IN THE COMPANY OF DOGS Whatever the cause, Michigan pheasant numbers are way, way down. I’ve seen grizzled octogenarians get misty, far-away looks in their eyes when they reminisce about the 1940s, when ringnecks were so plentiful that “you didn’t need a bird dog, you just walked out in the fields and stepped on ‘em.” They claim they didn’t even need bird dogs because they could flush pheasants with any old beagle or the family cocker spaniel or even a mutt. In 1944, when hunters’ ranks were greatly thinned by WWII, 1.5 million roosters were shot in Michigan. This year’s kill is expected to be less than 100,000. Last year, with the season almost over, and only one rooster to my credit, I phoned Paul, a long-time friend and hunting buddy, whose take for the year was zero. I figured he’d be willing enough on such short notice to join me. He was. I crated Georgie, the older and wiser of my two wirehairs, in the back of my truck, slid in my 20 gauge side-by-side and a box of sixes, and picked
up Paul and Kaiser, his Brittany. We drove fifteen miles north from my home in suburban Detroit to the Bald Mountain State Recreation Area. My decision to go to there required a prodigious leap of faith. Even when pheasant numbers were up, it was rare to see a pheasant at Bald Mountain. If I shot a rooster there, even if it had the stubby spurs and short, scraggly tail of a young bird, I considered it a trophy. But Bald Mountain had a couple things going for it. First, it was only twenty minutes from home. Second, I had exercised several generations of my wirehairs there, and much of its 4,600 acres are as familiar to me as my back yard. The “mountain” in question, on the edge of the recreation area, is actually a huge landfill, a treeless, grassless, dome so big that double-bottom garbage haulers and bulldozers crawling around near its summit look like toys. Scavenging seagulls swirl and dive around the big machines as they dump their malodorous cargo. In cynical moments I wonder if this gigantic mound of refuse is an unintended metaphor for what’s happened to the Bald Mountain State Recreation Area. For decades the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) managed the recreation area to improve habitat. Farmers planted corn, beans, sunflowers, sorghum, and native grasses on parcels of leased acreage. Crop fields were not plowed after the autumn harvest, leaving food for deer, pheasants, waterfowl, turkeys, and other game and non-game species in the harsh winter months.
Kaiser with a deer carcass – Bald Mountain
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