Bows and Bird Dogs

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Transcript

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Welcome to the Code of Traditional Archery, brought to you by Primitive Stone Archery and the founder Grant Richardson. Welcome to the Code of Traditional Archery Podcast. I'm Grant Richardson, your host, and welcome to all the new people joining us, and a big thanks to those who have been following us thus far. The Code of Traditional Archery is dedicated to the legacy I was raised with under the former Ontario Bull Hunters Association. The efforts of those to work, create, and implement and forge the original primitive weapons and archery seasons and laws in Ontario will not be forgotten. You can find this podcast on Spotify, iTunes, and Amazon Audible or wherever you listen to your podcast. And if you like what you hear, leave us a review. Our original intent of this podcast was to bring back traditional archery and bow hunting to an older era where hunting ability met Archer, and together the two formed a bow hunter. Shooting and hunting with recurves and longbows is more popular than ever. However, the approach is much more so an art and skill set, not a product, but a never-ending process. I was raised with a bow in one hand and a fly rod in the other. Nearby, however, was a bird dog. Always. Since a young age, they have accompanied my life and made me better for being a part of their world so much more than I theirs. Long before my love affair with the gray ghost Vorstund or Weimraner began almost 25 years ago, I'd experienced several other breeds. Our first working breed was a black flat coat retriever my father named Joga, a birthday gift to my mother. And Joga an abbreviation for blackbird in the Seneca people's language. She was faithful, a good water dog, and the way I saw it in my very young eyes, as much of a companion for the hunt as she was a hunting dog, always bright eyed and eager to chase whatever we were hunting, and a fantastic retriever and family dog. My interest in field dogs indeed sprung from my father and his dad, my grandfather, and he was a cocker spaniel and belt and setter man. He'd hunted over silver breeds, and these were his standouts, although he regaled me with tales of my father's uncle's viseless, red Hungarian poners that to my mind were dogs of staunch points and blinding speed. My first bird dog was a rescue from a field line of Brittany spaniels. She was my dog solely, and Daisy was just what a young boy needed in his life for a bird dog, a wild-eyed red and white beast, feathered in her hawks and legs and filled with energy. We went everywhere together, and I was able to train her with some help from my late grandfather's tutelage. However, I only had one year to hunt over her. A car took her from my life when I was fifteen, a memory I still cannot shake to this day. I learned that day that one's heart connected firmly with a dog, and when they leave, a piece of you leaves with them. Not long after, my father and I went to a small kennel offering field bred Springer spaniels, a line tied to England's pheasant coverts and trials, and I picked one out, a tiny female, and since some of her line held from a Welsh ties to Ireland, I named her Erin. My first few years with her proved to be a bundle of rough coated spaniel, not a show dog at all, but a shorter canine, well muscled and bristling with energy. She was a flusher and always on the move. And after a few frustration weeks the first year we hunted together, I decided to write a famous Spaniel man from England. A columnist from Gundag magazine, Ken Robuck, he was a noted handler and author, was kind enough to write me back and give me some tips. One wants to get her to range close and to do so get her onto rabbits. The idea is that they'd be held tight for the dog. I immersed myself in books and articles at the time and learned all I could out of field work and how to apply it as best I could to my young springer, yielding both good results and of course bird dog results at the same time. Bird dogs, you see, are gonna bird dog at times. They're not robots, and I was slowly learning this. My issue was at the time I was anchored with the bow as my weapon of choice, for the most part. Now to some that may seem obtuse since both dog and bunny are bird, as it happened from time to time, could be in relation to the dog's path, and this was cause for concern when arrows were being loosed. But something else entirely ended up happening, entirely different. And this podcast is episode number 25 of the Code of Traditional Archery, entitled Bows and Bird Dogs. The rail line to the southeast of the small rural Ontario town I grew up in ran freight only a few times a week and never on Saturday afternoons. That was our planned destination, and I was poking around my father's archery box, a large clear plastic crate with everything imaginable for bow hunting, tapering and swaging tools, knocks, various broadheads of all sorts and sizes, some napped heads, both his own, as well as some he'd found, and the occasional broken piece of pottery that he'd found intriguing enough to keep for future observation. 38 special and 357 Magnum casings for blunts and of course Wikidos, which is what I was after that day. The prior week I'd lost five arrows chasing Hungarian partridge, all eaten and swallowed by the long stem grasses and goldenrod fields where I'd found the rusty gray birds with my springer. That sunlit afternoon, and I was determined to prevent that from happening again. The Leveran white furred spaniel was a rough coat and ideally suited for such pursuits. But as anyone will tell you, again, even the best trained dogs are not robots. They will hunt for you but have their moments of connection to their heritage and wildness, and that was what I was trying to rein in with her that year. You see, if a bird dog got out to 35, 40 yards with a bird in front of her flushing in front of my banged up bread over and under, I had a good chance. But a recurve bow was an entirely different game. And it required tenacity, wit, and foremost, a very discriminating shot selection to ensure the dog's safety. It required a dog that worked closer, sprinkled with at times, some pure good old luck. That very component taught me tremendous lessons, however, on shot placement and angles, as it was often a wingshot on Upland Birds or a running rabbit away from the dog. The dog and I followed the train tracks out of town, walking along the edges, until the very field I called Partridge Field at the time opened up to the right. The rough coated Spitfire now out front of me near the old busted stelco gate opening, ran eager, her flag tail wagging furiously and barked her excitement at me to hurry up, as she was wont to do. I was using an old king back quiver at the time, filled with a ragtag assortment of cedar and aluminum arrows, some fluflu's tip with judos, old worn broadheads sharpened needles, and a few tipped with 38 special casings. The last series of events there did not make me feel too confident about checking that field out. Its expanse around 200 acres square and its grasses swayed in the wind as if hypnotizing me, daring me to tread again, and losing more of my coveted arrows to be swallowed up by its golden colored maze. The affair started much the same way as prior. We'd walked only forty feet when a small covey of hunts burst out from beneath the Spaniel's front feet, rocketing in four directions at the same time, without a shaft off my bow in pursuit. I walked on the dog's offside at an angle to ensure safety so arrow and dog never did connect. It worked, but also restricted my shots in the make of trying the safety and angles for the dog, and it was less than ideal at times. It did, however, teach me some safety sensibilities of when and where and how to launch an arrow effectively without ripping back and just letting fly haphazardly. We crossed into the center of the field, which housed a gap of raspberries. An old woodshed collapsed and crumpled into a pile, scattered and overgrown with brambles and juniper trees off to the side. As we rounded the corner of the first edge of the field, the dog stopped, then stomped forward, springing after her namesake into the brushy edges. Hup, I hutlered out, and she froze a moment, and then surging forward, pushed a large snowshoe hare across my path within eight feet of me. The dark brown hare had not yet had its winter coat, shot past me, and I missed cleanly with a shot off the old browning wasp recurve. The dog ranged out twenty five yards, putting out a second wild eyed hare and turned back to me, evidently catching the scent of the first lingering rabbit nearby. Knocking a second arrow, I let the dog round out behind the location of the bunny, and she again hopped and sat now, without command, at the rabbit's attempted escape, now thwarted by a blaze orange painted cedar shaft, which caught it squarely at a full burst run twenty feet away into the raspberries. Back, I yelled. With no broadhead and the thirty eight special brass casing on the front, I wasn't too worried. I pointed to the rabbit's location, gesturing my arm out for the dog to see, but she was already on it, and wagged her tail furiously, walked back with the fresh hair, and dropped it at my feet, barking loudly as if the whole world was hers, and mine to possess over what had just transpired. Kneeling, I tried to water her, but she was not having it, and tore off in search for more game to bring to bag. Picking up the hair and stuffing it into the shoulder bag, I watched her stop now and wait out past twenty yards. And this was it for me. That moment of her standing there, tail aloft in the sun, wagging, waning across the goldenrod stands with the sun dropping, blending into reds and yellows. It was her world. Hawthorn berries and apples. Nearby was the poster I'd seen a hundred times as a kid, and she stood there, fully embossed on its front cover, from outdoor life to sports afield and my grandfather's collection of American rifle boom. It was just us in the wilds. For the first time she stopped and hunted close, and I'd fully connected with what was happening. She ranged once in a while, but after that day stayed much closer and intuitively knew somehow that if we were to be successful, it would require not only teamwork, but a sense of closer ranging if I had the bow in hand. I'd like to say that we connected again that day and ended up with a brace of bunnies and birds, however, we did not. We walked the opposing fence lines for rough grouse and cottontails for three more hours, putting out several more of each, including a large lone gray partridge, but I sorely missed all at eight feet, save a tail feather or two, and lost four more arrows chasing that bird to the entire process as well. Didn't matter though. The dog now realized her job more than my shooting ability at running rabbits and jumpy grouse could. I could care less at the time. I'd found that whole process with her, and we had the time of our lives even though I came home with four or less shafts and the old weathered black king back quiver. I've had so many folks flinch at the idea of hunting with a bow for small game, and even more so with a bird dog and toe. And working with the dog with archery equipment is an experience. To see them working at doing what they're indeed bred to do instead of being an ornament to some show is a thing that needs to be experienced. And doing so with a bow may seem tedious at times, and safety is always at the forefront. However, it always taught me patience and an aliveness and shooting ability that hunting big game did not. I like to quote my friend Jeff Kavanaugh, in my opinion, one of the finest instinctive archers of my generation when he talks about bow hunting and wing shooting. To quote, no one told me I couldn't do it. As a kid, I was inspired by my father's friends, some like Vic Boyer and his associates, who could take cinnamon teal out of the air with his longbow, a feat many wing shooters have trouble handling with a fast-swing 12-gauge at times, let alone a 60-pound American semi-string follow longbow. We hunted many species with bow in hand, her and I, ducks, geese, and her favorite bird to Aaron, ringneck pheasants, which she drove at hunting like no other dog I've worked with, leaping wide at the birds' long tails as they escaped into the air with her fangs bared. I learned with hunting her a tenacity to shot that is carried through even now to my older years. She is laid to rest with our other dogs on our retired farmland, in an opening near some goldenrod which shines with the sunlight and memories of her life, and flag tipped, liver, and white tail. She was resting not far from where I took the last grouse with her, a bird she chased down for in her older years almost ten minutes at eleven years before returning me, and as usual, dropping the bird at my feet and barking for more time together. She was retired after that hunt, and one day while I was at work, my mother called to tell me she had passed on to other hunting grounds peacefully. I still encourage her to come along on every hunt when I walk past her spot, as with the other dogs laid to rest there, and my children do as well. And whether I'm successful on those hunts or not, I thank them each time as we head back to the house in an appreciation of their lives and the days afield I spent with them as they shared their lives with me. Time afield for me was made all that much better with a dog, although not the solitude and silence a hunting whitetail brings to one. It certainly taught me many lessons I shared with the dogs of my youth, and still share this day with our two wine runners, Ellie and Maggie. Watching an animal work with you doing what they were bred to do and to take game with them is as an ancient to time as humankind is, and is the very thing that was part of how wild canines were domesticated in the first place. That connection and companionship is still just as strong nowadays, and I often think that dogs do not deserve us at times. I've been taught much in patience and understanding in the ways of the field dog from my furry companions. And I will say that we as humans do much to confuse them. I'm a better hunter because of that connection with them, and I'm sure if you're a dog person, you can understand what I'm trying to convey about that relationship that is stretched across thousands of years and cultures. Don't forget to hit the link to receive our free ethical predator new newsletter delivered to your inbox with tips and advice on traditional bow hunting and so much more. You can find the link in our bio. If you already haven't checked out Compton Traditional Bow Hunters, the national traditional bow hunting organization, offering great membership benefits and ensuring the traditions of bow hunting with the stricken string is alive and well, not only now, but for generations to come. Thanks for joining us. We appreciate all the positive feedback we've been getting from folks all over the world. Please do take a time to leave a rating and a comment. We're gearing up for a great season with some brand new merchants dropping soon. So keep your eyes out and join us on the Traditional Bow Hunting app, your one stop for all things traditional bow hunting right in the palm of your hand, all downloadable, including our one-of-a-kind Tradbow Bootcamp Intensive. Our message is based on the three pillars of the code of traditional archery with the ethical predator mindset, weapons proficiency with a stick bow, ethics to guide us on our collective journey, and conservation with stewardship in order to protect the wildlife woods, fields, and waterways. We hunt as our themes. We are the ethical predator, a hunter who adheres to a strict set of ethical guidelines and principles when pursuing game with a traditional bow or other weapons platform. Thanks for listening in. We encourage you to immerse yourself in the art of the stick bow. Shoot straight and walk with us.