Last week I wrote about lines. Insurmountable lines. Lines we dare not cross.
I was inspired by that line about lines in the opening paragraph of “A River Runs Through It,” and that world of more than a century ago when lines weren’t meant as suggestions. These days we more often see lines as something to be tested, challenged. Is it a line at all, or just a foolish convention of the past?
Norman Maclean told us there was no clear line between fly fishing and religion in his family. I suggested the last century of fly fishing has done nothing but obliterate the lines between his family’s art, and other, less-refined methods of fishing.
Maclean was a product of the early 20th century when I imagine the lines that governed society were more sturdy than they were in the late 20th century, the age I’m a product of. Whether this change was good or bad, I’ll leave to social scientists, philosophers and theologians to suss out.
I’ve something more important on my mind: bird hunting.
There were no clear lines between religion and bird hunting in my family either, because there was only a cursory devotion to the former, and nothing of the latter. The closest my family came to bird hunting is my father’s Sears Roebuck 12-gauge pump shotgun. He never shot birds with it, only cottontails and jackrabbits, if even that.
Upland bird hunting with pointing dogs, a midlife-crisis obsession I surrendered to, was not the sort of thing my father would have pursued. It might look like fun, but he was too pragmatic to take it up.
My first bird dog, Jack, gave me all kinds of trouble when he was young. A bought him from a friend, the Dog Whisperer, who trained bird dogs, so as an assist, he ran me through his highly regimented training program.
It was nothing but lines.
I chose another path. The Dog Whisperer’s lines remain, but my dogs and I reserve the latitude to ignore them if we see fit. I’m the boss in my relationship with my bird dogs, sort of, but dogs are smart, smarter than folks give them credit for. They understand the intent of the game when we are hunting. Only non-hunters, or possibly cat people, don’t get this.
The Dog Whisperer was a guide, however. When you’re hunting with paying customers, lines are important. If I’m hunting with friends and my English setter, Jade, instead of fetching, runs over and lays on a wounded pheasant until I come pick it up, they’re entitled to give me stick, so long as they never criticize my dog.
Paying customers, however, have some expectation lines will be observed. Proper retrieves, for instance. Customers also demand bird dogs who don’t lose their heads when a bird or two flushes, the way Jade did yesterday on the edge of a willow forest.
I knew Jade was on point as her new GPS collar told me so. It also told me where, helpful since I couldn’t see her through the willows. When I found her, she was riveted on what turned out to be a pair of hens. When the second bird flushed, Jade, startled, lost it for a moment and raced about an adjoining grassland, looking for more birds, flushing a pair of roosters in the process.
Serious line crossing.
The collar also has a correction function, also known as a shock. Occasionally, when her inner puppy takes over and she ignores “Whoa,” Jade gets a tap that says, in a language dogs understand, “You’re crossing way too many lines at the moment.”
She stopped, waiting for me to catch up. I released her and she was on another bird inside a minute. Also a hen, but it was a fine point and a nice finale to our day.
Jade doesn’t care much for retrieving, anyway.