Dennis Anderson: Pheasant opener is a dog day

SOUTHWEST MINNESOTA - You really needed a dog Saturday, opening day of the Minnesota pheasant season. And even then, with nearly all of the state's corn crop still standing in fields, and many of those fields soggy wet, the odds were stacked against you. And stacked as well against your best friend.

We had four Labrador retrievers with us Saturday and one golden retriever. Others in Minnesota who beat the hinterlands on the season's first day put ahead of them springer spaniels, English setters and German shorthaired pointers, among other breeds. No matter. Each for their masters doubtless made pleasantly memorable a day that otherwise could be fairly described as frigid, blustery, wet.

Seven of us began the day in Murray County. All roads leading there from our headquarters in Willmar were slick with ice, some dangerously so, and our hunt as a result began slightly after the 9 a.m. opening bell.

With me were Denny Lien of Lake Elmo, Will Smith of Willmar and his two boys, Mathew, 15, and Harrison, 13, and my sons, Cole, 14, and Trevor, 16.

Fortunately, we had enough knit hats to go around. A few of us also wore long underwear, and the rest of our party learned this news with envy. Locking and loading, we reminded ourselves out loud the particular challenges of upland hunting and to shoot only in safe directions. Then we stepped off.

In fairness, before that happened, the dogs should have been introduced in the manner of a basketball team. Theirs after all was the hard duty, risking limb and life as they raced ahead, wild at first, then settling in, quartering in front of us like windshield wipers, back and forth, scenting the ground, alert for pheasants.

"Find the birds," someone commanded, and the dogs were waved ahead.

Youngest of the canine bunch was Pete, a 2-year-old yellow Labrador, a real athlete who seems to move as if on air.

Along as well was Rufus, a 7-year-old golden retriever owned by Will. Rufus' deal while searching for ringnecks is to wander ahead within shotgun range, to the left, to the right, alternately. Pheasant scent for her triggers a wagging tail and contorting torso -- body language that readily signals to Willy and his sons that a bird might soon be flushed.

Denny's dog, meanwhile -- Brit -- is a bit of a solo artist. When she was younger, sharing a pheasant field with colleagues of inferior breeding or manners was something she could put up with. No more. Now she wants to scurry about alone, with only Denny trailing. "That's just the way she is these days, she wants to be out here only with me," Denny said.

Then the two of them, man and dog, walked off together, alone.

Rounding out our cast of canines were Sage, a black Lab overseen by Cole, and Trooper, Trevor's charge. For better or worse these dogs are the boys' bed mates as well as hunting companions, a luxury that seems to have been extended without harm to either dog. Both still come to hunt, Sage more so for pheasants, while Trooper is the superior waterfowl dog.

This emphasis on dogs isn't unique to pheasant hunters, or even bird hunters.

In the South, dogs are commonly employed while deer hunting. Also, out west, hounds and other big runners are freed to chase mountain lions. And of course terriers and others of the smaller breeds that go to ground encounter in oftentimes fierce firefights everything from foxes to badgers.

That said, pheasant hunting without a dog is little more than walking with a gun in hand -- foolish to the point of being a waste of time. This was particularly the case Saturday, when birds for us were difficult to locate, because of the standing corn. And also perhaps because of the inclement conditions.

Which, by day's end, had reduced our biggest thrills to watching the dogs and the dozen or so birds they had put to wing, all but three of which were hens.

The lone bird we dropped was an adult with long spurs and longer tail, colorful as all cock pheasants are even if, as Saturday, viewed beneath a low, steel-gray sky.

So it ended. One bird in the hand. And the dogs, by dark, spent and asleep in their travel crates.

They had made a day of it -- for them, because this is what they live for.

But no less for us.

Dennis Anderson • danderson@startribune.com