The hayfield was high, the stream low for mid-May as I descended the compacted farm road to a sunken meadow I visit daily with dogs Lily and Buddy, along a placid stretch of the Green River, still, knee-deep flat-water pooling above a sharp S-turn. I was two-thirds of the way down a short decline to […]

With Bessie and Ringo gone to doggie heaven, I was down to one English Springer Spaniel until this week, when a 10-month-old male from fancy breeding came my way through a field-trialer and wing-shooting friend. What sold me on this animal was his pedigree back to 1996 national champion Denalisunflo’s Ring, not to mention many […]

I took my two surviving English Springers on their routine morning run Wednesday, 8:30-ish, to the usual hayfield — a mix of clover, timothy, orchard grass and rye — the shadowed eastern third still frosted brittle. I let Ringy and Lily out and sat in the cab listening to Dennis and Callahan on WEEI. Well, […]

It should be with euphoria that I greet the dawning of a new bird-hunting season, which opened today for woodcock, Saturday for pheasant and partridge. And, yes, I am looking forward to the exercise, the dogs and wing-shot challenges. But it would have been better with Bessie — that is, Old Tavern Farm’s Brown Bess […]

Published: Thursday, February 05, 2009 Old Ringo is curled up comfortably behind me, content but beginning to show his age, a poignant realization from a longtime companion. An English Springer Spaniel of royal pedigree, Ringy’s going on 12, still spry but descending t’other side the hill. How can I deny it? It’s never easy to […]

If you want to find out where you stand physically, try following two enthusiastic English Springer Spaniels through dense, wet, tangled cover for the first few days of the pheasant season. It’ll put you in you place fast if you’ve made your living sitting behind a desk for any length of time. So I guess […]

Sometimes a story changes abruptly and forces a ”touch-up” like this one did late Tuesday afternoon. It was supposed to be a tale about a lean and leggy four-month-old pup’s first pheasant hunt, the trials and tribulations of a mere baby trying to learn a new game while figuring out how to maneuver through dense, […]

For pure pleasure and optimal efficiency, you can’t beat one flush-and-retrieve bird dog between two hunters combing a dense, wet, thorny covert. When the dog’s working between the two of you and under control, a flush is usually a kill. But when the gun dog “makes game” and trails a running bird left or right […]

There was cause for concern and I could feel it in my hollow chest cavity, like the accelerated heartbeats were exiting my windpipe. Not a great feeling. The wheels were spinning wildly. Had the mother removed it from the litter and hidden it elsewhere in the stable? If so, why? Was it sick? Dead? How […]