TAUNTON AND RAYNHAM ACADEMY GRANT, Maine — The annual weekend adventure began as so many do: with coolers full of too much food — if there is such a thing — and a hunting party practically giddy with optimism.
Sure, Mother Nature had dumped 5 inches of rain earlier in the week. But it was dry! For a week, Hurricane Joaquin had been spinning offshore, and nobody seemed to know where he’d go next. Then, just before our gang headed for Brassua Lake and our annual bird-hunting and moose-watching adventure, we received word the storm went out to sea.
Dry weather awaited. And so, we were sure, did dozens of birds and moose by the herd.
As has become our custom, we were guests of Earle Hannigan. Hannigan, the father-in-law of my pal Chris Lander, and Chris’s brother, Billy, joined us in the Maine woods for our annual ritual.
We’d drive for miles, look for birds and periodically we’d stop, call in a moose and try to take stunning photos of it.
That was the plan, at least.
It didn’t take long before that plan began to unravel.
“Oh, shoot,” Billy Lander said Friday morning as we prepared to ride the roads and begin harvesting our bag limits of ruffed grouse. “I’ve only got 10 shells with me.”
In retrospect, I recognize that moment as the one when our trip began to go off the rails. In fact, Billy’s quote belongs right at the top of the list that would grow, along with our frustration, over the next two days: “The Reasons Why the Birds Did Not Participate in our Bird Hunt.”
Ten shotgun shells. Two days. A daily bag limit of four birds. Simple math — and past experience — should have indicated that Billy would never have occasion to fire so many shots during our trips afield.
Right off the bat, Billy had jinxed us. Of course, we didn’t know that yet. And, truthfully, I was giddy, too.
“If you run through your 10 shells, I’ll be glad to hand you my shotgun any time you want it,” I may have said, unwittingly adding myself to the list of things that conspired against us. “I’ve got a boxful.”
Go ahead. Add my quote to the list. We’ll add plenty more excuses as this tale progresses.
Before long, we learned that our optimism had been misplaced. Birds showed up on the sides of roads — just like they always have, more or less. Perhaps not as many as in some past years but all in all a good, average year.
But these birds? They were different, and they taught us a few lessons. In the process of learning those lessons, our list grew.
Like this entry: John is not too stealthy.
Before long, Billy spotted a bird about 100 yards ahead of us, standing on the side of the road. He pointed it out, and because it was my birthday, he gave me a birthday boy shot at our first partridge.
Before I could dismount and load up, the bird had scooted into the woods. After a more thorough search, I could see the little critter slinking between trees, always in shadow, never fully visible.
Ruffed grouse? Spruce grouse? I kept asking myself that — a classic question of good vs. evil or, at the very least, legal vs. illegal — until the moment the ruffed grouse flew away.
Add it to the list: John had a shot and didn’t take it.
Meanwhile, while Billy and I struggled to find birds, Chris and Earle — riding in another truck, miles away — were having no better luck.
Over dinner that night, we added to the list. One member of our gang wasn’t there this year. As superstitious hunters, we recognized that any kind of change in the group could have disastrous consequences. At least, that’s what we convinced each other as we sat around looking for scapegoats.
So we blame our failures on the guy who couldn’t come: The Game Hog.
To be truthful, my BDN colleague Pete Warner does not really deserve that nickname. He caught two big trout one day, and the name was born. But even though he may not deserve it, he did earn it — and he’s keeping it, if we have anything to say about it.
Add it to the list: Without a game hog, your hunt is doomed from the start. Though we hadn’t realized it, Pete must have been our good luck charm on previous hunts. (Don’t tell him we said that; it’ll make him insufferable.)
On Saturday, our frustrations built. Any birds we saw didn’t linger long enough for any of us to get off a shot. In fact, few of them even let us get two feet on the ground while dismounting from our trucks before they ran or flew away.
As you may have guessed, we had enough time to formulate another perfectly plausible excuse or two.
Added to the list: It was just too windy. Also, that torrential rainfall earlier in the week must have had some kind of effect.
Chris also mentioned the fact that on at least one of the days, he thinks he put on his left boot before his right — a clear miscue.
Billy and I suspected that sasquatches may have eaten all of the grouse, and thought we were kidding until another passing hunter — unprompted, I should add — made the same observation.
With independent confirmation, we added “Sasquatch Invasion” to the list, too.
In between our fruitless forays, the trip was not a total loss. We have found that if you make a good, honest effort to pack too much food, that’s always the case.
And we figured we’d always have a chance to shoot some photos of a moose.
All we had to do was call one in.
Chris and Earle finally found some moose, but Billy and I had no such luck.
But that was OK.
By then, our list had taken shape, and we added “moose” to the things we’d not been able to see.
We blamed that on the wind, too. And the game hog. And the sasquatches.
On Saturday night, after the hunting was done, Billy tossed another log on the conspiracy fire.
It might have been Mother Nature herself who was thwarting us — on purpose.
“You wait,” he said, pointing out at Brassua Lake as the steady wind continued to blow and the whitecaps continued to pound the shore. “We’ll wake up tomorrow morning, and it will be flat calm out there.”
After two very blustery days in the woods — and the fact that the ever-present wind was actually No. 1 on our list — we chuckled at his prediction.
The next morning, as we loaded our trucks for the trip home, Billy returned to the spot and pointed back at the mirrored surface of a placid Brassua.
He was right. Not a puff of breeze. Bright sun. A bit of early morning fog struggled to burn off.
So, I suppose, we could have actually added another excuse to our overflowing list: We didn’t get any birds because no hunting is allowed on Sunday — the only wind-free day we got.
Better luck next year.
