Labor Day is the traditional end of summer in the U.S., and its of course a three day weekend for most folks, although not those who work in stores and the like.
It's also the opener for Blue Grouse and Dove in Wyoming. I go every year, being pretty much as subsistence on those sorts of things as circumstances, time and my spouse will allow.
If this sounds like a mere rhetorical flourish type of introduction, it isn't. I truly and very seriously believe that a lot of the problems the modern world faces is that the Western world has forgotten what we are, which is a hunting species. That doesn't diminish any of our other accomplishments, but nearly all of our social problems, and most of our problems are social problems, stem from the slow, and it was very, very slow, change from most families, and again it was families, putting dinner on the table through the labor of hunters, which includes the subset of fish hunters, i.e, fishermen.*
As we've set out in our Third Law of Human Behavior, there's a lot going on here. Perhaps in a greater sense, the odd subtitle of a former very good, and now defunct, outdoor blog.
Eat More Brook Trout, which was "Save the West. . .Kill a Brookie", is not only true, but deserving of global application.
Anyhow, the opening of the hunting seasons on Wyoming is September 1, which is always coincident with Labor Day weekend. And that's a long weekend for most of us.
This three day weekend turned out to truly be a long weekend, in more ways than one.
The Trek
The dog. This is our bird dog, and he's at this point at about 8,000 feet in elevation after hiking about 1.5 miles or so. All on public land.
I don't really recall how young I was when I first went blue grouse hunting, but I was fairly young. It was well before I was old enough to drive.
On that occasion, an oral surgeon friend of my fathers asked if we'd like to go with him. That oral surgeon was a dedicated hunter in the way that I am now and have been ever since I was old enough to drive. I really was before then, but being able to drive, in the West, means a lot.
My father hunted, but when I was young, and probably because I was young, he didn't hunt everything you could. When I was a kid he never bought a big game license, although he started to buy deer and antelope licenses when I was old enough to hunt them. He always went for sage chickens, however, and waterfowl. We hunted ducks a lot. He was a very dedicated fisherman, and I think he preferred fishing, but not ice fishing, to hunting, although he liked both. I'm the other way around.
Anyhow, at this time, which was likely around 1973 or so, the oral surgeon, asked if we'd like to go blue grouse hunting. We did. It involved a trip with his old style Ford Bronco that was really a Jeep trail type of thing. Our 2x4 pickup could not have done it. We crawled all over the Laramie Range and ended up back on a near extension of it, which is where we got into the birds. After that, we went every year thereafter, limited however to where we could go with a 2x4 pickup.
When I was old enough to drive I'd go with my friends or by myself after school. I've never been shy about going hunting or fishing alone, although I've been warned repeatedly that I'd get hurt doing that. This will be mentioned again below. At any rate, in my college days I started to go with my good friend Jeff. And at that point, we started going into a remote part of the Laramie Range.
I'm not sure looking back, but I think he was the one who suggested the remote location. I've been back every year since, and if it seems odd that I haven't mentioned him in this context, that's because he moved, first to Denver, and then to Cheyenne. It's a really far trek for him.
But it's not a minor one for me.
Up until my 40s, the route in was by road, and then by foot. But you could drive really easily to a drop off point. The road part of this was on an improved, bladed, road before the two track, and quite frankly the road is a stock trail.** This is significant as the ability to close a stock trail to members of the general public was never even remotely conceived of at that time. But a stock trail is, where it crosses private land, really only open for livestock.
At some point in time the rancher closed the road, but he continued to allow fishermen on. As I do understand the difference between private and public land, I didn't begrudge him that and I still don't. Indeed, I'm grateful he allows fishermen on. And I'm one of those people who are generally fine with there being less roads in the world. But this did have the impact of closing, to vehicle traffic, a lot of access points to public land.
But not completely.
Being hugely road familiar, I realized I could still get there, on the back roads. With a lot of effort.
That effort, the first time I tried it, involved a bicycle. I drove to where I had to stop, as a practical matter, and rode for miles in on my old Trek Mountain Bike. It would have been easier, frankly, with horses, and while I have access to horses, and had a good horse at that time, those horses weren't trained to gun fire and picking them up would have involved an additional 100 miles by the time I was done. So mountain bike it was.
And then I acquired a Jeep.
I don't have a "four wheeler" or any kind of ATV and frankly I don't really approve of them. I don't want one. But a Jeep is a car and I guess I'm willing to accommodate that much. So with the Jeep, I could safely travel in on the really rough, steep, narrow, bad roads and make it to the jump off point, while never trespassing on private land.
In the meantime, the ranch had become part of a Hunters Management Area, in which the rancher granted access to big game hunters. Again, I appreciate that. But it never included bird hunters. I discussions with various area wardens later on, the Game & Fish just had never asked. That doesn't mean that the rancher would have said yes if they had. But the bird hunters, like myself, were just left out from the onset.
When it first was the HMA, I spoke to the rancher and got written permission for a couple of years. Eventually, however, he was of the opinion, or at least stated that he was, that maybe he couldn't do that as it was all in the hands of the Game & Fish. So Jeeping it in was the alternative.
I've done that now for three years running.
The Game Warden
I've always been s strong supporter of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. Indeed, when I was young I seriously thought of becoming a Game Warden or a Game Biologist with the department, with the warden position being the more sought after one. They're outdoors all day in the wilds, and that strongly appeals to me.
It might, I'd note, appeal to me very inaccurately. I've never done their job. Maybe its nothing like what I imagine it to be, but then I wouldn't know.
I do know that we seem to cycle through game wardens fairly rapidly anymore. This wasn't always the case. We used to have the same game wardens in the area for years and years. But this is no longer true. Now we tend to have young game wardens and most of the game wardens seem to be young.
This is significant for a variety of reasons. When I see an occupation occupied by the young, that means its not occupied by the older, and usually there's a reason for that. Sometimes its the physicality of the occupation. Other times its that the job features low pay. Sometimes its the conditions of the job, which may have changed over the years. And sometimes its societal, in that occupying a job, for a variety of reason, doesn't appeal to people in one generation the way it did to a prior one.
Indeed, the few former employees of the game and fish I've known, and the one then current one, held pretty nuanced views on their employment. The few former ones I have known were critical of their former employer in a really non specific vague way. I have no idea what their complaints were, other than that they existed. The one who was then working for the department had the complaint that being a game warden meant that he wasn't able to get out and enjoy the outdoors. Indeed, he recommended that a person who loves the outdoors not become a game warden, but take up some other "good paying job" that "let's them get outdoors".
The problem with that statement ist hat "good paying jobs" that "let you get outdoors" largely don't exist in the modern world. Increasingly in the modern world, good paying jobs put you in a steel and glass giant shipping container on 16th Street in Denver where you get to see the layers of pollutants separate each other out depending upon the day. In our un-directed search for progress, we've made some odd progressions.
At any rate, as noted, I've generally held the Game and Fish and its game wardens in high regard. Indeed, while I've never been a game warden, I once considered becoming one. The thought first occurred to me when I was graduating with my undergraduate degree in geology. There were no geology jobs to be had with a bachelors degree, but the Game and Fish didn't require masters or doctorates for game wardens, and I thought about applying to take the warden's exam. I started to study for it, and then thought if I was going to do that I ought to pick up a degree in biology or wildlife management. Trying that was one of my three options at the time, the other two being law school or a masters degree in geology. I applied to the latter two not really thinking I'd be admitted anywhere, but as luck would have it I was admitted to the University of Idaho for geology, to my surprise, and the University of Wyoming's law school, the only law school I'd put in for. I took that latter path, the future for geologist at the time looking fairly bleak.
Anyhow, even shortly after I graduated from law school I pondered the Game and Fish adn I took the warden's exam and passed it. I was then offered a summer job, but I turned it down, being into a legal career at that time by over a year and on the verge of getting married.
So, suffice it to say, I don't dislike the Game and Fish or its wardens at all. Quite the contrary.
In recent years, when on the blue grouse expedition mentioned above, I've encountered the same warden twice telephonically, and then run into him sage grouse hunting a couple of weeks thereafter. He was a super nice young man and in regard to the blue grouse expedition, he was very enthusiastic about how I'd gone in. I offered to come into the office to show him the map, and he said there was no reason at all to do that, and that the next year I should just leave something in the window to show how I'd gotten there. I think he appreciated that somebody would go to so much effort.
This year I did what the warden last year told me to do, left a note in the window. But I didn't encounter a warden until the way out.
And he didn't believe me.
Not only did he not believe me, this very young warden called me a liar, in so many words.
I lead him out on the road I cam came in on, learning in the process that a 4x4 pickup truck could do it, to my surprise. I stopped after I lead him out, which is what I did, which probably took about two hours or so to accomplish. At that point he was somewhat sheepish and much nicer, but he never apologized. He stated that part of the reason he hadn't believed me is that I'd gone to so much effort just to hunt blue grouse.
I don't know what to make of it, but I don't like it. In an age in which a lot of hunters seem glued to ATVs, I'm not, and I don't even own one. If it was possible, I'd frankly ride a horse in, which maybe next year I'll go. But to get this treatment simply for putting in the effort really strikes me the wrong way.
And in saying that, I'm one of the supporters of the Game and Fish. Not everyone is. A long time friend of mine who has similar sporting views to me clearly is not, and he had a bad encounter with another young warden last year that really left a sour taste in his mouth (I've encountered the same one two years ago and she was very helpful to me, even allowing me to borrow her fairly untrained retriever to retrieve a goose).
Personal encounters mean a lot. Maybe that's the lesson to learn here. Two encounters with the same super crabby policeman who ought to retire, both for minor traffic matters, has left me sympathetic with urbanites who complain about the police. If you can't interact with the public without calling them a liar, you are probably in the wrong job. Or it may be that your employer has the wrong man, or woman.
The Hat
I've posted my now absent 1911 campaign hat here before.
I always wear broad brim hats in the sticks and really appreciate a good fur felt hat, which is what this hat was, or is. I came by it in an odd fashion however.
I never went to buy a broad brimmed hat of this type. Indeed, I never would have. And at the time I acquired it I had a couple of good broad brimmed hats already. Indeed, for general hunting, at that time, I wore a black Stetson that's since become my ranching hat, after my then ranching hat died. And for bird hunting at that time I wore an Australian style Stetson I still have, appropriately enough termed their "Bird Hunter" model.
Anyhow, an organization I'm part of that's dedicated to the history of cavalry was looking at trying to have some hats made and the Jackson Hole Hat Company made some samples, including the hat depicted above. The were all small sizes with the one depicted above being the only one that was really finished and the only one close to my size. Truth be known, it was a bit small and always was, but it was a really great example of the early pattern of the M1911 campaign hat, complete with the brim stitching that served some unknown to me purpose.
When the project failed, we were allowed to keep the hats so this became my hunting hat. Truth be known, it was always really too small and therefore uncomfortable for years. When my kids were quite young they sometimes wore it as an outdoor hat and hence the stampede string that was affixed to it, made easy by the fact that M1911s had a hole for that purpose. But for years I've worn it as a hunting hat in spite of it being a tad too small. As its a beaver fur felt hat, it's nearly bullet proof and its endured.
It's endured but it's also become rather disheveled looking, quite frankly. Rain, snow, and whatever, have taken its tole, and the shape has deteriorated due to my pushing it on when its just not quite right. The last couple of years I've thought of tossing it.
Indeed, I nearly did Sunday when we came back as its' just gotten so rough looking, but I didn't. I left it looped over the driver's seat of my Jeep, where I tend to place it when going here and there. Generally, it's stayed put there.
Well, even though I had the doors of the Jeep on and the top up on Monday, when I hit the highway to go look for doves, the string snapped and it went flying. I went back to see if I could find it, and couldn't, and then traveled on. When I came back to town I went twice more.
The wind made the decision for me. But I'm still thinking of going back one more time.
If somebody found it, I hope its a kid who it can fit who spends a lot of time outdoors.
The Boots, the Hole, the Dog and the Snake
As noted, on Monday, Labor Day, I went back out, this time for doves.
I went to a spot I always do and saw quite a few. I took the dog with me, even though you really don't use dogs much for doves, as he likes to get out and gets upset if he doesn't get to go.
I probably should have left him at home as when we got out, he was clearly tired from the long, long hike the day prior. But he went and we were seeing quite a few.
The grass in that spot is really overgrown this year and its covered up the ground and the terrain features pretty severely. That always worries me a bit as I don't want to run into snakes. As it was, it covered up a major erosion feature and I fell into it landing on my back. I fell about five feet.
That scared me as if ever I was going to get bit by a snake, that was when it would occur. I scrambled right out, which is saying something for a guy whose fallen five feet, hit his head on the way down, and is only 5'6" tall.
The dog jumped the ditch.
On the other side I walked past an area of tall grass.
Before leaving to go out for doves I almost put on my Red Wing service shoes. They're not really appropriate hunting boots, but most of the areas I was going to check were fairly close to roads and I was thinking that I could put them on quickly and get out.
I didn't. Instead I put on my Hathorn (Whites) smoke jumpers, which I'd worn the day prior and which were still out.
I"m manic about good boots.
A person can skimp on nearly any item of outdoor apparel except for two things, and two things alone. You need a good pair of boots and you need a good broad brimmed hat. Most modern outdoorsmen have neither.
Indeed, about 99.99% of boots worn by outdoorsmen today are complete and total junk. Synthetic crappy boots have come in which are no better, in my view, than wearing your Chuck Taylor's. Almost any excuse of them is nothing much more than a bunch of unthinking crap. A person needs, if they're really going to be out in the real outdoors, with the sole exception of some specialty uses, good leather boots.
I've given this lecture, I'd note, to more than one person who disregarded it and even argued against it. In two such instances those people have blown out their ankles severely in the sticks. I was with one of them when they did. The other had to be hauled out of the high country and doesn't talk to me about boots anymore.
Anyhow, I love smoke jumpers, which are the best general use outdoor boots of all time. And Whites are the best of the best.
One of the features of boots of this type is that they feature really thick leather. It's counter intuitive, but in really hot weather heavy boots are cool to wear as they keep they heat out.
They also keep the heat from transmitting from your foot out.
And that matters if you are in areas that are snakey.
Rattlesnakes operate off of heat, not sight. Their noses keenly sense any change in heat, and that change is usually when a mammal comes buy. Nine times out of ten for htem that mammal is a mouse or rabbit and it gets no warning at all. It's bit and eaten.
Sometimes that mammal is something the snake finds threatening, and as they have barely any intelligence at all, that's anything that's not edible and probably some things that are. Horses, cattle, deer, dogs, and people. If you are a people, and you are out where snakes are, you ought to be wearing a stout, high, pair of boots.
I don't care what some salesman or outdoor boot company that's going for the mass market tells you. That boot had better be leather and stout leather. Synthetic is just an invitation for the snake.
I walked right by the snake, which I never saw. The dog did, as the snake bit him in the face.
Swollen muzzle a day after the snake bite
We were not far from the Jeep and I walked him back to it, lifting him over the fence. He's a big dog and he seemed okay. I called my wife to call the veterinarian anyway. By the time we hit the highway, he was not okay. Now, several days later, and after a night in the vets, he's doing much better, but still on medications.
My wife loves the dog. It took me sometime to get used to him really as I"m not a dog person. He's a big, gentle thing, and a good bird dog as long as he doesn't have to go into water, which he's not particularly keen about. As he was purchased due to my wife's assertion that as an aging, often solo, hunter, I shouldn't be wading out into the North Platte, that's a bit of a disappointment, but I hope he'll come around.
The dog is a Double Doodle, which in his case means he's 3/4s Standard Poole and 1/4 Golden Retriever. He's from a hunting line and both of those breeds are hunting breeds. Poodles, in fact, are an ancient German hunting breed, their name evolving from Pudelhund, "puddle dog". Golden Retrievers are a Scottish breed descended from a laird crossing a Spaniel with a retrieving dog of some sort, in search of an all purpose breed.
Poodles are the second smartest breed of dog, right behind collie, and are are third only to wolves. There's a lot of wolf brain in them and they an odd dog for hunters who have never been exposed to them as they're a lot more like the hunting dogs in Medieval paintings than they are like the dogs on the cover of Field & Stream. They're odd to train for that reason and they take most trainers off guard. We bought some books as I thought I could train him myself. That thought was foolish, and the books were really deceptive. The author of the books, a highly respected series, had trained modern retrievers and water dogs, not poodles who are a really good hunting dog, but who have stepped out of the 1400s more than the 1940s.
So we took him to a trainer, who was really skeptical of him at first, but then really impressed. Oddly enough, by the end of that summer the same trainer had three hunting doodles in his classes. The breed, or rather cross breed, is really coming along.
Owning a doodle or a standard poodle is an interesting experience for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that people have opinions about it, and not always the ones you are expecting. Hunters are pretty opinionated about dogs in general, but again that isn't quite what a person might think. Beyond that, outdoorsmen are super opinionated about outdoor things, and this too works a bit differently than what a person might initially suppose.
What I've noted about this is that there are "experts", Experts, and then folks, so to speak, and their views vary considerably. Everyone seems to believe that they are "experts", but few actually are on a lot of these topics. Indeed, real Experts are a tiny minority of supposed "experts" on the topics of at least guns, dogs, trucks and the like. Real Experts, which can be found anywhere, often have very nuanced opinions and tend to be careful and reserved where as "experts", which can also be found anywhere, but who are particularly vocal on the Internet, often have opinions derived from trends, each other, and from sporting journals on magazine racks. Folks, on the other hand, have opinions, but they're their own opinions.
Anyhow, if you a outdoorsy guy with a great big Doodle, and they are large, regular folks don't really know how to take it. It doesn't seem super manly, so they're surprised as as rule that he's a hunting dog, particularly as he's very gentle and friendly. Folks who have doodles, on the other hand, are usually super enthusiastic to see any other doodle. Lots of folks in general are surprised that doodles and standard poodles are hunting breeds, let alone good ones. "Experts" on the other hand, think that's the most absurd thing ever and will tell you so. Doodles are dumb, they maintain, apparently not realizing that poodles are Einstein's next to Labradors. Or maybe what they are is like mules as to horses.
Labradors and the like aren't bad dogs by any means, but the debate and doubt have been bread out of them so they're like machines in the field. Labs know from day one that they are to retrieve waterfowl. They're iffy, usually, on other types of retrieving but can learn it.
Poodles, and by extension doodles, also have that instinct, but it's a 15th Century instinct when to be a hunting dog, was to be a hunting dog. Today we're hunting waterfowl. . . tomorrow upland birds. . .next week roebuck. Hunting. They know that they're a hunting dog, but they're a generalist and the specifics have to be learned, or maybe more accurately explained, as in "Jim, I know that that's a fine flock of ducks but I don't see a really good reason why you shouldn't shoot that deer instead., now pound per pound. . ." They will learn it, but it has to be learned. That means the trainer has to be good (as ours was) and you have to be good with them. I doubt they'd work for a heavy handed hunter. Indeed, I think that's another reason that doodles and poodles are much like earlier hunting dogs. Gerhard the Jaeger lived with that dog, and it was his pal. He didn't go to the cubicle every day and put the dog in a dog run. It worked for him, but he lived with it. Doodles are like that.
Real Experts tend to know that, and that's why their opinions tend to be very carefully voiced. Some guys I know who know a lot about hunting dogs simply ask a series of questions when they learn the dog is a hunting dog, which is how they're weighing his merits. How does he do in water? Does he retrieve sage chickens? How is he in the field?
Anyway, I'm not much of a dog person and have become less of one over the years. I've been attacked by dogs a couple of times, including by a German Shepherd once, and that's made me dog leery. But this dog has such an odd personality and has been such a good dog that the thought of his getting injured on my watch while he was helping me was simply awful.
Day after accident with swollen muzzle, going home.
So, what's the moral of all of this? Well, I don't know if there is one. Or maybe there is one, or several closely connected ones.
One is that perceptions of things can be pretty inaccurate, but impressions, no matter how inaccurately formed, can have a very long lasting effect. If a guy like me, who has been a strong backer of the Game and Fish for half a century is now suddenly reserved about game wardens, what must the view be of a person who experiences something like I did who isn't so vested in them?
And maybe another lesson has to do with the utility of the proven that works over the nifty and new. I probably didn't get bitten last weekend as I was wearing a stout pair of outdoor boots. I got where I wanted to go as I know how to read a map, and use a GPS, and knew the country. Native knowledge and experience.
And the dogs doing fine.
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*This reflects an interesting language evolution as well. That fishing is fish hunting is self evident, but a lot of fishermen or, to use the less common term, anglers, fail to realize that. But earlier on, English included other words that also delineated various other types of hunting.
Fowling, for example, is the hunting of birds, and a fowler is a bird hunter. Lots of people today bear this common last name, stemming from the day when one of their ancestors was principally employed in that activity. My guess is that other terms existed in older English at one time, but I don't know that for certain. Certainly more than one for hunter exists in English, with hunter being one and names based on the German Jaeger being others.
**The fact that its a bladed road means its a maintained road, and that, combined with its distance from any town, means that its almost certainly a government maintained road.
I note that as its curious. The road is closed most of the year, but somebody is maintaining it, and generally ranchers don't maintain roads, particularly ones far from town. If a road is being maintained on the public's dime, in my view, it ought to be a public road, but none the less, I respect the closure.
