Already Thinking of Fall

Smoky Gold

There are two kinds of hunting: ordinary hunting, and ruffed-grouse hunting.

There are two times to hunt: ordinary times, and when the tamaracks are smoky gold.

This is written for those luckless ones who have never stood, gun empty and mouth agape, to watch the golden needles come sifting down, while the feathery rocket that knocked them off sails unscathed into the jackpines.

Those tamaracks change from green to yellow when the first frosts havebrought woodcock, fox sparrows, and juncos out of the north. Troops of robins are stripping the last white berries from the dogwood thickets, leavingthe empty stems as a pink haze against the hill. The creekside alders haveshed their leaves, exposing here and there an eyeful of holly. Brambles areaglow, lighting your footsteps grouseward.

The dog knows what is grouseward better than you do. You will do well tofollow him closely, reading from the cock of his ears the story the breeze is telling. When at last he stops stock-still, and says with a sideward glance, 'Well, get ready,'the question is, ready for what? A twittering woodcock, or the rising roar of a grouse,or perhaps only a rabbit? In this moment of uncertainty is condensed much of the virtue of grouse hunting.

He who must know what to get ready for should go and hunt pheasants.

An excerpt from A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold.