The Flowers of February in these countries:

¨ Chinese— Peach Blossom

¨ Japanese— Plum Blossom

¨ English— Primrose

¨ Australia— Pink Mimosa  (Summer, 3rd  Month)

¨ Canada— Violet

¨ Irish— Narcissus

FEBRUARY - 2012

The name comes either from the old-Italian god Februus or else from februa, signifying the festivals of purification celebrated in Rome during this month.

Hunter’s Apocrypha

There’s a place where outdoorsmen wake up early even before daylight and when they arise, they can feel the strength and life flow into their bodies anew every day. There is no pain, no stiffness and their strength and zest for life is the same every morning.

All their gear is packed and ready to go all they have to do is whistle up the dogs, fill the thermos with coffee and be underway.

Outside the air is stinging cold, “bracing” the men say. The dogs are milling around breath fogging out and with happy yips and much crashing into one another they furiously wag their tails and bounce on their front feet, waiting barely constrained for the humans to get it together and let them hunt.

Finally, after much back-slapping and morning grunts, they all bundle into the oldest vehicles still running. There are pickup trucks with the tailgate missing and no two quarter panels are the same color. Primer is the color of the day but there’s one red Volkswagen Variant station wagon which came from Germany with the Marine who was stationed there many years ago. That rig is the one the four big Labs and one thirty-five pound Poodle-cross all jump into. It has stood the test of time. Most of the vehicles have pan warmers still plugged in so the oil is already warm and they are underway at last.

These men are going out to walk a couple of fields today to see what flies.

My daughter asked me to write a Bible for hunters. One in which the Ten Commandments are about how you handle your gun and dogs; how you are in the field and in camp. You never want to walk a field with someone on your left, flicking the safety off and on as they walk carrying their gun negligently over their arm and pointing directly at your left side. That person would be told quietly at a rest to get out of the field and never come back or the hunter would let his daughter shoot him.

People who have hunted with one another for years already know and trust how their fellows will act under pressure. They trust them or they don’t hunt with them.

There is a place I’m sure for where hunters go when they move on out of the life they’ve been living here. I see it as the kind of place where when you want to hunt deer, your gear and road always leads to deer country. Not necessarily to a place like the Grand Rounde where a river and rocky mountain faces go straight up and deer, sheep, goats, and snakes wander around up there. The first time I heard the story from my hunter pals that when they arrived at that destination and were setting up camp and looking over the terrain, they watched a fully racked deer fall straight down off a cliff far up and crash land right in front of them. Fred said, “Well that’s one way to tenderize a deer.”

And Upland bird hunters will arrive at a corn stubble field with a fairly high left-over fifth cutting of alfalfa next to it. Perfect for Pheasants and maybe a sage hen or two. Oh, and there will be a wooden bridge crossing water of some kind where they can stop and sneak up on the bridge then have a kid turn the dogs loose to run across the bridge making all the noise they can make. When the Bridge Pigeons fly out, it is a very good eye that brings one down for the dogs to retrieve. Pigeons like to drop and fly an erratic course. They are nearly impossible to bring down.

Duck hunters will find themselves at the end of a road that lets them stalk up on cattails growing out of almost stagnant water. Then the dog squats to point and when the hunter is ready (hopefully) the dog gets to kick up the bird and maybe a Mallard or Teal will fly for the shooter. The dog is off into the water as the shot is rung and in a perfect world will bring the bird back to the shooter, not to the neighbor across the water and when it is released into the waiting hunter’s hand, it won’t be crunched. Soft-mouthed dogs are a prize.

W.R. who lives in Hunter Haven will tell this story to all around the fire and Dale, Bob and Fred will smirk and maybe add more to it. It is like this: They were all settled down in a  corn stubble field, lying in the corrugates the farmer used to water the field and covered up with their white parka’s as it had been spitting snow for some little while. When the ducks landed they landed right on top of the would-be hunters, too quick to land, too close to shoot. As they lay there being one with the ground, one Mallard waddled right up W. R.’s gun barrel and leaned in to peck at his glasses. They finally just had to jump up and hope that when the ducks flew someone could stop laughing long enough to shoot one of them.

Goose hunters now are have an even greater treat because their road takes them into a dry-land wheat field where pits have already been dug by industrious children who have been spotting the geese for days and when a pattern is shown, they dig the pits and maybe even add homey touches like dirt benches inside to crouch on while hiding from the geese who they hope to call into that field again where they have been feeding regularly. Just as often they wait in the immobile pit on a frozen winter day in snow and ice wearing white parka’s over their hunting gear and the geese fly be a half a mile away or a half a mile up and all they see is the V as they fly out of sight.

Hunter’s Haven doesn’t have successful hunts every time. What would be the fun in that? Sometimes they just need to enjoy the beauty of the land, the smell of fresh snow and watch a coyote off in the distance where a talented bird caller can imitate the sound of a dying rabbit and maybe call the coyote up close to the pit. After all there’s no use in wasting the pit just because the geese didn’t land for them.

Then there are the infamous Snipe hunters. Contrary to popular belief there really is a bird called Snipe and they really are hunted. By the terminally insane in my estimation but I went with them so what does that say about me. They are smaller than Pigeons and it would take more than four and twenty of them (as the song goes) to go into a pie. So in Hunter Haven there is a brackish salt-water backwater with sad looking cattails and you need boot overalls not just waders to stay somewhat dry in the six to twelve inches of muck under the dirty salt water. I was told by the inveterate Dale and Neil that this is the best hunting ever. It was raining, water was everywhere, dirt and muck all around and we were up to our thighs in water. How much more fun does that get for the perfect place where hunters go?

Everyone in Hunter Haven is blowing their duck calls and shouting “I love you kid” just for you today.

Peace.

© 2012