Tales from the Bark Side

By Keith Ross | The Daily Journal

Published Saturday, September 22, 2007

Welcome back to the bark side of life here in Ottertail where fingers of early morning fog reach out from the meadows below our property like they belong to some gigantic hand. But the days will stay warm for a while longer.

It's this time of year that we are thinking about hunting and all those stories we love to tell about great exploits in the wilderness and how they played out in the theater of real life. I happen to have a tale that touches upon that very subject — a hunting dog that would not be denied.

This tale comes from Ike Fischer of Frazee and he harkens back a few years to a time when man's best friend was little more than one man could handle. Here's the tale about “Buckshot.” How's that for a name for a hunting companion?

Over the years I had several yellow labs, one of which belonged to the owner of a farm next to ours but he lived in town where the dog was always in trouble. So they left him out at the farm where he would get lonesome and come over to our place most of the time and finally the owners said to just keep him.

He loved to hunt with me but had never been trained so he was hard to control. When we would be in a duck blind with decoys and a flock of ducks would fly by, he would jump up or stand on his hind legs to see if they landed in the decoys.

As soon as I would raise my gun to shoot at anything, he would plunge into the water and circle around in the decoy, looking for something to retrieve, even grabbing decoys in his mouth at times, dropping it when realizing it was just a decoy.

One time we were hunting grouse and ducks in the lake region west of Itasca State Park and would park the car and walk through the woods towards Hidden Lakes where there were usually ducks and hunting grouse on the way.

This time my brother was holding Buckshot on a rope while we walked into the lake and was to turn him loose if he heard us shoot. The dog was very excited and unhappy about being left behind and we could hear him barking and howling as we walked towards the lake.

There were some ducks on the lake and we shot several of them. We could hear him crashing through the brush towards us, barking and howling as he came, then suddenly no more barking.

As he came past us he was dragging the long rope which my brother had been unable to unsnap from his collar in time to release the excited dog. He also carried a rabbit in his mouth that he somehow grabbed along the way, dropping it as he went by on his way to the lake to retrieve any ducks.

There were several ducks there so he circled around them trying to decide which one to bring in. Sometimes he would grab two or three but as he circled the long rope was gathering weeds and soon he was struggling to swim with a couple of ducks in his mouth and a heavy rope full of weeds.

For awhile I thought I'd have to go out in the cold water and rescue my struggling dog but I kept calling and urging him in where he finally made it and after removing the heavy rope, he went back to retrieving the rest of the ducks.

Well folks, if you have anything that rivals that tale, let me know. A well trained hunting partner is invaluable but a natural hunter like Buckshot probably comes along once in a lifetime. Am I right or are there lots of examples out there of unbridled enthusiasm just waiting to be told?

As the “best critter tale” contest winds down, I'd like to thank our sponsors for their support in this contest. Dave Peters Jewelry, Wal-Mart, Country Store, City Bakery, Coopers, Don Pablo's, and Dan's sewing and Vacuum sales all have donated a prize for the winners to be announced later. I have you, the reader, to also thank for the success of this column.

If you have a tale worth telling — they're all worth telling — and would like to submit it, e-mail me at info@rosswoodkennels.com or write to me at Keith Ross, Richville, MN 56576 or you can also phone me at 218-495-2195.

Keith Alan Ross writes from his home in New York Mills.