IN THE COMPANY OF DOGS
Drunken Priest
By Richard Hirneisen with the author’s photos
Imagine a perfect woodcock hunt. It might go something like this . . . an October morning in a northern Michigan forest. Golden aspens, now half-naked, are dripping beads of melting frost that sparkle in the early morning sunlight. The smell of browning ferns is strong and sweet. The sight and sound of your dogs bounding through the woods, collar bells tinkling, fills the brisk morning air with promise. Removed from the noisy, crowded hustle of your normal day-to-day existence, you enter a woodcock covert, a secret place you can hunt for hours, where the only gunshot you’ll hear will be from your own gun or your friend’s, the only other human being who knows the whereabouts of this secret place. At least that’s the way it usually goes in my imagination as days shorten and cool, and woodcock season nears.
Buzz - Richard Hirneisen’s 2-year old Wirehair But, alas, reality has a way of intruding. Instead of the pristine north woods, I find myself in a thorny thicket on the mucky fringe of a cattail slough. I hear the banging and clanking of railroad cars unloading at the auto plant less than a mile away. Traffic roars by on a nearby paved road. Model airplanes dive and loop above the close-by flying field, whining like a squadron of giant, angry insects. One of my wirehairs, Georgie, a Master Hunter, is on point. Buzz, her young nephew, is honoring, ankle deep in muck. I am in a dilemma every woodcock hunter has experienced. Having fought my way into a tight spot where bloodthirsty thorns grab at my clothing and vines and branches whip Karl and Chuck sunrise at Drunken Priest
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WIRE NEWS
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