Decent day

[mobirdhunter]

Originally Posted by Dean Romig

Dogless just isn't the same anymore is it Chris...?

This is my first season without Gracie and it kinda sucks...

I carry her bell with me and her whistle on the braided leather lanyard you made for me many years ago. She was a puppy when you first sent the lanyard but through my carelessness she chewed it up and you sent me a replacement. I always used it whenever Gracie was outdoors with me and though it has a 'sweat and grime' (patina) polish to it it's still whole.
I blew the whistle a few times on the first of our '24 VT grouse season just to reminisce and possibly summon her spirit... but then my vision got a little cloudy and I've gotta see those grouse when they flush...

Thanks Chris





.

Dean, I see my former hunting companions in so many of “their” covers as well. Gives clear meaning to the word: bittersweet.

[Kevin McCormack]

Years ago the NY state DEQ cut a deal with a "boutique logging" firm to alternate thinning and clearcutting plots in one of our favorite grouse covers, a flatland bisected by a meandering stream. Unfortunately the contract let included removal of the more valuable hardwoods but not for the removal of the slash and understory waste of the softwoods.

The result was a flatter version of exactly what Chris' photos show - a knee-deep-plus tangle of fallen trunks, stobs, branch spikes, and the remains of a couple of hundred-year old stone walls, all covered with mosses and lichens. I narrowly averted a disaster when my English setter leaped over a downed trunk, slipped on the slime, and caught a bayonet-like stob between his neck and his collar, which could have easily pierced his neck or chest as he fell. After that and a couple of cracked shin bones and soaked crotches, we quit hunting it.