Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/528216
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 1 1 5 Vermont's prime had come and gone, and the land I loved nudged me from her nest and compelled me to seek thornier, more overgrown pastures. So, as in all good things that end in hunting or fishing, I headed North and West. T he sweep of upper Wisconsin is like a grouse-and- woodcock hunter's carnival, with pole-sized aspen that seems to tumble off into Lake Superior, with nary a sign of slowing. I went there on the auspices of circumstance and in the mindset that part of grouse hunting, part of dyed-in-the-wool New England provenance, is knowing that a dearth of birds is part of the beauty. I went looking for more but expecting less, in a gesture of defeatism that my Calvinist forefathers would appreciate. But the rumors were there, and like any big- eyed bird hunter in the adolescence of his craft, I just had to see what the promises were all about. I drove west under a full-moon sky to a camp on the outskirts of Hayward, Wisconsin, where Mark, a friend of a friend, met me amidst a bevy of Brittanys. He introduced the dogs first, then himself. I arrived late, and the morning was soon, and my host excused himself to bed, after showing me my digs, and the place where the bourbon was kept. "You'll like what we've got here," he said. "I can tell." How a grouse hunter knows what another grouse hunter will prefer is elemental or perhaps spiritual. But Mark would prove his sentiment correct. I'd been steered his way by like-minded men who, similar to DB, knew that I'd probably never see the best grouse hunting that had ever been. But even among those grizzled elders who'd swear that the good ol' days could never be topped, there are the precious few who see that the good ol' days are relative, and when you're not that ol' to begin with, your arc of perspective is fairly short. When you aren't all that ol' to begin with, sometimes you are still wide open to the fact that what amounts to a pale comparison for your grizzled mentors may be the best you've ever seen. I'm quite sure that Mark, trundling off to the bedroom he shared with his Brittanys, had the compassion to understand that. Needless to say, his knowing smile and the brand of bourbon he preferred, got me thinking that I was in for something great. O ver the ensuing days I walked miles behind Brittanys and saw grouse and woodcock and shot much and hit some, as is the custom with those birds. But the country was so vast, and the birds so regular, and the dogs so good, that the chances of success were proportionally increased. Barred birds got up on the edges of log landings, under blown-down firs, from the gravelly margins, and tamarack edges. They flew as they did back home, but from closer places and with more sympathy for me and my short-barreled 20, and they fell for me as they never had before. In Wisconsin, I began to feel a fondness for all mankind. On the second day, in a covert we now call The Deuce, I dropped in succession two birds from a group, both mature and both stone dead upon tumbling. To think that I, from my humble origins, could ever have taken a double on grouse made my heart both big and a little magnificent with gratitude, and I felt for a moment as DB Brown must have, when we returned so often to the truck empty handed, save for his stories of better days, and doubles of his own. My history, my stories, I was forging them too, and my heart felt that same thing that his must have, a score of years earlier and 1,000 miles east, when he had done the same. Mark and I celebrated in Hayward at lunchtime, with a pint of the local stout and an ice-cream cone to follow. Mark paid. He knew, or seemed to know, that this moment was a defining milestone, a regeneration of a history that I'd feared I'd missed but found instead under circumstances I'd created. He venerated this rite of passage in true Wisconsin style: with ice cream and beer. After a brief recovery period that begged for a snooze, we forged deeper into the October woods. I returned at length to Vermont with my stories, tail feathers from my birds, and a cocksure spring in my step. In my time away I felt I'd become something I could never have become without going and returning, and seeing the bigger piece of popple woods that lingered beyond the Green Mountains. I also found in turning into DB's yard a newfound commonality borne of experience. I'd meet my mentor, my friend on level ground, explain to him how I now understood the time that he spoke of, the time when the woods filled to overflowing. The wayward son of sorts but one returning home having forged a history of his own, by his own hand, and his own well-hurled pellets—albeit not in our revered Vermont coverts but nonetheless in the grouse woods, in a land familiar in composition and structure. I was so eager—and so proud. DB's wife Ann was in the garage when I pulled up and loosed my dogs for a hello. She was putting the snow tires on the car, and she straightened and stretched and smiled to see me and as always she petted the dogs. Certainly, she could sense that I had news. After the pleasantries, I asked the whereabouts of DB. "Oh, you missed him," said Ann with an innocent smile. "He headed out of here three weeks ago on a road trip west. Hunting grouse with a couple of buddies. He'd been planning it for a year or more; surprised he didn't tell you. Said there weren't enough birds left around here. Seems he won't be home for another week or so, but apparently they're making quite a dent out there. He'll be glad to hear you stopped by."