition, Mouthful of Feathers - Upland in America, is due to be released the summer of 2023. To pre-order go to the Mouthful of Feathers blog or mouthfuloffeathers.bigcartel.com.

As promised, the group has "doubled down." The print edition of the book is in the works, new contributors have been recruited, the reading is fabulous!

Bird Dog

With Indian Head Intrigue
photo by Holly Higgins

BIRD DOG -
Deep chest, slim flank, great heart to stand the pace
And that unerring wizardry of scent
To trail the quarry in it's secret place;
Power and cunning, speed and wisdom blent -
these are the immemorial gifts that came
Out of  forgotten time's unfathomed gulf;
These are the fierce ancestral fires and flame
Undimmed, unchanged still - Son of Wolf.
Grave eyes, grave bearing, dignity of kings;
The gentleness and trust of a child;
The flawless poise that veils old savage things
But half remembered from the vanished wild -
These are the kingly qualities that came
On unremembered fields where sports began;
This is the clear glow of a steady flame
Undimmed, unchanging still - Comrade of Man
                                                       C.T. Davis

Thanksgiving and a conundrum

Thanksgiving – two daughters, two dinners – bloat recovery and football. Thinking of hunting. 

I have much to be thankful for – family, friends and dogs. Time and enough money for traveling to places that I love to go.

So, the conundrum. When young, despite having a lifetime ahead of me, I ran from one thing to another. And the time passed quickly. Now that I am older, despite having less than a lifetime ahead of me, I am not in such a rush. And it works out that I can see more, learn more, do more... and that is infinitely more satisfying. So I am thankful. I hope that you all have the same good fortune.

You know you're a bird hunter when...

You retire 10 years early with no plan other than to hunt birds everywhere they exist.

You own an equal number of shotguns and bird dogs.

Your hunting truck cost more than your daily driver.

You realize that ALL your good friends are also bird hunters.

You take your best dog and a shotgun on an elk hunting trip -- planning to shoot the first legal elk you see and spend the rest of the two weeks hunting birds.

You wife AUTOMATICALLY assumes that you have some special bit of hunting gear in mind for Christmas.

You look in you closet and you have more hunting boots than dress shoes.

You spend more time in Montana than in your second home in the Caribbean.

When you do go to the Caribbean with your wife, you are invited to shoot birds by your friends... and you go.

Your vet bill equals or exceeds your own medical expenses.

You spend your cross country flight time looking out the plane window trying to spot likely places to go in the Fall.

You realize that all your non-hunting friends have given up on you... you're getting more invites to go hunting than to attend Christmas parties. 

The Power of the Dog

There is sorrow enough in the natural way,
From men and from women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and you think to buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie;
Perfect passion and friendship, fed
By a curse as well as a pat on the head
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To risk your heart for a dog to tear.

When the short term of years which Nature permits
Is ending in asthma, or fever, or fits,
And the vet's unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or leveled guns
You'll find it also your affair
And that you have given your heart to a dog to tear.

When the thing that lived at your single will
With it's whimper of welcome, is still (how still),
And the spirit that answered your every word
Is gone, wherever it goes, for good,
You will discover how much you did dare
When you gave your heart to a dog to tear.

We've debt enough in the natural way
When it comes to burying our two-legged clay;
For treasures aren't given, but only lent,
At compound interest of building percent,
And though I've no firm figures I firmly believe
That the longer they're the longer we grieve

Yet when debts come true, for right or for wrong
A short term lone seems as bad as a long
So why in hell, before we're all called there
Should we give our hearts for a dog to tear?

- Kipling

Memorial Day

Like a swarm of illuminated bees, they travel down the far left lane. Flashing brake lights and riding close , cutting in and out between the aluminum behemoths whose gravity seems to sling them forward, they ride as if they hold a papal dispensation from the consequences of their carelessness. They arrive in tight knit clusters of 8 to 10 mini vehicles, indistinguishable from each other - mini-suvs, sedans, the occasional small truck. Heading, as if down a wormhole, back to the very places they could not wait to leave on Friday.


I time my moves and target the gaps, steering back between the trucks for refuge from vehicular homicide. This is the last day of the Memorial Day weekend. Could we pause to think of who this day honors? 


After 12 hours of driving I ask myself why I choose to live in the crucible of modernity and forward motion. Eight days of traveling the backcountry of the Kaibab, camping on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, and relaxing in the night time moonlight with a fist-full of distilled spirits has set my mind back to a time of more leisurely motion. 


I wonder where the real world is... and who inhabits that world.

McGuane again

From Tom McGaune's 'Midstream'

American shame at leisure has produced the latest no-nonsense stance in sport, the "streamside entomologist" and the "head-hunter" being the most appalling instances that come readily to mind. No longer sufficiently human to contemplate the relationship of life to eternity, the glandular modern sport worries whether or not he is wasting time.

Just thought that i would bring this to your attention, since it extrapolates to many areas of life.   

Thought for the day

A friend recently forwarded me the following quote from the ABC sitcom, Better off Ted. I'm not sure whether to rejoice that mainstream television has heard of birddogs or be peeved that they clearly misunderstand their sunny dispositions...

"Don't be the guy that points fingers. Nobody likes a pointer.
Even in the dog world they are seen as insufferable."

Wolves eat dogs...

"Wolves hate dogs. Wolves hunt down dogs because they regard them as traitors. If you think about it, dogs are dogs only because of humans; otherwise they would be wolves, right? And where will we be when all the dogs are gone? It will be the end of civilization."

   - from Wolves Eat Dogs, by Martin Cruz Smith

Politically Correct defined

"Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rapidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end"

Thanks to Craig Peters for sending this along.

Tom McGuane on writing about hunting and fishing

Re-reading a favorite book by Charley Waterman (R.I.P.) I noticed that Tom McGuane wrote the forward. As usual, he has something to say about sport, and here takes on writing about sport.

Writing about hunting and fishing is an old practice in America, partaking equally of logs, reports, adventurous accounts, and, of course, tall tales. For the most part, its excuse for existing has been to offer practical advice. Its chronic weakness is that for a writer to consistently position himself to advise, he must be or pretend to be, an expert. In today's highly deteriorated situation, almost all we have are "experts" and our sporting literature reads like some obsessive Consumer Report for outdoor gadgeteers. In sports like fly fishing and bird hunting, which appeal to either the literary or merely high falutin, the microscopic technical examination and mania for equipment has reached a point among the credulous as to drive sensible folk to catfish grappling, trotlining or the spotlighting of deer.

Well said, Tom.

"Why do you hunt?"

"But I do still hunt, and when someone occasionally asks me why it occurs to me that the only reason we have brains large enough to formulate that question is that our distant ancestors got the extra protein it took to evolve the organ by supplementing their diets with meat, first as scavengers, then as hunters. Hunting made us who and what we are. It is in our nature more deeply than clothing, tools or language."

From Fool's Paradise by John Geirach