I’ve always been a casual bird hunter. More of a wingshooting diletante, honestly. Fly fishing is my first passion, and it’s tough for me to drive over a trout stream without stopping, let alone wander the forest trails and creek bottoms looking for grouse without pulling out a fly rod and casting to rising fish instead.

And, after losing my wire-hair mix, Phoebe, to old age a few years back, the grouse hunting has taken on an even more informal bent. She was birdy, but totally untrained — we both got along pretty well on our instincts, but the activity was inconsequential and just as likely to end up back at the truck with me pulling a fly rod out of its case and wandering the creek for an hour or two before we headed home. If we were lucky, we’d bag a grouse. We weren’t lucky terribly often. Now, with a stubborn Old English bulldog and an airhead in a French bulldog package sharing the house, grouse hunting with a dog is completely out of the question.

Not long after losing Phoebe, I started small-game hunting (squirrels and grouse, mostly) with an air rifle. Today’s pellet guns are surprisingly potent, and a kill shot for a sizable grouse or a chattering squirrel isn’t even debatable. It’s also a good sensory experience, with a walk down a decommissioned Forest Service logging road offering a chance to wander the woods and take in the sights and sounds of fall in the Rockies. Seeing game is a bonus. Shooting a bird or a squirrel or two can make your day.

But, man, is it lonely.

Alone and lonely

I’ve always taken care to clearly delineate the difference between “alone” and “lonely.” The former is a necessary element in a complex existence. Sometimes, being alone is the ideal tonic for someone with a busy head and idle hands. It shovels the emotional sidewalks en route to solutions to immediate challenges or plans for the distant future. And, if you’re lucky, by the time you’re done “being alone,” you’ve got a dozen bonefish flies tied up, the fly reel has a new line on it, and the shotgun is clean.

And then there’s “lonely.” And lonely sucks. Yesterday, as I walked an old two-track that’s been closed to motorized vehicles for decades, my .22 caliber Benjamin on my shoulder, I was damn lonely. I missed my Phoebe and her ever-present, one-step-ahead gait. I missed the subtle sound of a sniffing nose hard at work, and I missed that long, intentional pause that usually meant a bird was close. I missed her excitement, and her leap from the passenger seat into the woods where she’d nose around for a good 30 seconds before finding the perfect place to pee. I missed her expectant whine while I assembled hunting vests, backpacks, shells, and such. I missed my dog. And yesterday, I missed her a lot.

A dog gives us the chance to vocalize without feeling like an idiot talking to the ether. And, after a fashion, they come to comprehend us, if not by the words we utter, then by our body language and our tone. Phoebe and I carried on full conversations while we walked. We didn’t cover anything terribly complex, but at least I didn’t feel stupid when I said, out loud, that it was time to stop and have some water or gobble down a fistful of wasabi almonds. When you walk alone, you talk alone. More likely, you don’t talk at all (or at least that’s what you tell people so they don’t press the backs of their hands to your forehead to check your temperature).

Alone is therapeutic. Lonely inspires worry and internal chaos, for there’s no one with whom to share … anything. Lonely is alone with a good dose of despair. Lonely is grouse hunting without your old dog.

Shoulder the gun

And I knew that, no sooner had I started up the old two-track, that “alone” had switched over to “lonely.” Phoebe and I used to walk this path together — sometimes we’d walk miles, and she’d patiently point out the birds. Sometimes, I’d see the blue grouse first, slinking along the edge of the gravel, seemingly convinced that, so long as there were no sudden movements, they were invisible. But a blue grouse — they’re called “dusky grouse” these days — is hard to miss when it’s not sitting in cover. It’s a sizable bird about the size of a young chicken. But, when Phoebe’s nose caught a whiff, there was no mistaking what was going to happen next.

For some reason, she was neither a pointer or flusher — she just kind of looked in the general direction of where the birds were sitting, and, as I moved closer, she’d move right in with me. She never charged birds. But once she saw them, she really saw them. Often, so I could see them, too, I’d stand behind her and just follow her gaze. And, once I marked them, I’d shoulder the shotgun and start slowly walking in, waiting for the grouse to take flight. If my aim was true, and I managed to put a bird down, I was my own retriever. Phoebe wouldn’t go get them. In her mind, her work was done when I got my eyes on the quarry. Like I said, she wasn’t a trained bird dog. Just like I’m not really a trained bird hunter.

But yesterday, with my break-barrel Benjamin loaded with a single .22 caliber pellet, things were a bit different. First, no Phoebe. No spotter. No help. Second, the pellet rifle takes the guess work out of a shot. It’s basically target shooting. That’s the payoff, I guess. No dog. Fewer birds (a lot fewer birds). But any reasonable marksman who can line up the crosshairs within 30 yards ought to be able to make a kill shot without having to break the barrel, reload a second pellet, lock the barrel and hope like hell that the braindead grouse is still there wondering what just zipped by its head.

And, not 30 yards up the trail, I spotted a lone grouse. I instinctively looked at my feet, and instantly regretted it. There was no old, black wire-hair tuned into the bird. It was just me, and I felt incomplete. I lined up the shot, pulled the trigger and watched as the bird quivered and died within just a couple of seconds. I walked up, grabbed the harvested bird by its feet and stuffed it into the game bag. There was no admiration shared between hunter and dog. No “good girl, Phoebes.” No curious muzzle soaking in the aroma of freshly killed grouse.

It was just me. And I shouldered the gun and kept walking.

It’s OK

I didn’t see another bird all day. Anecdotally, I would say grouse numbers are a bit more modest after a banger of a season last year, at least where I hunt, up on the caldera. But I walked a bit, thought a lot, and came to grips with hunting without a dog. Last night, as I breasted out the grouse (if you’re grouse-curious, it really is a gorgeous piece of meat), I did so alone. I plucked out a few tail feathers for the fly-tying bench and put the breast in the freezer.

As I started up the stairs toward bed — I got home well after dark — Poppy, our belligerent Old English bulldog stood on the landing, watching. I have no idea how long she’d been there, or if she was at all curious about what I’d been doing, or what I brought home. As I topped the stairs, she sniffed my clothes with a bit of enthusiasm, and she looked up at me.

“I love you, Pop,” I said. I patted her head and she turned to follow me into the bedroom. Then I remembered that Phoebe used to come home with me after a day of hunting, and we’d clean the birds in the kitchen before going to bed. Poppy, a puppy at the time, would sit down next to Phoebe and watch, not really sure what this whole thing was all about. Poppy took one more good sniff of my blue jeans as I walked into the bedroom. She let out a slow whine.

“I know,” I said, talking to the dog, because that’s what I do. “I miss her, too.”