Fall Is Close - So Is Bird Hunting

It was the quintessential neighborhood icon, the Sunflower, which first made me contemplate Autumn and the upcoming hunting season. The cooler weather and heavy rain made their water-laden heads droop, almost as if they were bowing in reverence. Is it really only August 7^th? What a nice reprieve from the summer’s heat. No question – Autumn is in the air early this year and according to 2 News Weather this pattern will persist.

In the low, fast-moving clouds I earnestly track multiple squadrons of quaks speeding to and from destinations unknown to me and I wonder, do others notice these rather obscure clusters flying about or is it just us waterfowlers?

The land and crops are also showing signs of fall. They’re turning that wonderful shade of gold I so love. I doubt the uninitiated really care much but to us bird-hunters it’s a thing of beauty, a harbinger of good things to come.

A few of the wheat fields have already been cut and even plowed under. What a shame. With a nice goose-blind they could have been put to such good use this coming fall. Soon the tall corn will be also be nothing more than stubble and as I drive home I wonder if I can muster the chutzpa to ask some farmer to hold-off plowing his field under until I’ve sufficiently exhausted its hunting potential. Don’t they know, birds need habitat. I suppose they have their reasons.

Each day the season gets closer and as it approaches I find it more and more difficult to concentrate on work. Instead I find myself perusing the Cabelas Fall catalog and exploring the Fish and Game website for opening dates. Soon my doggies will be dropping quail, chukar, huns, pheasants, grouse and best of all ducks into my waiting hand.

The dove season is only three weeks away and I’ve already secured my hunting privileges with a local landowner. Doves provide such a nice early-season tune-up. Their tweety-bird flight patterns make for difficult targets and since they offer little scent, dog-handling is often an fun part of the aftermath.

Next down the pike come quail, blue grouse and by mid-September, the opening day for chukar arrives here in Idaho. September is a little early in my opinion - too hot for the dogs and the cheat grass still retains those unfriendly canine chards.

The Oregon opener on the other hand comes one month later and the hunting is far better. I and my buddies will have waited over eight long months for this masochistic leg-burn. In years past, a limit was commonplace but no so of late. No one ever really knows how well the hatch has fared until opening day when we either hear something akin to an all-out war or just heavy breathing as sweat pours from the brim of our hats. Regardless of odds, we continue to haul ourselves over the brutal Owyhee Mountains – last year over 200 miles.

Maybe I ’m imagining this but I think my dogs sense the upcoming season. They lift their heads curiously and track me whenever I move about. I think they’re checking to see if I’ve donned my camo garb. Soon I’ll be testing the new skills that I hopefully infused in them over the spring and summer. If it weren’t for training and AKC hunt tests what would there be except boredom between seasons.

My old big game friends ask me why I no longer hunt with them. It’s simply this. A day hunting big game is a day I could have been shooting birds under my labs – no contest; bird hunting wins every time.

Final preparations are underway as I check each day off the calendar. What’s left really except cleaning my shotgun, getting the decoys in order door knock to garner a few more hunting permissions. Soon that anticipated day will arrive and every year after I kill that first bird the same thought crosses my mind – Is this the best sport in the world or what!

ONE MAN’S JOURNEY INTO THE HEART OF LABDOM

A few years back two great events occurred in my life; I sold my business and purchased my first lab. This was my season-of-life to kick-back and enjoy the fruits of my labors. For years I had secretly dreamed of having oodles of free time to train dogs, hunt under them and embrace a new lifestyle. Now at long-last that day had arrived.

My wife, on the other hand, didn’t necessarily share my enthusiasm. When she found out a lab would be on her doorstep in a few short days, her exact words were “OK, you can have the damn dog, but if you think he’s coming in my house, you’ve got another think coming.”

Didn’t she understand – my version of a mid-life-crisis was far more reasonable than the meltdown I’d seen others go through. I just wanted a dog, that’s all. OK well more than one dog. Next I dropped the bombshell that I was also purchasing a puppy to train from scratch. She was not a happy camper.

It had been more than 30 years since I’d owned a dog so I was worried; could I just flip a switch and jump into the game? Somewhere down deep I just knew this journey was going to be filled with joy, and now looking back, I was 100% right-on. I wonder if I had really understood the time commitment level, would I have been so enthusiastic?

Previous to my new chosen pastime, I’d done a little chukar hunting in the steeps of the Idaho Owyhee Mountains with my brother-in-law beneath his Brittany so I seriously entertained the notion of a pointing dog. Ultimately though I decided upon a started Pointing-lab so that I could hunt under him immediately and reap the benefits of a pointing dog as well. I learned later that labs weren’t specifically designed for the chukar game but the pursuit of this devil-bird has since turned my dogs into chiseled specimens of lab-fitness. I do not however enjoy playing the camel to them during the warm early-season hunts. Sometimes I carry as much as two gallons of water for them. No kidding.

Labs may not cover as much ground as Brittanys but they hunt hard – long beyond the endurance of my 50-year-old body. After our hunts, in the mellow of the evenings, I bind their wounds as they lay basking in the heat next to the fireplace hearth. It’s truly a communing experience as I listen to them groan when I touch them, as if they were the 50-year-old man who just walked his legs off in the Owyhees. I often walk more than 10 miles but I suspect they traverse five times that distance. Labs have so much heart, so much desire to please. My adult kids now laugh at me when after a hunt I say the immortal words, “Life just doesn’t get any better.”

It’s a common occurrence now – my brother-in-law and I continually engage in the “best-breed” debate on almost every hunt but let’s see how well his dog does on a long retrieve that requires handling across the Snake River in the dead of Winter. It aint gonna happen. Plus my dogs actually find the chukars I shoot and even bring them back to me. What’s more if you could see one of my buds lock up on a pheasant or a quail, you’d be impressed. However, I’ll admit it not the same as a pointing breed.

One of my best hunting buddies recently penned the moniker of Lifestyle Nazi to me. According to him I think everyone should think and act as I do and my newfound love for Labs is no exceptions. I suppose everyone loves their dog, and certainly there’s something to be recommended in most breeds, but you’ll have to excuse my bias – Labs are in a class of their own. That said, I’ll concede to the fact that I have very little experience with other breeds.

A fringe benefit of this hobby has been the friendships I’ve made. I found a very talented and helpful group of trainers here in a local Southwest Idaho retriever club and through my association with the club I teamed up with Jake Coon. Jake is young, enthusiastic pro-trainer who previously worked for one of the best in the business – Pat Burns; and now Jake is mentoring me in the hobby. I also purchased the entire Mike Lardy DVD training series and outlined the entire set indexing each segment so I could quickly pull-up the video clip I needed without scanning through the entire DVD. If you’d like a copy of the timeline, drop me an email and send it to you. (livingidaho@gmail.com)

My pup has just passed through the AKC Juniors and my older dog is one leg away from his Senior title. I’ll have to admit, when the judge handed me that first Senior ribbon I felt like a 16 year old girl who had just won the beauty pageant. It was so gratifying. Next year I plan to go straight to Masters with both dogs and check-out the dog-trial game as well.

By the way, since our supposedly “outdoor” dogs entered our world, they haven’t spent even one night in the kennel. My wife fell head-over-heals in love with them. I’m a little embarrassed to confess that they spend most evenings next to me on the couch or sitting on my wife’s lap. Of all people, I wouldn’t have taken her for such a softy. She turned two beautiful hunting machines into 75-pound lap-dogs. But that’s labs for you; they just win your heart.

The Top 10 Most Memorable Things About Picking Huckleberries

On a recent trip with my family to pick huckleberries I came away refreshed and at peace which made me wonder – why do I so enjoy this past-time. Certainly the reward doesn’t outweigh the benefit.

Nonetheless, I came up with my own top 10 list as follows.

1) 1. The Smell - Such smells bring back wonderful memories

2)  2. Everybody comes back with the same purple stain their behind

3)  3. Camaraderie

4)  4.  Mosquito Bites – It’s worth it.

5)  5. Getting car-sick on the windy road up.

6)  6. Competition – Who can pick the most in a given time-frame.

7)  7. Four tasty huckleberry goodies – jam, cobbler, ice-cream, pancakes

8)  8. Absolute silence – how often do we get that?

9)  9. Realizing your dog just ate half the berries you just spent the last hour picking.

10 10. Spilling your jar of huckleberries on the ground.

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The Wakeup Call

Sometimes it takes a wakeup call before we take the time to consider what’s really important in life.

I recently received just such a call.  For me, it took the form of a health issue. I was sequestered for six long days in the hospital – more than enough time to take stock – did my life match up to my words? Was I living the purpose statement I had written out years earlier?

I will embrace Life, delve into Its beauty, know Its Creator and impart It to others. I will live a life of gratefulness, purpose, passion and creativity. By God’s grace my life will make a difference and have eternal significance. (Note the capitalization)

I have very few regrets in life really.  If anything my life has been blessed, even serendipitous but depending upon the outcome of my biopsy I might have had something very nasty. Thankfully that ended up not being the case. Raw circumstances nevertheless have a way of making one reflect. Pretences and self-deception evaporate and it was during this time I drew certain conclusions about my life.

First off, it’s obvious – God has blessed my life.  It has had and does have meaning. God graciously used me somehow to play a part in the lives of my children and to help them come to know Him. That alone is enough but there’s more.  I have seen beauty in the world, in nature, in relationships, with my beloved wife for instance.

Over the years however I haven’t been as faithful as I could have been in my relationship with God.  I’ve since confessed this and feel that if God were to verbalize His forgiveness it might sound like this – “Ya, I know; its OK but now let’s get with it.”

So now I have a chance to live life anew so to speak – to refresh my relationship with God and to regird. I also have other goals yet to be completed which I believe are good and achievable if my health holds-out. I’m still excited about these things but like life itself, I view them in a different light.

A wakeup-call has been a good thing for me.

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The Miraculous - Taking A Breath Of Air

To breathe deeply and take oxygen into your lungs is such a wondrous thing. Who among us though ever takes the time to really consider what a fabulous gift from God this is? Until today I’ve certainly taken it for granted.  Something else, not so obvious, is the ability to breathe completely out, to vacate your lungs but if you’d had the lung problems I’ve had today, you would no longer take either for granted.

I actually reached panic stages a couple of times today while in violent rib-cracking coughing fits.  No matter what I did, I couldn’t get enough oxygen and I don’t mind telling you it was damn scary.  Plus my lungs sounded as if I had a harmonica lodged in my windpipe.

A few days ago I went the traditional doc in the box approach.  Nothing they’ve given however has helped. Sometimes the obvious place to go is overlooked even though it’s right there in front of you. My brother is a case-in-point.  He’s a top-notch homeopathic Chiropractor that can fix almost anything so I don’t know why but I just didn’t think of him when it came to pneumonia or whatever vile thing habitates my lung cavity.

I was in the exact opposite boat the other day when a good friend mentioned she was buying a property with another Realtor®. Immediately she made the connection that I should have been her Realtor but alas she forgot. When she thought Realtor, my name didn’t come to the for-front of her thoughts. My fault not hers.  Anyway, I’ve decided to be more proactive in garnering my friends mindshare as it relates to real estate issues..

OK back to being thankful.  My brother in law just happened to call me today and when he heard my tale of woe, he suggested I come in and get some diothermy.  Diothermy is this device that radiates heat where aimed into your body cavity, thereby raising the ambient temperature of the affected areas (eg, lungs) to destroy, blast, desomate, (kerplowy) the bugs causing the problem.  The device itself stays cool to the touch but there’s no doubt your innerds are being bombarded by warmth-rays.  Very cool device.

Even afterward though I was starved for air.  I had to have my wife drive home and came very close to just heading down to the emergency room.  Then suddenly at 7 PM, it was gone. No more coughing, no more squeaky lungs. I don’t know if this is just a short uptick or if I’m really on the mend but either way, I will never take the miracle of breathing for granted again. Strangely I still don’t feel all that well but in comparison I feel so much better than before, I almost feel euphoric.  Ah to breath deeply in and out. 

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Lawrence Welk – What He Did Right That You Could Do

If you’re from the Baby Boomer generation no doubt you grew up on Saturday nights watching Lawrence Welk with your parents. Regardless of your views on his music and his show, he was arguably the greatest band director who ever lived. 

 
The Lawrence Welk show was extremely successful and after more than 50 years it’s still airing. If you haven’t watched his show lately it still comes on every Saturday night at 8 PM on the local PBS station.
 
I’ll have to admit I watch the old reruns often. I’m not certain how I picked up a fetish for Lawrence Welk except that it makes me feel good and in a world where bad news is medium of exchange, a good dose of feeling good helps heal the soul.
 
I know every Welk musician in detail. I’ve researched their lives and backgrounds. From Arthur Duncan to the fabulous Champaign Lady (Norma Zimmer), I know them all and every one of them is a winner in life. Moreover Lawrence Welk knew how to pick the winners. When he found one he found a way to get them on his team.
 
The success that Lawrence Welk achieved doesn’t happen by accident. So the question is, what was it about Lawrence Welk that produced such results? As a ardent student of the man I’ve drawn some conclusions about the man.
 
Foremost Lawrence Welk strikes me as being genuine – to the core. He was what he seemed to be. There was no deception in the man, no facades. He was honest with himself and with others and something about the man attracted winners to follow him. I believe this was his genuiness.
 
Secondly I believe Lawrence loved what he did. There was no disguising it. His smile was infectious as were the smiles of his musicians. That’s something that can’t be disguised. Either you love what you do or you don’t. It can’t be faked.
 
Thirdly he worked hard. He was the first person to arrive at the studio every morning and the last to leave. He gave it everything he had. There is no substitute for hard work.

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A Visit to the Emergency Room - My Take On It

Anything that’s wrong with our medical machine is a direct result of government involvement. The cost issues are the result of licensing which limits competition and the whole racket is enforced with guns and jails, just like everything else government does – just good ol’ coercion, plain and simple.

Regardless that’s not the point of this blog. As I sit in my hospital bed, after what I presume is the normal poking and prodding – man they need a lot of blood, mostly I presume for liability reasons – there’s no way I can dispute that the actual care I’m getting is excellent. To the extent that it’s good could (with some effort) no doubt be correlated to the extent that there’s still some level of free market capitalism left within the system. It makes me glad that Obamunism healthcare hasn’t been fully injected into the system yet because I need good care.

Without going into my specific health issues suffice it to say that ten seconds after I arrived at the ER reception desk, I was spirited into a treatment room with a Nurse. A barrage of questions ensued. You’d thought I’d been dropped into the middle of the Spanish Inquisition. While in the ER, I saw a respiratory therapist, two nurses, two phlebotomist and a doctor. Each of them who poked, prodded and asked a lot of the same questions. The ER doc had had access to state of the art technology enabling him to pull all of my prior chart notes, x-rays, cat-scans and pharmacy records from various locales all over the Valley.

This is where you see how well technology and healthcare work together with people and patients. They have a system and they follow it perfectly. You ever watch the inner workings of a watch – one with a clear back-plate? The people here at St. Lukes are just like that – really, really competent. Everyone knows just what they’re suppose to do and each person follows the system to a tee. Even better they do it cheerfully. They want to be here and it shows. They smile, they’re nice and they sincerely care about you. You can’t fake that. What could nationalized healthcare do this type of system but screw it up? What needs fixed except to expand the competition in order to make it affordable.

Two hours after arrival, my test results were back and had been moved to my room and I was talking to the head pulmonologist who has carefully examined all my records, explained the most likely of the three things causes of my illness and he put me on a course of action to pin-down the source of the problem. Of course this requires more nasty, expensive invasive testing procedures but depending upon the results we’ll probably know something. Finally after six months of not knowing, we’re likely to have an answer. It’s the not knowing that’s really hard. You begin to wonder, “Is this it? Is this the thing that’s going to get me or am I just being a baby here? Am I being overly melodramatic?”

It wasn’t until I finally shifted to a new doc that I really got the serious butt kicking that I needed. After ordering a whole new battery of tests and carefully examining them my new doc looked me in the eye and said “you are a very sick person (he emphasized the word “very”) and I’m trying to decide whether to admit you to the hospital right now . . .” you get the idea. He took responsibility and made me recognize the seriousness of my problem. By the way if you ever need a really good pneumonologist Dr. Brian Goltry is it. Possibly I should have take action months ago but I’m 51 and haven’t been to the doc since I was ten years old. I haven’t been sick more than about five consecutive days in my entire life.

You might think if you’re seriously ill you’d know it but I don’t think that’s the way it usually presents itself. For me, I felt pretty good between short periods of acute lung issues. I’d take inhaler medications and the symptoms would dissipate. At first it took several hours for the symptoms to reappear, then four, then two then finally every hour until I finally couldn’t get around it – I really had a problem. Even on the way to the hospital I told my wife, “Hey I feel pretty good. All they’re going to do is increase my dosage and charge me $1000. Let’s just do that our selves. Maybe we should turn around and go home.” Fortunately we didn’t. Marline was very patient with me. During the previous night she dressed three separate times to take me to the ER. Each time I cancelled at the last minute. The last time she just remained dressed and slept in her clothes. In the morning, I thought I everything was going to be OK when the mother of all coughing episodes struck.

If you’ve never had a serious coughing episode you couldn’t know. It’s sudden; it’ violent. Every muscle in your body shakes. I mean every muscle. It looks like a convulsion. You cough out exhaling in one continuous cough but can’t suck air in until you’re about to black out. Then somehow you’re able to control yourself enough to inhale but the problem is you need to be doing this in a controlled manner using an inhaler in order to get medication into your lungs and it’s extremely difficult. As far as I can tell there’s really no way to remain calm during these events. It’s a full-on panic. If you can’t find your inhaler, which happened to me, then the episode escalates into pure pandemonium – pulling drawers open onto the floor, groping for light switches, trying to remember where you left that precious little rescue device. To make matters worse this type of coughing damages the heart and sure enough, one of my blood tests confirmed the presence of a certain enzyme indicating just that. They tell me it’s probably inconsequential but as far as I’m concerned I’d rather have every last corpuscle of my heart muscle intact, thank you. So now I’m on all sorts of other monitors just to make certain I don’t croak from a heart attack while I’m here.

That’s the medical story but another story underlies the physical. It always does. There’s a spiritual side to every story. The story of God, His love and the relationship of others. That is the subject of Part II – coming to a blog soon.