I Thought My New Dog Might Be Stolen, But No One Ever Claimed Her. I’m Glad

This story, “Her Grace,” appeared in the June 1981 issue of Outdoor Life.

The new dog, a little white setter, had made the strike and she was rock solid. Ten cents would have got you a $10 bet she was locked up on a quail. If there was any doubt in your mind, she had a big pointer we call Flirt immo­bile about 20 feet back of her signifying abso­lute confidence in her diagnosis. Perhaps 30 feet to her right and slightly downwind, a German shorthair­ English pointer dropper we call Cisco was also frozen into position. You could not say Cisco was backing. He has the kind of nose that usually gets him a piece of the real action.

In the 50 years I have hunted quail, I have been in on thousands of covey rises, but that thrill of anticipation still shakes me.

I glanced at Tom Peterson, my shooting companion. The big Swede was drinking in the situation, smiling slightly. I knew that almost subconsciously he had looked over the terrain, anticipated the most probable flight lines, moved his trigger finger to the safety button, placed his feet carefully, left foot slightly forward and now, his knees almost imperceptibly bent, he was exhal­ing slowly while nodding he was ready.

We had not named the old pointer Flirt by accident.

She rolled her one good eye back, located me, rolled it forward again like a trollop indicating the back door of a saloon, and stared bug-eyed at the clump of briers in front of the little setter.

I took a step forward. The big pointer crouched slightly and wagged her tail once. This was too much for Cisco. He moved forward about three feet and froze again. But this was too much motion, period. The birds boiled out of those briers like scalded cats, and the shotgun band be­gan to play.

The new dog had proved she would hold birds, but she sure wasn’t steady to wing. I watched as she chased the flushed covey. I was not particularly upset. She was a young dog, and she would get over that.

I remembered the day I had bought her. One summer evening I was sitting on the patio, sipping a cooler, when a car stopped and a hillbilly got out. He opened his trunk and led the dog into the yard. Cheap collar, cheap chain; I knew a dog peddler when I saw one.

“What’s on your mind?” I asked.

“I got a uncommon fine bird dawg here,” he an­swered. “Fella out to Scotty’s told me you might like to buy a good bird dawg. No, didn’t have no papers that I ever saw.”

She was small, but I liked her looks. She appeared about a year old. Good conformation, good feet, and a beautiful head.

“I’ve got a good dog,” I told the man, pointing back to the kennel. His face fell. 

“What did you want for her?” I asked.

“Hundred dollars,” he said hopefully.

“If she’s not gun-shy, I give $50 and that quart of Ear­ly Times.”

“Mister, you got yerself a dawg,” he beamed.

I had my son go to a nearby field and fire his 20 gauge a couple of times. The dog was not gun-shy, so I gave the man his loot. He had started to leave when I called to him.

“What’s this dog’s name?”

He looked startled, stared at the dog, and then at the fat woman in the junk car.

“Gracie,” he answered.

This reaction made me think that possibly the animal had been stolen. So I placed advertisements in three pa­pers with large circulations, but received no calls. At the end of two weeks I sent her to a trainer.

This was the first time I had hunted over her, but from what I had seen, I was glad no one answered my ads.

Tom brought me back to the job at hand. “How did you do?” he asked.

I had grazed a bird the first shot, hit him solid the sec­ond shot, then knocked a second bird down. Peterson had leaned into that Browning automatic like a highly skilled technician and rolled three straight. He’s no slouch when it comes to handling a smokepole. Both Tom and I dropped our hats at the spot where we were standing at the flush and started to help the dogs locate the dead birds.

We have found that marking the exact spot we shot from helps to retain perspective while looking for the fall­en game. This is especially helpful when there are several birds to pick up.

The weeds were about four feet high where the birds fell, and it was some time before the pointers located all five of them. Only after we pocketed the fifth quail did we realize we had not seen the setter for some time. Tom blew his whistle and called. 

Then we both started looking for her, and as we moved through the weeds we suddenly jumped a single bird, a sleeper that had not flushed with the covey. There was absolutely no excuse for missing it, but we both shot and so far as I know that bird is still flying. After it disappeared into a thicket we saw the setter. She had come back in and had been pointing the flushed bird. As nearly as we could tell, she must have held the point for six or seven minutes.

We were hunting north of Wabash in north-central Indiana. Admittedly this is not the quail hotspot of the nation, but before the terrible snows of recent winters took an estimated 85 percent of the breeding stock, it was not bad quail country.

A man who has spent as much time in the field as I have is bound to know plenty of good hunting spots. Tom’s position as one of the area’s leading farm realtors has proved an invaluable aid. Naturally, in the course of apprais­ing lands, he also appraises the quail hunting potential. If it looks good, he can usually get permission for us to hunt.

We had estimated on this occasion that the covey consisted of 16 to 18 birds, which is a little above average for our area. Three or four of them had swung into a weedy draw about 75 yards ahead of us. They had not been chased, and we thought we might shoot a couple more singles and still leave plenty of seed. Peterson elected to cross to the other side of this depression so we could keep better track of the dogs. I waited for a few minutes and then, when he was on the opposite side, the two of us started toward the area we thought held our quarry. We had cov­ered about 50 yards when a bird jumped wild from some place ahead of us and doubled back toward me. I’m not the world’s greatest shot on incoming game, so I decided to wait and shoot when the bird was past. But something happened. The bird was flying through sparsely branched, rather stunted trees when it suddenly fluttered to the ground. It started to run, but one of the dogs dashed up, caught it, and brought it to me. Neither Tom nor I had shot; the quail had hit a twig and broken a wing. I have often marveled that grouse blasting out of thickets do not frequent­ly fracture bones, but had never until then seen it happen.

We moved forward again and Cisco, the half-German-shorthair, and the big pointer started maneuvers like Jackson and Lee running the Southern army. They quartered into the wind, angled slightly away from each other, and sud­denly both froze. Tom moved up back of the pointer, and I stepped in to flush Cisco’s bird. These were easy shots. Not wanting to thin out the covey any further, we decided to move to another spot.

An old-timer once told me, “Son, when you hunts quails, you look for feed and cover. When you find a spot that’s got them two things, just turn out yer dog.”

I remembered something else he had drilled into me. Don’t stop too early. Push those dogs right up till dark. The later in the evening the better the scent is. Dogs handle better if they’re a little tired. I’ve killed dozens of quail when I could see muzzle flash.

We had about an hour and a half of daylight left, and I knew of a spot close by that the old man would have approved of.

“Let’s try it over by the 40-acre weed patch,” I suggested.

Tom agreed. “Drive around to the east side. That big covey should be moving out to feed.”

We drove a couple of miles and pulled into a picked cornfield next to a thick hedgerow that separated the corn from a harvested soybean field. At the back end of the field was the weed patch. We knew from experience that this was a hotspot.

Tom opened the trunk, and the little setter started to move away — not fast at first, but when the other dogs followed she began to turn it on.

In some indescribable way the heart of a quail hunter moves with his dogs when he watches a cast like this, and we both paused to appreciate the poet­ry.

They were running flat-out now, the wind was right, scenting conditions perfect, and the birds were there. Gra­cie suddenly broke stride, turned slightly closer to the hedgerow, and froze. She had almost missed the scent, but the two older, slower dogs were pointing before she got stopped. They don’t make too many mistakes.

Again Tom had that faint smile on his face. “Get ready, I’ll trip them,” he said quietly.

Very few of the birds flushed so Tom could shoot at them. The bulk of the covey swung around my position in a sweeping curve. I love a shot like this. When that big covey swung my way, I laid the hammer on them hard. And this time Gracie did not chase the birds. She started to, but smacked into a fence. I grabbed her and kept her in till she calmed down a bit and started to help the older dogs hunt dead. She pointed a fallen bird, the German picked it up, and she followed him when he brought it to me.

When we had found them all, Flirt cast out in the direction the covey had taken. The German followed her, and the young dog raced after them and then took the lead.

The three dogs flowed along the fence row. Where it ended they curved to the edge of the picked corn and head­ed toward a small farm pond.

If possible, the little setter had speeded up. She was farther in front now. Questing the wind, moving like a ribbon of flame, she swung nearer to the pond’s edge, and with almost shocking abruptness, froze, to hang there alone for that brief moment it took the other dogs to arrive and provide bas relief for her sculpturing. It was only a matter of seconds until they relayed the message, “This is true. This is true.”

I looked at Tom. We stood there transfixed, then finally started the long walk down to the water’s edge. This took a while. Our quarry, once shot at, was jumpy and flushed just as we got in extreme range. Tom folded one bird.

“Great shot,” I told him.

“Yes, but I’m sorry I took it,” he answered.

“Why?” I asked.

“Look where it fell.”

The pond was frozen out about 30 feet from the banks. Not solid, just a thin shell. This was the deep end, and the bird had fallen on the thin sheet of ice. No way would that ice support a man. I didn’t think it would hold a dog. The old pointer didn’t think so either. I tried to send the German out. He saw the bird, whined a little, and backed off when the ice began to crack under his weight.

About this time the small dog came in from wherever she had been, and evidently caught the scent. She stopped, and as she looked at the bird it fluttered just a little. That’s all it took.

Slowly, with light, catlike steps, she edged forward, stretched her neck as far as she could reach and picked up the quail. The ice sagged. Water came in around her front feet, but the support held as she backed up a bit, turned, and made her way to shore.

She was very jealous of the other dogs. Watching them out of the comer of her eye, head high, with an almost regal air, she strutted up the bank and presented me with the trophy.

When I could talk again, I asked Tom if he wanted to look for more sin­gles.

“Man, let’s go home. We both got the limit today,” he answered.

We weren’t even close to having the 10 birds apiece the laws allowed us in those days, but I knew what he meant. There is so much more to bird shooting than just shooting birds.

We started back to the Buick. It was getting cold. Dusk was setting in, and I knew we would need the headlights before we got home. Tom opened the rear door of the old car, and the three tired dogs curled up on the back seat. We emptied our guns, double-checked, buckled them in their cases, and laid them on the back floor.

We got in the front. Tom started the engine, and we sat there waiting for the heater to kick in. My friend stretched a long arm back and stroked the beautiful head of the little setter.

Read Next: How a Feud Between Two Pointers Turned Them into True Quail Dogs

“Gracie,” he said, “you’re a good little girl. Yes sir, you ‘re a good little Gracie.”

“Peterson,” I reprimanded my part­ner, “you sure have a lot to learn about the protocol of quail hunting. Please, may I never again hear you speaking to that dog in such a manner. In the future, when you speak to that little princess, please have the courtesy to address her as Your Grace. After all, you are in the presence of a duchess.”