A Long Walk into a Brisk Wind: Takeaways from a Lifetime Pursuing Upland Game Birds

By Michael Lannoo

This book follows the arc of an upland hunter's life from childhood into old age. Each chapter emphasizes the larger life lessons that hunting teaches a person as they learn and then practice the sport. A large portion of the book centers on the way upland hunting integrates wing shooting and dog work into a coherent whole that, when it works well, can approach art.

The book consists a Preface, 34 stories organized into seven sections (Growing Up, Shotguns, Reloading and the Range, Dogs, Birds, The Hunt, and Dotage), and a Postface.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 19, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350944983

Michael Lannoo

Michael Lannoo, Professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine, is the author of Malformed Frogs: The Collapse of Aquatic Ecosystems and the editor of Amphibian Declines: The Conservation Status of United States Species (both from UC Press), among other books.

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A Long Walk into a Brisk Wind

Takeaways from a Lifetime Pursuing Upland Game Birds

Michael Lannoo

ISBN (Print Edition): 979-8-35094-497-6

ISBN (eBook Edition): 979-8-35094-498-3

© 2024. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Front cover photo: Otter, the author’s chocolate Lab, after a day hunting weed-choked fence lines in a blizzard, the thing Labs were born to do.

Back Cover: The author with his first chocolate Lab, Abbey (left), then eleven years old, and nine-month-old Otter, the year she began to understand her craft.

To all the crusty old timers who make the world a better place by spending time with a kid.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Growing Up

Desperados

A Big Mouth…

A Lunchtime Diversion

A Near Miss

Shotguns (Mostly Brownings)

A Random Act of Kindness

Duck Stamp Legacy: The Browning A-3

Something Special

The Shooter

All Choked Up… No More

John Browning’s A-5 Then and Now, Or the Chunk Rediscovered

Reloading and the Range

A Gain in Brain Explained

Every Round’s a Ticker-Tape Parade

Shooting Fast and Slow

Dogs (Mostly Labradors)

Range

No Dandy of the Drawing Room

Man’s Best Friend

The Essence of the Sport

Is My Dog Smarter Than Your Honor Student?

Birds (Mostly Pheasants)

I’ll Drink to That

Datus Proper Versus Proper Data

Liars, Damn Liars, and Statisticians

A Spurious Encounter

A Conservation Conundrum

The Hunt

Ode to South Dakota’s Prairie Coteau

Old-Timey Pheasant Facts

Whither a Hunting Ethic?

Party Limits

Words Escape Me

I Shot My Wad and Bagged a Rooster

The Scars Align

Advice on Hunting Pheasants While Wearing Snowshoes

Why I Hunt

Dotage

Clothes Make the Man

A Give and Take on Take and Give

Postface

Preface

As you read these stories, it will become obvious I have been heavily influenced by one Willis (Ole) Oldefest, a veteran of George S. Patton’s Third Army. Severely wounded in the Battle of the Colmar Pocket during the Second World War, Ole refused to let himself become a victim. Rather than stay disabled, as his wounds healed he made himself abled. By the time I knew him, twenty years later, Ole was tough without being a tough guy. That he and I became friends—that Ole let me in—is a memory that always makes me emotional.

When I was growing up, my dad must have sensed it would do me good to be around a person whose life’s original trajectory had been truncated and who then pivoted onto something else as if nothing had happened. Adversity had opened Ole up to life’s other possibilities, and he seized them. While Dad figured I needed to learn this lesson, these days, the teacher in me reckons everybody should.

It’s interesting to compare the two men. Ole was in the army in France; my dad was a Marine in Korea. In their prime, Ole was 6’1 and weighed about 180; Dad was 6’3 and forty pounds heavier. Both were athletes. Ole was graceful and controlled; Dad was powerful and spontaneous. Ole was right-handed; Dad was ambidextrous: throwing left-handed, shooting and playing golf right-handed. Ole’s war wounds meant he could never again play organized sports. My dad played baseball well into his thirties and was so well known in the Quad Cities that after he passed, when Ole would introduce me at the gun club, after giving my name Ole would say, Don’s boy, and the guy would nod and say something to the effect, Helluva ball player.

Ole Oldefest and the author’s father, Don, in 1970 near Swift Current, Saskatchewan, with Ole’s black Lab, Mike, and a bag of sharp-tailed grouse.

When pheasant hunting, Ole would patiently line up the shot and follow through as he pulled the trigger. Dad would point and shoot—snap shooting they called it back then. Neither missed often. On the range it was a different story. Ole might shoot four rounds and never drop a bird, for Dad eighteen out of twenty-five was a good score. Ole diagnosed the problem as too much thinking, but I think he was kidding. Ole practiced all the time, Dad, rarely.

I’m a product of both these men, their similarities and differences, which, when combined, offered a more complete tutelage. When I hunt, I try to arrange it so the whole hodgepodge fits together. That dogs, gun, and effort match the birds I’m hunting, usually pheasants. This means when I scan an article about hunting Great Plains sharp-tail grouse using a 28-gauge, I want to read that pointing dogs were used and no shots were taken beyond twenty-five yards. If the author doesn’t include these and other details about how the whole hunt fit together, the article becomes one of those, Look at me, I’m a man stories that Jim Harrison despises.¹ So do I. That’s when the Ole influence takes over and, to use one of his favorite phrases, the article goes in the shitcan.

Those days with Ole and Dad were in the era of Jones hats, cotton thermal long johns, jersey gloves, and Servus Rubber insulated boots. There were only three TV channels back then, and they televised in black and white. Nevertheless, you could watch celebrities² pheasant hunt on a Sunday afternoon program called The American Sportsman, my favorite show. It should also be said that this was the era of the Beatles and Rolling Stones, although they got no airplay in Ole’s Suburban during the five hours or so we were forthing and backing from our Tama County, Iowa, hunts.

I enjoy hunting. I do not enjoy killing. I try to make the killing as quick and painless as possible. A wounded bird lost will ruin my hunt. This is the reason why, like Ole, I practice shooting clays. It’s not a burden; I like to practice, and unlike Dad, I must practice to stay on my field game. Strangely though, like Dad, I can snap shoot. Exactly two weeks ago, I shot a rooster pheasant, and while I have clear memories of Otter and Lena’s work leading up to the flush, the bird’s too-quick flight, firing the gun, seeing the bird fall, and Lena’s retrieve, I have no memory of lining up the shot. I don’t think I consciously did. I’m pretty sure that’s an experience Ole seldom had.

I hunt with Labradors because Ole and Dad hunted with Labs. But I also use Labs because I like interacting with my dogs, and hunting with Labs gives me the opportunity. I’d prefer a beeper not tell me what my dogs are doing, and I’d rather not have a GPS unit tell me where they are. With Labs, I must pay attention all the time so a flush doesn’t take me by surprise. I also like Labs because I spend most of my time not hunting, and during the offseason I don’t want to be surrounded by knuckleheads.³

I also like Browning shotguns. My first real shotgun was a 20-gauge A-5 built in 1960. Dad bought it for me in 1969. I still have it.

All this dog and gun business works for me, but I don’t write this as any form of advice. I am not a pilgrim or a preacher (though I can be a problem when I’m stoned⁴). The trick is to know yourself and your hunting preferences well enough to choose among the countless options available for combining upland birds, dogs, and guns.

I’ve written these little stories in the spirit of Ole and Dad, even though most of these incidents occurred after both men passed. I hope you enjoy them (too many good hunting tales die with their owners). If you don’t, I encourage you to write your own. Each of us has our stories to tell. They’re all interesting, and they help explain how we came to become the people we are.

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1 Off to the Side: A Memoir (Grove Press, 2002), p. 106.

2 For example, Bing Crosby and Phil Harris were regulars. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCWkegFqMC4.

3 In his 1992 book A Hunter’s Road, Jim Fergus shares Jim Harrison’s praise of Labs as companions (p. 44): You and I know [Labs] make the best companions, and in our lonely march toward doom, writers frequently need companionship. My old Sand will sit and listen to me talk for hours, for just one biscuit. Whereas my setter is only good for about ten minutes before she gets bored with me and wanders off. I’m going to finish my life with one more Lab.

4 From Kris Kristofferson’s The Pilgrim, Chapter 33, on the album The Silver Tongued Devil and I (Monument Records, 1971).

Acknowledgments

My life would be much poorer without the friendships upland hunting has furnished. The mentorships, first by my dad’s buddy Ole Oldefest, and now by my sensei Gary Williams. The friendships begun during my undergrad and graduate student days at Iowa State. Bill Noonan still invites me out to the Plains for late-season pheasant and prairie grouse hunts. More recently, I’m grateful for my friendship with Bill Souder and his family; it’s been fascinating to watch Bill make the transition from Lab guy to Griff guy. Locally, Indiana has turned itself into an upland game desert, so when I hunt with Ted Shanks (Lab guy), Scott Canfield (Griff guy), or Nate Engbrecht (currently dogless), it’s at a game farm; not optimal, but better than not hunting. Plus the dogs enjoy it. I’m not sure I know any more dedicated hunter than Mike Martello, out of Sitka, Alaska; Mike pretty much sets the standard.

I have especially enjoyed my friendships with the farmers who host my hunts, in particular the Ericksons of northeastern South Dakota, who I would not have gotten to know if not for Holly (the farmer’s daughter) and Brad Hanauer. I now hunt with grandson James. I would acknowledge the Labs who have owned me over the years—Brutus, Denali, Abbey, Otter, and Lena—but they already know. It’s satisfying to realize I’ve transferred some of my knowledge and passion for the sport to my son, Pete. And bless my wife Sue, who always responds to my questions about buying a new shotgun or Lab pup with the same answer: If you’re going to hunt with it, go ahead.

A few of these stories have appeared in The Upland Almanac, edited by Tom Carney. There’s a story here too. A while back I wrote a little book detailing the lives of two of my heroes, Aldo Leopold and Ed Ricketts. (You’ve likely already heard of Leopold; Ricketts was a buddy of John Steinbeck’s, the guy Steinbeck often referred to in his writing as Doc.) Bob DeMott, Steinbeck scholar, a brother of Harrison, and no doubt one of the kindest, most generous people alive, emailed me out of the blue to offer congratulations and commentary on the publication. Bob and Tom Carney happen to share a Grouse camp in northern Michigan and must have talked about the book, because a while later Tom reached out to me with questions about Leopold. During our conversation we agreed Tom would at least consider publishing some of the stories noodling around in my head, looking for a way out. I write a lot, but not stuff like this, and Tom’s early editing helped point me in the right direction. This book would not have happened if not for