My birddog, Woody, figured it all out last night. He’s a 6-year-old English cocker, bred to find and flush birds. Unfortunately, I just haven’t hunted with him enough in the last few years to bring him to the full flowering of his instincts. But yesterday after work, I saw an opportunity for a quick hour in the woods, so I got out my vest, my gun, and my whistle, the combination of which set him all aquiver and out we went.
This was our second outing this year, and the recent experience of the first trip meant that this time he was all business. He understood that what we were doing was different from our regular morning walk, knew in his big heart that all he had to do was use that nose of his to find ruffed grouse or woodcock. Woody is an intense dog, but controllable, what dog handlers refer to as biddable. If he gets out there too far, a quick toot of the whistle brings him back.
We followed a stream with wild apple trees on its banks, then turned into an adjacent wet thicket of alders, hawthorns, and doomed elms. Perfect woodcock cover, but we found no birds. Then, back uphill under a higher canopy but still wet underfoot, things started happening. His tail quickened its pace as he caught scent, and up came a woodcock. I didn’t get a shot at it, but I watched its flight and had a reasonable idea where it landed. I brought Woody to my side, and we approached to within 30 or so yards. I gave him a hand signal and said, “Find the birds.” He busted out in the direction I’d sent him which would bring him above the bird, while I took the low road. If all went according to plan, he would catch the scent, circle toward me, flush the bird, and I would get a shot. And that’s what happened. Of course, I rushed the shot, as I’m prone to do and the bird flew safely away. Two shots, to be honest. But Woody had a wondrous spark in his eyes and I knew that the combination of scent, flying bird, and shotgun blast all lined up with his breeding and his blood, and he knew this was what he was meant to do.
The spark in a birdog’s eyes has been exquisitely captured by Nancy Whitehead in her coffee table book, In the Field: A Photographer’s Journey with Sporting Dogs. http://sportingdogphotography.com/
In Whitehead’s work, pointers, setters, labs – dogs that fill their hunting companions with awe and affection – go about their athletic and instinctual business of finding birds. Anybody who loves dogs – I’ve heard there might be someone out there who doesn’t – will smile at her images, and those who hunt with dogs will be particularly smitten. Nancy was born in New Hampshire, and I first learned about her photography through her brother, Bill Clough. After marveling at the book and then the website, I approached her about using one of her images for a story we were doing on woodcock habitat. She made it possible for us to use her amazing image of a woodcock flying right at the camera that ran in our Autumn 2010 issue. Take a look.