Orders from on High
A friend who happens to be a biblical scholar, a retired U.S. Navy chaplain and a bird hunter has long contended that shortly after finishing the Creation, there were some indications that God surveyed His handiwork and realized a bit of tinkering was needed.
Clearly, bird hunters were going to need some additional help in their efforts to take dominion, but what form should that help take?
It was obvious that bird hunters were going to encounter briar patches, marsh muck, fields of tanglefoot and muddy wheat fields. Being a merciful God who loved all His children, no matter how wayward and brainless they seemed at times, He created gun dogs to guide them on their quests.
Then He commanded “Here” to the dogs, and when they had gathered at His feet, issued these orders.
“You will take a solemn oath to take care of bird hunters, because I was unable to provide them with a sufficient amount of good sense. You must use the abilities I’ve given you to help them in their quests, be willing to share with them the torments of the damned, and then at the end of the day, provide them comfort and unconditional love.”
The dogs wagged their tails, the canine version of “Aye, aye, sir,” meaning that they understood the order and would obey it, at least most of the time.
However, the chaplain says, after they’d thought about it for just a few seconds, the dogs said, “Whoa, wait just a minute here. We need to renegotiate this oath,” and requested an audience to see if they couldn’t arrange for exceptions: That obedience to those orders was not applicable if the weather or the terrain was particularly vicious. Or if their bird hunter hadn’t been able to shoot their way out of a paper bag or hit the side of a barn from three feet away all day. Or if the only bird visible after hours and dozens of miles of walking had been a turkey buzzard, presumably circling in wait for either the dog, the hunter or both to drop over from exhaustion so it could pick their bones clean.
Since God apparently viewed those exceptions as reasonable, He granted them.
That’s why, my friend says, my dogs have always believed the “share the torments of the damned” part of that order had definite limits on just how far they had to be willing to go with “sharing.”
As evidence, he cited the time in Nebraska after a brutal early-season ice storm, which a native described as nature once again reminding people that Nebraska was no place to grow trees. We had spent the morning hunting in the aftermath of the storm. Not that the storm had completely abated, as we encountered rain, snow and sleet at various times and in varying amounts during the morning hunt.
By afternoon, both hunters and dogs were cold, tired and wet. The birds, apparently having way more sense than the bird hunters, were so well hidden that the dogs had been unable to get so much as a whiff of bird scent all morning. But as bad as the morning had been, in retrospect it was a pleasure stroll, because in the afternoon, the weather gods chose to add a bitter northeast wind to the mix.
When I went to get Sparky, my tempestuous, frequently contrarian Master Hunter Brittany from her crate, she stepped out on the tailgate of the truck, instantly and correctly assessed the worsening weather conditions, and promptly executed an abrupt about-face, flouncing back into her warm, insulated-blanket-covered crate with its comfy foam pad. Once she had made it clear that the blankets had to be tucked around her, she curled up and went to sleep, leaving no doubt that she believed she had done her part of sharing the torments.
If we insisted upon continuing to hunt, it was up to the Chessies, as she was having none of it.
The Chesapeakes, perhaps a bit more loyal, made of sterner stuff or having a broader range of the torments they were willing to endure, came out of their crates and actually jumped out of the truck. But less than 15 minutes into the afternoon hunt, as we turned into the teeth of that wicked wind, I felt a tug on my hunting coat.
When I looked to see what briar or bramble had snared me, I discovered it was neither. It was Rowdy, my Ch/SH dog and the senior dog in the pack, who was attempting to drag me to the truck.
Fifteen minutes into the afternoon hunt with a bitter north wind added to the mix of rain, snow and sleet, Rowdy dragged me back to the truck.
I tried to free myself from his grip, but he was not taking “no” for an answer. He grabbed a big hunk of the sleeve and, using all the considerable power vested in 105 pounds of dead-fit retriever, refused to give up until he had pulled me all the way back to the truck.
My hunting partner — once he finally managed to pick himself up from the ground where he’d collapsed with laughter — said, “Did you, by any chance, get the hint?”
My chaplain pal had a Ch/MH Vizsla who had a fairly extensive list of exceptions to the order to “Help them in their quests.” One of things prominent on her list was brambles, which is a generic term for a nasty form of plant life that includes wild rose, blackberry, raspberry canes, plum thickets and prickly ash, all of which can quickly turn any exposed patch of skin into something resembling a city street map.
There was a time, so I’ve been told, when the upland birds we mainly pursue — pheasants and quail — lived along the edges of these fearsome thickets, only occasionally venturing into their spiky hell. That, the chaplain contends, must have occurred roughly around of the time of the apostles, because nowadays, the wild quail and pheasants we occasionally see over the bead on our shotguns are all at home in the brambles.
Sassy the Vizsla, swore off brambles when, as a first-year gun dog, a close encounter with a plum thicket created a painful and bloody cut on her nose. After that insult, she would hunt the edges of those areas, making certain she never again got close enough for the brambles to attack.
This created conflict on those occasions when the bird and shotgun pellets intersected over the bramble patch. Despite otherwise being an enthusiastic retriever of virtually any game bird, there were limits to her enthusiasm. She simply refused to retrieve a bird that had fallen in a patch of thorny vegetation of any kind.
Sassy the Ch/MH Vizsla had a fairly extensive list of exceptions to the order to “Help them in their quests.”
The chaplain says he also witnessed an exception to both the “help in the quest” and “share the torments of the damned.” He was hunting ducks in Arkansas in flooded timber with an Army chaplain buddy, his buddy’s Ch/SH Golden Retriever, Molly, and a guide pal of theirs. They were dealing with a December combination of snow, rain and occasionally sleet accompanied by freezing temperatures and a nasty wind. It was a day when any sensible person, in other words, anyone who was not a waterfowl hunter, would have wrapped up in a down sleeping bag and burned the furniture. The chaplain says it was the kind of day when even a Chesapeake loses interest in hunting.
So, of course, they went hunting.
Molly, on her first hunting trip in flooded timber and just barely three years old, had already hunted two full seasons and acquired enough hunting smarts to immediately recognize that anything coming with the wind that was bending the trees almost to the water was not going to require her services. So, when a lone mallard came from that direction, she simply pulled her coat a bit tighter around her and re-focused her attention back to the opening in the timber with the blind and decoys.
To the dog’s utter amazement, either superb shooting or sheer bad luck on the part of the duck caused the shot to connect and the bird to hit the water a good 200 yards from the dog.
Having been in that chilly water several times earlier, Molly left no doubt that she had reached her quota of torment for that day, even though wearing a flotation vest. When sent for the bird, “help in the quest” was also out of the question as she sat down, refused to budge and ignored loud, frequently profane commands/words from her owner, apparently learned during 20 years of Army service because it was unlikely to have been part of the seminary’s curriculum. Molly, instead, held firm and waited until the wind blew the bird across the pond, where it lodged against the blind.
When it hit the blind, she reached over, picked up the duck and, foregoing her usual delivery to hand, dropped it on the floor of the blind. Then she turned her back on the hunters, making it as clear as she possibly could that she had endured enough “helping them in their quest” and “sharing the torment” in that day’s miserable weather.
If the hunters had any sense at all, her every bit of body language said, they would agree with that assessment.
Several years ago, at the game dinner I do every year for hunting and non-hunting pals who like the taste of wild game, I recounted the ex-Navy chaplain’s version of why these many stipulations and exclusions to heavenly orders had occurred and how my dogs have demonstrated their resistance to heavenly command. Once he had stopped laughing, another friend, who in “real life” is a Catholic priest, shook his head and quoted a line from William Cowper’s poem, “Light Shining out of Darkness.”
His quotation? “God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.”
While a fine waterfowl hunter, Molly really preferred upland hunting with dry footing and mild temperatures.
One of the other diners, who had spent enough time as an officer aboard an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin during the Vietnam War to know he never, ever wanted to revisit the miserable heat and humidity of Southeast Asia again, was less charitable than the priest. Instead, he snorted, “Always suspected the dogs were smarter than you, and this just proves it.”
Sadly, his assessment was probably no less accurate than God’s conclusion about why bird hunters, from the beginning of Creation, have needed help from gun dogs.