SEASON'S END: A RETROSPECT AND BENEDICTION

The close of bird season – no matter where it occurs or what species you consider your favorite game or primary wing shooting obsession – always brings a corresponding period of emotional downturn.

- Bob DeMott

Last fall, I had 29 days of woodcock hunting, most of it in my home coverts in southeastern Ohio’s Hocking River Valley, with a couple of bonus road trips thrown in to destinations where grouse were a possibility, too: an early October week in north central Michigan with four old bird camp pals and five days in early November in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts with a group of new upland friends. Considering routine daily commutes to home coverts, long distance out-of-state travel, anxiety produced by unusual weather conditions that fluctuated from drought to sleet and the perpetual nagging suspicion that time afield subtracts from normal domestic and work-a-day duties, that month of pursuit amounts to an intensely compressed physical/emotional experience. It seems natural to feel a letdown when the game is over for the year and equally natural to want to revisit that part of the past to discover what sense can be made of it.

In six decades of uplanding, I have always dreaded the moment at the end of shooting season when the air goes out of the balloon, that inevitable moment when I am faced not only with the question of what to do next to occupy my time but how to explain the sudden onset of relative inactivity to my bird dog, which surely deserves better. Even the finality of necessary end-of-season tasks like cleaning shotguns, sewing torn brush clothes, tending to hunting gear, reorganizing equipment, etc., seemed somehow loathsome and to be avoided at all costs in order to extend the hunt vibe. I confess that’s a form of denial, clear and simple, to which I plead, “Guilty!”