Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/787068
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S • 33 F ixing to write this down before I forget, the days and years slipping away the way they do, that blaze of autumn to water the eye, the flames of maple and oak and the dry-bone rattling aspen, that red and yellow glory, the black spruce and white pine, green pickets between. Me and Deuce and Maggie taking our ease on that pioneer rock pile, on that ruined homestead just north of Debs, Minnesota, population five, a good long time ago. Maggie was a footsore young spaniel, greenest of a kennel of six. She was thirsty and, at long last, working close to the gun. We gave her water, but not much. We passed sandwiches around—brown bread, pink bologna, and yellow cheese. Maggie got the crusts and nosed our hands and pockets for more, but there was no more. This land was free for the asking but came with a price few could afford. Finns and Norwegian homesteaders lasted a generation, sometimes two, all their sweat, tears, and blood for naught. And now there was a fallen-in fieldstone basement, a half-dozen winter-blasted apple trees, a broken wood range, a forlorn hay rake, a derelict plow—the sad and rusted remains of a hopeless dream grown into windbreak wood. Three million acres lost for taxes, and two old friends slap in the middle of it, footsore like the spaniel, taking their ease upon rocks grubbed and rolled by hand so long ago. Deuce had his 16-gauge Ithaca 37; wouldn't shoot anything else. It fed and emptied through the bottom—some tricky mechanics—and how it worked so well is a continuing wonderment. Deuce had a rack of 37s in various gauges, right down to a 20 that he would rather oil and admire than shoot. Deuce fished for walleyes, nothing else. He picked wild morel mushrooms every spring. He shot pheasants and more ruffed grouse than any man I ever knew, but never drew a bead on a duck. And deer? No antelope or moose need apply. He had nine whitetail heads above his fieldstone fireplace, and you could put my biggest rack inside his smallest rack and rattle it around. I called it the Supreme Court. I had my Model 12 Winchester 20 gauge. I wouldn't shoot anything else, either. It horizons by roger pinckney Man or woMan, dog or gun, you never know when you Might say goodbye. was a lovely gun till you looked close in full sunlight and saw the wire brush marks on barrel and action, and I reckon that was the reason I could afford it in the first place. It jammed only once, when I tried to force feed it a Bic lighter in the midst of a furious rise of Hungarian partridge, busted loose among the haystacks on the far end of a stony field. T he wind was soft and fine and smelled like fresh-cut grain. Making barley that time of year, and way out on the prairie, distant combines hummed and hammered and a yellow haze hung low over the west. But the immediate ragged hills grew only bumper crops of granite and grouse. Each May for the last 50 years, wildlife biologists with clipboards and No. 2 lead pencils drove backroads along prescribed routes, stopping at prescribed stops and listening for prescribed minutes, noting the drumming of ardent males, the ghostly beatings of wings atop the hollow spruce deadfalls, more felt than heard, like Ojibwe tom-toms, like some pioneer John Deere lugging a plow through heavy, black Waterfront Girlby unknown artist courtesy heritage auctions/www.ha.com