I'm just running my dogs!

The season has been slow. I’ve only shot a handful of birds since the Sept. 1. opener.

It isn’t for a lack of trying.

More days than not I’m hunting, so often in fact that I’ve quit telling people I’m hunting and instead say I’m just running the dogs.

The birds simply aren’t there. All my favorite places have been busts, but I’m too old to find new favorite places, so I hunt them anyway.

I’d heard there were birds around the grain fields, but my preference is wilder country with sagebrush and shortgrass, not plowed ground and tightly strung barbed-wire fences.

It was so dry early in the season that there was no morning dew. What grass remains is brittle and has lost all its color. The dogs kick up little clouds of dust as they run.

Because of the drought, emergency grazing measures were undertaken, and the Bowdoin National Wildlife Refuge became a livestock refuge of sorts, black Angus yearlings crowding under the few remaining trees there seeking shade.

I keep expecting the drought to break, for the weather to change. While much of the state received rain and snow last week, we didn’t. It cooled off a bit, but is still dry.

I’m not complaining. I still get to follow in the wake of my dogs, carry a gun, and on occasion, take a shot, but it’s hard not dwell on how good it used to be.

That’s probably why I keep going back to the same spots. I remember killing birds there and expect to do so again.

Or I just like the scenery.

I used to hunt the same places year after year in the mountains, too. But there it was partly because I knew the way in and the way out. I didn’t want to get lost. Up here, where you can see halfway across the county in most spots, I never worry about getting lost.

What weighs on me more are all the miles I have to cross to get back to the truck, a tiny, but clearly visible speck on the horizon. I’d rather not know how far it is.

The season is nearly halfway done. There will be cold and snow before it’s over. It may even rain. There will be days when the birds are plentiful. I have no doubt.

In the meantime I’ll keep running the dogs and see what happens. It’s pretty country anyhow.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]