I've been re-reading a favorite book of mine, Gun Dogs and Bird Guns, by Charlie Waterman. If you've not read Waterman's stuff, you should, and this book is one of his best, IMHO.
But this morning I came across this passage, and it moved me:
"I would like to get poetic about Huns, for nobody else has. I like them in Oregon in dry country when they flush from the edge of a giant erosion and swerve with the air currents caused by a ribbon of river far below. It is wonderful in Alberta when they leave the stubble and go against a backdrop of blue sky and a bright orange grain elevator. In Montana they flush from the abandoned homestead where they and their ancestors have lived half a century.
"I love to look for them in the edges of the golden stubble, but perhaps the high-grassland Huns are the best of all. The country is wilder and more lonely. Small European gamebirds making a home where the summers are dry and the winters are cold.
"Scatter the covey and look fruitlessly for it as night comes on, your dog confused by occasional shreds of scent, finding nothing. Bone-tired, unload your gun and start back toward the truck as true night closes in. There's an occasional bullbat when the first stars show and a little wind in the grass. Then you hear the faint, reedy sound somewhere on the shadowing slope. A lonely Hun asking about his friends."
This chapter in Waterman's book made me remember how often I've hunted Huns, and how much I've enjoyed it over the years, and how much I miss it. I'm going to have to remedy this problem next fall, I realize.
I still rate the Hun as my favorite upland bird at the dinner table, and have done since I was a small boy. And I think I'm not alone among bird hunters raised on the northern plains in thinking that there is no covey bird I'd rather hunt than the Hun.
