Munitions . . . monsoon . . . mud . . . mosquitoes . . . mushrooms, not to mention killdeers, and curlews, but no pheasants, Huns, or, mercifully, rattlesnakes, about describes this year’s training trip for my newly trimmed and groomed Brittany, Beau, to upland country near my home town (now city), Brooks.
We try to time this trip for when the pheasant and Hungarian partridge young of the year are off the nest so Beau can point and I can count them and predict the kind of upland bird hunting season we are going to have in the fall.
We would probably have cancelled because of the June monsoon in Southern and Eastern Alberta, but this was a gun-running trip with a rigid schedule for me to deliver to buyers of firearms from the downsizing of my personal battery.
The deluge had become a drizzle when we pulled up at Chicken on the Way in Cluny for our meeting at 11:30 a.m. with the first buyer, then lunch.
By 12:15 p.m. we had concluded business, even completed the transfers by cell phone to the Registry’s toll free number (1-800-731-4000) in New Brunswick.
By then there was still no sign of the noon opening promised by Chicken on the Way’s sign. “No problem,” my buyer told me, “they’ve got chicken down the street.”
There seems to be a fried chicken war on in tiny Cluny, because at the general store and bakery down the street, a big sign proclaimed “Pete’s Chicken on the Run.”
At a picnic table outside, we feasted on fried chicken and chips at least the equal of Chicken on the Way and far better, lighter, tastier corn fritters, plus excellent cole slaw. Be advised, you Trans Canada Highway travellers who like to drop in at Cluny for a supreme cholesterol fix, but have been frustrated by Chicken on the Way’s erratic hours.
The drizzle was constant and water was filling every low spot as we carried on down #1 to Brooks in time for a meeting with another buyer, then Beau and I were off to the Patricia area where we hunt a huge tract of prime upland cover, usually starting with Huns in September, then adding pheasants in October and November.
The rancher, working in hip waders, asked us to drive on the prairie rather than on the sodden trails. Beau found no upland birds in two of our hotter spots, but shore-marsh birds, killdeers and curlews, found him and gave him great runs with their playing injured charades, and their scolding and swooping.
Dinner was at the steak pit and bar with the rancher and the last buyer of one of my custom shotguns in the 95 year-old Patricia Hotel.
From my teens I’ve spent a lot of time there, including Friday and Saturday fight nights in the good old days and never fail to hear, see, and learn interesting stuff.
Ed Hauk, still CEO of the Canadian Pheasant Company, was there and announced settlement that day of what I’d been hearing had been an ugly dispute among shareholders and directors that results in fewer of each. Always promoting, Ed told me he is looking for ideas (and funds) to offer pheasants to handicapped hunters.
A local ranching family of pheasant hunters told me their many hunting dogs frequently get bitten by rattlesnakes too close for comfort to where Beau and I do our hunting.
They report they have never lost one, never use anti-venom, and have a protocol of treating a bitten dog with anti-histamines, anti-inflammatories, pain killers and watch for any sign of infection setting in.
Next morning the sun was shining, the meadowlarks were singing, but again we could find no slightest scent of upland game.
Heavy rains just as chicks are about to leave the nest are a major cause of low numbers of birds in hunting season.
Every nesting area I know of out here was under water and one formerly dry ditch in and along which pheasants nest was close to overflowing the trail.
But the killdeers and curlews came out to play and, while I strolled the prairie behind Beau, I noticed that the sudden sunshine and warmth after heavy rains were bringing on the usual bloom of mushrooms.
There were some old and soggy specimens, but if you tuned out the serenade of the meadowlarks and the cries of killdeers sand curlews, you could practically hear the “pop” of fresh, button meadow mushrooms emerging.
Once again, as I hunted and picked, as I did years ago when I lived down here, I noticed and wondered at a seeming symbiotic relationship: find the young clumps of sagebrush and there would be mushrooms nearby. Things were so good that we road-hunted a good bagful of my favorite — after morels — wild mushroom.
But all that in and out of the vehicle to pick what I had spotted had a downside: on the long drive home we discovered we had also harvested a rigful of fresh, hungry mosquitoes.
Bob Scammell is an award-winning outdoors writer living in Red Deer.