And Now We Shall Do Manly Things

by Craig Heimbuch

  The dogs were working out ahead of us, bounding, bouncing, and leaping through the tall, windblown dry grasses, which were knee high. Within moments my heart was racing and I could feel the morning chill start to burn off my skin. My breathing got shallow and I felt like I was back on the treadmill at the gym, huffing and puffing, realizing thirty yards into the walk that I had managed to fall five yards behind. This was no leisurely stroll through the bucolic countryside; this was a purposeful double-time march up a small incline through seriously unlevel terrain. I was fully aware of the weight of my loaded gun and carried it with both hands, one on the stock and one on the forearm, out in front of me. I looked up the line and saw Mark carrying his gun easily at his side with one hand. Rob had his slung over his shoulder like a hobo’s stick. His friend John carried the same way, as did Adam. Tommy and B.J. carried theirs like they were marching soldiers, one hand under the butt, the barrel resting on their collarbone. I couldn’t quite make out Ben’s form, but it certainly looked easier than mine. I fidgeted several times, trying to find the right balance and comfort, to no avail. I simply was not used to carrying a gun on a walk. There aren’t a lot of opportunities to practice in the suburbs—not without drawing the ire of the local police department or, worse, the homeowners’ association.

  A few minutes in, I found myself watching my feet, trying to find a good place to put each step. Had I not been carrying a loaded gun, I might have had a walking stick, but as it was, my hands were occupied, so every uneven step or deviation from balance required a tensing of my abdominal and back muscles, a subtle correction so as not to trip and fall flat on my face. Fifteen minutes after we set out I realized I hated this field. All fields really. What is so appealing to behold—the long grasses blowing in the early fall wind, rolling over acres and acres of undisturbed openness—from behind the comfort of a picture window is a real pain in the ass to walk through. The guys down at the right end of the line stopped abruptly, and I followed Tommy as he sped up and began turning. I sped up too, trying to maintain my spacing between him and B.J. We began to swing around, like a giant human door closing and the dogs, which had been frantically moving in S-turns across the width of our line, managed to keep up. Truth be told, on that first stretch of walking, no more than a quarter mile, I had not been paying too much attention to the stated task. A pheasant could have popped up and landed in my hat and I’m not sure I would have known it, so transfixed was I with the ideas of not falling behind, not tripping on my face, not accidentally shooting my young cousin or his friend in the head.

  I want to take a moment here to explain how hunting dogs work. If you have never seen a pointer work in a field, then you are missing out on one of the great genetic amazements in the man-made world. Let’s take Zeke for example. Zeke is a purebred German shorthaired pointer that Mark bought for Tom at the annual “Hillbilly Sale” outside of Mason City. A hillbilly sale is, by way of explanation, basically a pop-up swap meet. Anyone can bring anything they want to sell and anyone can buy it. There aren’t a whole lot of rules. The meets take place in wide-open fields and, from what Mark tells me, there is no reason to go with a shopping list, because in order to get the most out of one of these events, buyers are best served by browsing until they find that perfect thing that tickles their fancy. Care for an illegal iguana? There’s a man selling them from the bed of a pickup just over the hill. Have a near-complete collection of spoons from all the world’s largest truck stops? Jim-Bob probably has what you need to complete your set. The point is, these things often have little rhyme or reason. They just are what they are.

  Seven years earlier, Mark had taken Tommy to the sale to look for equipment for his ammunition reloading hobby. They came across a man with a truckload of chickens. They made some small talk and Mark told him that, while he wasn’t interested in poultry, he was in the market for a hunting dog. As luck would have it, the man had a single pup tucked away in a crate beneath the tarp that covered the bed of his truck and his cache of chickens.

  For many hunters, training a bird dog involves investing hundreds of dollars and a roughly equal number of hours. They invest in shock collars and while away Saturdays hiding pigeons under bushes and among trees for the dogs to sniff out. They work on commands to teach the dog to pin down a bird—meaning to get it to stay in one place—without killing or attacking it. Zeke required none of these things. So strong was the genetic instinct to hunt that Mark and Tom abandoned training after a couple short sessions. The dog simply knew what to do.

  I watched Zeke, who was lither and more energetic than the other dogs, trace long arcs back and forth as we walked, our pace finally beginning to slow, his nose to the ground, his tail nub bobbing. If there is such a thing as pure happiness, as unbridled enthusiastic joy, I realized I was witnessing it. Tom and I, in our positions on the far left of the line, were walking down a long slope along a fence line. Zeke, Jaeger, and Ava seemed to be working independently. Jaeger and Ava might sniff next to each other, but Zeke invariably did his own thing. A stiff breeze blew up for a moment from the left and the most extraordinary thing happened: all three dogs, who had been spread across the breadth of our line, converged upon a single patch of scrub grass fifteen yards in front of Tom. It was like looking down into a shark tank and seeing three tiger sharks swimming around on their own, then putting a drop of blood in the middle of the tank and watching them all converge. At first, my inexperienced mind didn’t quite register what was happening. But, after a second or two, when all the dogs began sniffing the same four-foot circle, their tails stopped. They froze into a posture that suggested absolutely focused attention. None of them moved and I heard someone shout from the other end of the line, “Get up on ’em!”

  When a bird dog stops dead in its tracks like that, there is undoubtedly a bird in the area. When three of them do, you can very nearly triangulate its precise location. The dogs, through training or instinct, will hold the bird in its place and wait for a hunter to come kick the bird up, which essentially means walking near where the dog is pointing to scare the bird into attempting escape. Without a dog, the pheasant’s instinct is actually to run, not fly. But with a dog blocking that option and a hunter approaching, a pheasant will pop up and fly away with the wind or sometimes across it, but never into it.

  With the wind moving from left to right, that meant as Tommy approached the spot where the dogs had the bird pinned down, it would more than likely pop up and fly directly in front of me. I nervously clutched my gun.

  “You ready?” Tommy yelled.

  I nodded. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  During my class at L.L.Bean, I got pretty good at these left-to-right shots. My weak eye dominance meant I could keep both eyes open, so I could see the target coming from the left and was able to pick up on it quickly when it moved from my periphery to center view. In fact, of all the different shots we practiced, this was the one I had the easiest time with. As Tommy took another step, my grip tightened and I made sure to keep my face solidly against the stock of the gun. I tried to visualize what was going to happen, put most of my weight on my front foot, and bent slightly forward at the waist. I was ready.

  A pheasant makes a distinctive sound as it rises from the ground and beats toward safety. It’s a sort of staccato exhalation. Imagine spinning a bicycle tire lightly and then holding a piece of notebook paper up to the metal spokes; there’s a small, breathy clacking sound as the relatively big bird’s wings hammer furiously against the air and its body. I heard the sound for the briefest of moments as the bird, roughly the size (though a fraction of the weight) of a bowling ball popped up as if it were spring-loaded and arched off downwind, directly in front of me. It was such a shock, such a thrill. My pulse quickened and my gun raised instinctively to my cheek. I didn’t aim, didn’t think about it, just picked up the trajectory of the bird and traced it as it rose and passed in front of me.

  “Hen!” yelled Tommy.

 
“Hen!” yelled everyone but me as the female pheasant traced its exit over the heads and eventually behind our line. I had read about the difference between hens and roosters time and again over the course of my preparation, but trying to distinguish between the two in the field proved much, much tougher. For one thing, a hen is dull in color—brown, taupe, gray. It’s smaller, though you would have to know what a rooster looks like to be able to tell, and it has shorter tail feathers. A rooster is a bird of many hues. Black, brown, gray, green, teal, a little bit of red, and a distinctive white ring of feathers around its longer neck. Its tail feathers, too, are much longer and more flamboyant. The idea, according to some of the sources I read, is for the male to distract predators away from nesting females and for the hens to blend in. It worked really well in my case, because I didn’t have the slightest clue whether that bird was a male or female. Some things, I guess, come with experience.

  “Good job, Jaeger!”

  “Great work, Ava!”

  “ ’At’s a good boy, Zeke,” said Mark. It was so tender and enthusiastic, the closest thing to coddling I’ve ever heard coming from his lips. It was never fully explained to me, but I understood that applauding the dogs’ efforts, even though the bird was a female, was a means of reinforcing both instinct and training.

  I had seen my first pheasant and the experience, while not fruitful in terms of bounty, had been thrilling. It was a rush when the bird popped up and flew past. And I felt satisfied, having heard the “Hen!” call and reacting appropriately by not shooting. My gun was trained squarely on the dun and gray bird. Had it been a male, I would have been able to take two quick and well-placed shots. I had done right and found myself feeling more at ease with the situation. I felt, in short, more like a hunter, like I belonged there.

  We walked another quarter mile, before gathering on a dirt road to give the dogs water and discuss our strategy. We would turn north—to the right—along the fence line, spread out, and walk a half mile with the wind at our backs before turning to the east and working our way back toward the cars. Rob had spoken to the men who leased a portion of Paul and Roger’s farm for crops. They had another field up the road and a patch of it had been left feral, where they had seen pheasant. We’d try there after lunch. With my first drive out of the way, I felt more at ease. As we started north, I didn’t feel quite so awkward holding the gun and was able to feel comfortable with it slung over my shoulder. I’m sure that, had I been watching from a distance, it would have been obvious that I was the new guy and therefore the least comfortable among the group, but for the time being I felt good.

  We marched through more tall grass and came to a stand of tall reeds at the base of a small hill. I marched alongside the others, keeping my gun in front of me and my place in the line as the spindly stalks slapped against my nylon-covered vest. After a hundred feet or so, we emerged from the reeds and a strange epiphany came to me.

  “I’m about to shoot my first pheasant,” I told myself aloud, though inaudibly to the other hunters. I felt my eyes widen and pulse quicken. I had a clear vision of what was to come. The pheasant, with its iridescent and furlike feathers and long spindly tail feathers, would rise in front of me and I would put it down with ease. I began rehearsing in my head as we trudged up the hill. Weight forward. Back heel slightly off the ground. Bend slightly at the waist. Keep cheek firmly against the stock. Move my left hand first and allow my eyes to stay focused on the bird, not the end of the gun. Follow through, don’t stop.

  We reached the top of the hill and started down across smooth, mercifully short grass. We hadn’t taken twenty steps when I heard the breathy flutter of wings against the cold air and looked straight in front of me to see a rooster pheasant rising. He was beautiful—exactly how I had imagined it. He rose straight in front of me and turned his back, revealing a long brown body, black head, the distinct white ring. Green and teal and long tail feathers dragged behind him like a tail on a kite. And, clearly, not a hen. My gun came up instinctively. My weight shifted without thought. My left arm traced the pheasant as it flew directly away from me. I concentrated on the tail feathers and time seemed to slow down. Unlike the first bird, the hen, the dogs had not scared this one up. It had risen of its own accord and directly in front of me. Me! It was amazing, the feeling of absolute focus. I could see individual feathers, make out the shape of the bird’s beak, without seeing the end of my gun, without being conscious that it and I were distinct objects, but rather feeling like we were moving in perfect concert. I didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.*

  Ka-blang! Ka-blang!*

  The bird dropped straight down, landing not twenty yards in front of me and perhaps one long step to the left, coming to rest in a clump of long grass. The dogs reacted immediately, converging on the spot.

  “You got it, Craig!” shouted Rob from my right.

  “Nice shooting, big guy!” answered Tom.

  “Great shot, Hemingway!” yelled Mark, who had moved to the left end of the line when we made the turn north. Plaudits down the line, then another shout from Mark. “Get on it before the dogs rip it to pieces.”

  I snapped from my delirious reverie, a postcoital return to the present world. I was a hunter. Before I could eject the spent shells from my still-smoking gun, I ran to where the bird was lying, its lifeless and limp body a trophy of my year spent discovering what it meant to be a man. I picked it up by its neck and was surprised by the weight. It wasn’t heavy, just heavier than I had expected—about like picking up a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store. I drank in a long gaze at my first prey, taking mental pictures before stuffing it into the front entrance of my vest’s game bag, where it settled at the bottom, on the small of my back. I could feel its heat and was not nearly as creeped out by it as I had imagined I would be. I felt good. Proud. My premonition of moments before had come almost exactly true and I couldn’t wait to call Rebecca and my dad to tell them my big good news.

  16

  The Asterisk*

  Most of that last chapter was true and as it happened. Right up to the asterisk. From that point forward, it was the way I had imagined things happening, the way they should have happened.

  Emerging from the reeds at the base of the hill, I really did have a vision and say to myself I’m about to shoot my first pheasant. And I really did rehearse mentally all the things I had learned. And as we crested the hill, which afforded an awe-strikingly beautiful view of the bucolic wonder that is Iowa, the grass did get shorter. In fact, the whole thing went down the exact way I described. The rooster popped up unbidden by dogs directly in front of me, just slightly higher than eye level. I moved as if by rote or instinct, raising my gun and feeling time itself slow down. I felt like I was married to that gun, and for a long moment, my mind went blank of all expectation and insight. I simply was—in the moment, doing what felt so natural.

  I selected a small bunch of feathers just above the bird’s spindly tail and my eyes focused in such a way that the world itself seemed to disappear. I pulled the trigger without hesitation and this is where the story deviates. Rather than a report of Ka-blang! Ka-blang! All I heard was click, click.

  For a split second, I thought the gun had misfired or that the ammunition was bad, but I didn’t have time to think about it before the reports up the line fractured the air. Boom! Boom! Boom! Two to my right, then three, and a fourth from my left. The bird tumbled down exactly as I had described.

  “Craig, I think you got it,” Rob said meekly.

  “Nice shot, Craig,” Tommy tossed in as if he were throwing the comment away like so much trash. I think they both knew the truth.

  “I didn’t shoot,” I said sheepishly.

  “What?” “What?” “Why not?” came several replies.

  I looked down at the gun and moved the thumb on my right hand to reveal a switch securely in the “Safe” position. I had forgotten to take the safety off.

 
; “Hemingway wouldn’t have missed that shot,” Mark chided from the fence line.

  “One more reason I’m not like Hemingway,” I shot back, but I wasn’t in a joking mood and, I sensed, neither was he. I felt like I had let him down, like I had wasted the efforts of all these people who had come out with me that day. I felt like I had dropped the ball, which, essentially I had. Yet I didn’t feel sorry for myself. It was more like the kind of embarrassed anger you feel in junior high when someone says something mean about you—something, in my case, invariably true—and you want to both hang your head in shame and run theirs into the nearest hard surface. So much for showing up to my first hunt and surprising the family with a clandestinely earned expertise.

  We continued our hunt for another hour or two, seeing only hens and calling them out as they sprung into the air and flew off unmolested. When we got back to the cars and stood around for a few minutes talking, Mark made a few mocking comments about “Mr. L.L.Bean” missing an easy shot, but it was the sort of gentle ribbing that belies a certain degree of respect and love. Cousin Ben’s friend retrieved a knife from his truck and stepped off into some scrubby brush to field dress and butcher his pheasant.

  “I don’t really remember how to do this,” he said to no one in particular as Tom, Ben, and I followed him to where he was going. We stood for a few minutes trading technical wisdom. This was something I had learned how to do. I learned from books and countless viewings of YouTube videos, but my confidence was shot. Everyone knew this was my first hunt and this bird was supposed to have been mine. I would have looked like a real jackass had I been pompous enough to claim expertise in field dressing with zero real-world experience. In the end it was Tom who took the knife and made a slice from the bird’s anus to its rib cage. He pulled the guts with an ungloved hand, as confident and sure of what he was doing as if by rote. He bent the bird’s wings back until the tendons in the shoulder joints snapped and cut them off with a flick of the blade. He cut the pheasant’s throat and pulled the head back with a such a deft and strong movement that he removed the head, neck, spine, and skin down to the legs, over which he pulled the feathery skin as if he were pulling off a pair of socks. In less than a minute the entire bird was reduced to two pink breasts, legs, and thighs, which were put into a zipper bag, feet and claws intact for identification by a wildlife officer (male pheasant have heel spurs, while females do not). The rest of the bird was discarded in the bushes for coyotes or foxes to eat.