Autumn and hunting and learning experiences

I crack up when I hear that it is "the beginning of fall" right now in some areas that are pretty near to me. Although all the leaves have not turned, here, in northern Wisconsin, it is well into fall. In fact it could snow any day now.

Autumn here means that most of the male population take to the woods with their guns or bows to kill creatures. When I moved up here 9 years ago, I thought that was cruel. Last week, at the suggestion from someone I carpool with, I actually went into the woods with dogs and a man carrying a rifle. It may or may not have anything to do with hitting 3 deer in my time up here.

Not that we were hunting deer - it's grouse season now, as I learned.

<--- This is a grouse.

Anyway, after work, I was picked up from home with my 11 year old Newfoundland, Dulse, and brought to this "secret place". Although I was not blindfolded, nor was I threatened, I was strongly advised not to reveal the location. That, I guess, happens a lot up here.

Dulse and I and my buddy (I have friends with sons older than him), his 2-year-old Lab, and a giant gun started trekking along a path into the woods. At first Dulse, who misses playing with his brother, was chasing after the lab, who was doing all sorts of gymnastics I did not think were possible for a dog to do. Soon, my 11-year-old Newf backed off. I could tell he had this "f--- this!" look on his face and stuck mostly by me.

My buddy was determined to show me how his dog flushed a grouse and he would shoot it. He warned me not to scream when the gun went off, as this would throw off his concentration. (I did not mention when I lived in a neighborhood in Minneapolis, I heard gunshots regularly.)

He told me what kind of brush the grouse preferred, the height where they usually roosted in the trees, and their favorite times of day to feed.

We walked quietly, and every once in a while, my bud would say, mysteriously, in a whispering voice, that I should stay right there and look "down there" (he pointed in a general area) and that he was going off the train with his dog to see if he could flush a grouse. I spent the next 10 minutes "seeing" grouse anywhere but where my buddy was, whisper-screaming for Dulse to "come" by me so he wouldn't get shot, remembering any TV show/newspaper/radio story about how someone was accidently shot while hunting, and enjoying the woods. This happened twice. By the second time I had decided that he was proficient enough with the gun to know where his hunting companions/dogs were that he would not accidentally shoot anyone.

We neither shot anything, nor flushed anything in our hour and a half in the woods. We enjoyed our dogs, the beauty and scent of the fall woods, and chatted very little. It was wonderful and a great way to end a day of stressful work in the middle of the week. I am incredibly lucky to live here and to have the kind of friends who are willing to teach me something every day.