Oh, to run (and stop!) like a Lowcountry hunting dog, even if it’s for only 10 minutes

Have you ever considered that reincarnation is the next level after your days on this earth are over? If so, what would you like to be?

A few years back I designed a T-shirt for a king mackerel fishing tournament that said something like “If reincarnated, the worst possible creature you may come back as is a pogie.”

If you don’t know what a pogie is, it is slang for our most often-used bait fish, the lowly menhaden. If you still don’t know what a menhaden is, then maybe you have seen them just outside the surf line on the beach. About 6- to 8 inches long, silver and swimming in tightly packed schools, they are tops on the menu for just about every game fish that swims in our waters.

Usually the schools of hundreds upon hundreds of menhaden are so tightly packed it appears as a big black spot in generally greenish water. Then if you watch that school, it doesn’t take long for an explosion to occur as sharks, tarpon or any number of predators blast up through them, showering frantic pogies in all directions.

You see, coming back as a menhaden would be the pits. All they do is swim in circles, everything wants to eat them, and fisherman throw cast nets over them for live bait and chum. They are chopped, diced, stomped on and every other manner of torture, so they would be tops on my list of creatures that would be the worst of the worst when it comes to reincarnation.

Why am I talking reincarnation, you ask? Because something happened this week that I rarely talk about anymore, that being the “blast” in Cast&Blast. I went bird hunting, something I used to do all the time before development drove ducks, doves and quail elsewhere.

Getting a call from Al Stokes, the former director at the Waddell Mariculture Center in Bluffton, he told me he had recently donned his Reverend Al hat, officiating a wedding for Perry McAlhaney’s son up near Estill in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Perry is the chief of police of Hampton and also an avid quail hunter and bird dog trainer. His invite to Al to come quail hunting included that Al could bring a guest. It didn’t take a second for me to accept since I had not touched my 20-gauge in a year.

Dove and quail hunting, or for that matter any type of wing shooting, was something I loved for a whole lot of years. Back then, finding a good dove hunt was as easy as knocking on some farmer’s door. But as this area grew, out-of-state hunters, particularly from Florida, offered these same farmers big money for hunting rights on their land. Mostly deer hunters, it pretty much sidelined my wing shooting passion.

If you are wondering what makes quail hunting so wonderful, it isn’t how many quail you bag. It’s the exercise on a cool winter day, the banter between hunters and guides and, most of all, watching good bird dogs do their thing.

If you are easily offended, then quail hunting isn’t for you. Some of the easiest shots are the hardest and not only do you not get the bird, the ribbing afterward can often be merciless. Personally, I thrive on that aspect. Some things that come out the mouths of fellow hunters or guides are hilarious.

On this hunt I had more excuses for misses than I had shotgun shells. No matter how good you think a well-thought-out excuse may be, the ribbing can be brutal. That ribbing can include just about anything, even as lowly as genetic slurs. “What did you say about my mother?” You get the picture.

Back to reincarnation (which, if I remember correctly, was my opening segment), I now think I would like to come back as a dog.

Perry had several dogs we rotated — mostly pointers and one Labrador for flushing a covey of quail the pointers had, well, pointed. His pointers would run full tilt, zigging and zagging through brush and brambles, and when they caught scent of quail they would stop on a dime with nary a muscle twitching.

I swear it’s like watching a cartoon dog that was shot by a villain’s freeze gun in mid-stride.

Even if reincarnation is out of the question, what I would give to be a dog for 10 minutes. It blows my mind that a well-trained dog can sift through thousands of scents and, when that one scent hits them, wham-o! The brakes go on.

Even better is when you are hunting with two pointers and one freezes and the other honors his point by freezing too. It’s spectacular to watch.

Oh Lord, how I miss bird hunting all the time. It’s so much a part of my Southern life and no, I never missed a shot that day. One thing though. I still don’t know why they kept calling me Pinocchio all day. I reckon some things are just meant to remain a mystery.