On Saturday Senior called while we were on our way to Hetch Hetchy. Did we want another hound? Well, no, not really. Job insecurity makes this a poor time to be adding to the animal collection.

But he’d picked up this hound at the trap club; she’d been running around there loose for about a month, living off of handouts. He said she looked like a Walker, and looked young.

So I did a lot of thinking over the weekend, and a lot of getting more and more aggravated at Fionn. Fionn and I do not have personalities that mesh. He’s very timid and screams at anything, up to and including wearing a leash to go for a walk. I don’t really think that he’s going to work out well as a hunter, but I’ll give him a year or so. I actually have a neighbor who wants him for a pet if he doesn’t work out for me.

So what’s the harm in trying another dog? We don’t know anything about her, of course, but we’re no worse off than starting the puppies from scratch. I decided to at least bring her home and see how she interacted with the rest of the pack. I’d make a good effort to find her previous owner and if someone claimed her, I’d give her back. But in the meantime, I’d treat her like she was mine, and that means putting a bit of money into her for vaccines and spaying and whatnot.

She was very clearly friendly when I met her. Not a speck of manners in her, but I’ll teach her not to jump on people or to yank on the leash. Looking at her teeth, she’s clearly not the six months that Senior guessed at; I’d say closer to three or four years. She’s pretty thin and can do with another five pounds of meat on her bones, but she isn’t emaciated. She had a collar but no tags or tattoos. She’s been around people and other dogs, but I’m not sure if she’s ever been hunted. I can only find one scar on her body, and that doesn’t seem to be from running through brush. Their ears and front legs tend to show wear if they’ve been hunted much, and her toenails are a little long for it too. I think I might be able to feel a spay scar too.

When we loaded her into the truck, she jumped right in. I tied her up short, not knowing what she’d do on the freeway, but she just hung her ears out in the wind and grinned all the way home. She was a little unsettled being mobbed when we got to the yard, and Angus was a little growly, but that eased over pretty quickly. I stuffed her into the kennel with a big bowl of food and let them all get to know each other through the fence. Then when I had people coming over to buy my goats, I had to toss the puppies in there with her. And they were all fine! I left them together all night and nothing happened.

So we’ll give her a shot. I’m calling her Jane, for Jane Doe, as she’s anonymous. I’ve put up found ads in a couple of places, but I suspect that she was dumped. She could have been someone’s noisy pet or a terrible working dog; we don’t know. But I guess we’re about to find out if she’s worth anything. What’s one more hound? It’s better that she be put to use than to linger and die in the pound.

While I’m over the pneumonia incident from this winter, it’s taking me longer to bounce back than it used to. I’d like to be hiking all over the mountains, but I’m just not capable of the strenuous stuff yet. We went to Vernal Falls last month and there was no way I could go on to Nevada Falls. So this time, on Junior’s last free Saturday with me for months, we picked an easier hike that we’ve done before.

The water is still massively flowing in Yosemite, so we went to Hetch Hetchy to see the waterfalls. I can’t believe the difference between this piece of Yosemite and the Valley. No busloads of tourists, no massive traffic problems once you turn off of the main entrance road (which was backed up for miles), and no hassles. The weather was absolutely perfect, cool enough that we could sleep in, take a leisurely breakfast, and ease our way up to the park. We didn’t start hiking until after noon, which is usually a really bad idea in the Sierras.

But we knew the hike to Wapama Falls and Tueeulala Falls would only take us a few hours. This time, I didn’t carry a pack. Junior did, both because he wants to carry more weight to get more work out of our hikes and also so he could bring along his new spotting scope and tripod to try them out.

The last time we were on this trail, a couple of years ago, Tueeulala Falls wasn’t even flowing. This time, it was prudent to take one’s shoes and socks off to cross the creek below it.

And Wapama Falls was absolutely thundering, drenching the bridge, which was a “cross at your own risk” situation. It may have been foolish, but we both went out onto the bridge and cooled off in that massively powerful water. Then we had to hike back with squelching socks anyway, as we got so wet so fast that there hadn’t actually been any point in worrying about it earlier.

I felt so good coming back that I even picked up speed on the downhills, which is not normal for me. It’s very rare that I can say, “Hey, this exercise isn’t doing enough for me and I must make it harder!” But mostly it felt good to get away from work stress and crap building up at home. I don’t know how we’re going to do it with Junior working on Saturdays now, but I need more of it.

edited to add: five days after our hike, two hikers were swept to their deaths across that very same bridge. A storm had rolled in earlier in the week, raising the water levels even further.

When I started the poultry project last year, I’d always intended to expand to turkeys eventually. I didn’t think that I was ready to jump straight into it right off the bat. But I still had birds in the brooder when we went to the feed store for something else, and Junior egged me into picking up two Broad-Breasted Bronze poults. This is the turkey version of a commercial meat bird. They come in bronze and white, and are bred to grow so fast and so big that if they aren’t slaughtered when they reach market weight, they quickly begin to deteriorate. Their bones can’t hold up their enormous bodies any more.

So we’d planned to eat them, but as plans do, things changed. We’d ended up with a pair, and those stupid birds had so much personality that I wasn’t really thrilled about the idea of killing them. They would follow me around the garden, waiting for me to pull a tomato branch down for them to pluck a hornworm from. Mr. Turks loved me especially, and always, always, puffed up and showed off for me when I went in the pen.

I had a bit of a scare with him around Christmas time, when it was already too late to process him for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner anyway. He got a massive cold, and could hardly breathe or move. I isolated him and fed him antibiotics and Gatorade by hand for ten days. Have you ever tried to force feed a turkey who doesn’t want to eat? I was a little surprised that he made it, frankly. It took him months to completely recover.

Over the last month or so, he’d got so big that he was hardly walking anywhere. Momma turkey is still fine, but Turks could barely make it between his food and his water. It was time. Since he was free of the antibiotics, I chose to slaughter him instead of just put him down and bury him. I thought it would greatly honor my giant bird to serve him for our Thanksgiving dinner. If he’d fit in the oven, that is.

Be wary; I will be posting some fairly graphic photos of the process here.

I knew I’d have to have lots of help, so Junior stuck around that day and a couple of my friends came over to watch. I’ve become a pro at killing chickens and had done a fair amount of research on slaughtering turkeys, so I had some things in mind. Of course, nothing went as planned. I’d intended to put him inside of a feed bag with the corner cut out for his head in order to restrain his wings. There’s no way my chicken cone would have been big enough. Well, I got the bag on over his head but it wouldn’t fit down past his breast, and controlling the wings was sort of the point. So we restrained one leg and I held him somewhat pinned with my own legs, and slit his throat. This process has proven to be fairly painless with the chickens, but I’d failed to account for the sheer volume of blood that a giant turkey contains. It really took him a long time to bleed out. I was not happy with that, as I’d wanted to give him a respectful death.

Once he had expired, we hung him from a ladder to finish bleeding out. It took two of us for this.

Junior weighed him for a live weight: 51 pounds. Wow, I’d guessed around 40 on the ground. Now I suspect that my hen is at least 40 pounds.

Scalding him for plucking was also a learning experience. There was no way that I could have got all of the feathers out cleanly without scalding, but of course, he didn’t fit in my pots. I thought that I’d heat a pot of water up to boiling and then cool it down to 150 in a bigger tub. But once I got that done, there clearly wasn’t enough water to submerge him. Junior had to rush and get the burner for the turkey fryer to quickly heat up another batch of water. Once that was done, turkey and water completely filled up my big blue rope bucket.

The wing feathers never did pull free easily like they’re supposed to with a good scald, but I was worried that I was starting to cook the skin. So we had us a job plucking that bad boy. It was a good thing that I had help, or I’d still be out there working on it. We had to use pliers for a lot of the feathers.

Finally then, it was on to the eviscerating. I’m fairly quick at this now and the size of the bird worked to my advantage for once. It’s a lot easier to get your hand inside a 51 pound turkey than it is a seven pound chicken. The organs were massive; the gizzard was bigger than my fist, and the heart was at least half the size of a deer’s heart. The legs at the joint had to be at least an inch across. The nuggets were exceptionally large.

There was a lot of rinsing involved to keep the carcass clean. We had to continue plucking after I’d gutted to get the rest of the feathers off. Finally though, we got to bring him into the kitchen. Set in a roasting pan, it was obvious that he was going to be too big to cook in one piece for Thanksgiving, and I did not have a clue how I was going to wrap him up to keep him from getting freezer burned until then. We weighed him again for a dressed weight of 44 pounds, which gave us a yield of over 86%, which is really outstanding. An average beef yields 62%, and my meat chickens were yielding in the high 60s to low 70s.

So we decided to part him out and deal with each bit separately. I had in mind to smoke the legs and wings, and to make two separate roasts out of the breast halves. The back, I was going to roast and use for stock like I always do. So Junior started butchering him. The legs alone filled up a mixing bowl.

But when we got to skinning out the breast to piece it out, disaster struck. Junior’s knife hit an enormous abscess, right in the middle of the breast. There was a whole lot of nasty fluid and part of the surrounding tissue was already going towards gangrene territory.

We stopped work while I googled meat inspection rules, and this turned out to be a grey area. If an abscess is localized, it’s generally considered OK to cut it out and eat the other parts. But if it’s systemic, it’s a bad idea to do that. And even though all of the internal organs and other meat looked healthy, there was no way for us to tell if the infection was in his blood stream or not. It might have been OK to eat, but it might not have.

The whole point of this meat-raising exercise is to provide healthy food for our family, so we sadly made the decision not to eat this particular bird. No wonder he wasn’t walking much; he didn’t feel good! So instead of providing us meat, he just gave us a lot of lessons. I doubt that I could have cured him of the abscess had I known about it, so it was his time to go anyway, just not for the reasons that I’d thought. I’m sick about wasting all of that effort. It took a fair amount of thought to even consider eating something that I’d named, but now I’m sorry that I didn’t get to do it. Wasting him was not my intention, but sometimes that’s just how it works out. He was a good turkey, and lived a good life longer than most Broad-Breasted Bronzes ever get to. I will do it again, but I won’t let one of these Toms live as long the next time. I’ve got 15 heritage breed turkeys coming next week, and we will eat some of those, trade some, and breed some. But 51 pounds is too much for me to handle and I don’t want to see them hurt themselves with their size again.

Now that I’ve had these dogs for six weeks, I’m starting to see hints of their future personalities. They’re young yet, I know, and things may (and probably will) change as they grow. I have predictions though.

Foxy:

Foxy is the one that Junior picked out. I couldn’t see what he saw at six weeks, but now I can. She is most definitely the alpha bitch of the pack. Nobody messes with Foxy, and nobody is allowed to have something interesting around her if she wants it. And she always wants it.

Foxy has the busiest nose of the pack at this point. It’s always to the ground, trailing something or other. She is the most hard-headed, stubborn beastie that I’ve come across in a long time. She knows her name all right, and may deign to glance at you if you call it, but she will come to you or not on her own terms. Foxy and I are about to butt heads over this for real; they got collars yesterday and as soon as they’re used to them, the long leash will be employed. Dogs will come when I call them, no matter what.

Foxy also has the most potential to lean toward tree fighting, which will get her killed if I can’t break her of it. She’s already cut Cara up pretty badly fighting over some piece of nonsense. Tree fighters are simply not tolerated in our group.

Cara:

Cara is the extra dog. We went intending to pick two up, but Junior encouraged me to get three. We’d have a better chance of ending up with a decent hound with three to pick from, and Maverick was absolutely fine with it. He’d have sent us home with four or five if he could have. The last three females in the litter were all pretty similar to me; nothing stood out about their behaviors. So I went, “eeny, meeny, miney, mo,” and picked the one that I thought was the prettiest. Cara’s ticking and light colors remind me of the bird dogs that I grew up with.

Cara is the one that’s interested in her surroundings the most. She’s the one who always finds interesting bits to play with, which Foxy then normally takes away. Cara learned her name first, and is somewhat better about coming when she’s called. Cara is my prediction of the best hound we have simply because of Foxy’s tree fighting tendencies. She is also slightly better at treeing the housecat.

Fionn:

When I picked them up, Fionn was the last male available. He had a big wormy belly and was a little subdued about it. I didn’t have high hopes for Fionn turning out to be a decent hunter, but I didn’t want to mess with an all-female pack. The dynamics of that make me shudder to think about, so I took him just to keep things a little balanced at home.

After a good worming, Fionn’s coat got shiny again. He’s by far the most timid of the three though, and the first to go yelping away in fear if Pete the cat hisses at him. But if the other two are working, he’ll get in there and help them. He may have potential as a pack dog, but I don’t see him occupying any lead positions. He’s the most pet-like of the three, so if he doesn’t work out, I may be able to find him a loving home. The girl next door likes him a lot. But Fionn is also the barkiest one in the kennel. We’ll be working on that.

As far as training, I’m still at the level of letting them be puppies. They’ve learned their names, and not to jump on me, and sometimes they come when I call them. I intend to leash train mine, which isn’t always done with hounds, just because I may have to handle all three of them at once sometimes and it’s just too hard on me to be yanked around those mountains.

My two cats are thoroughly disgusted. Booger is slightly smarter and just vacates the premises any time the puppies are out. Pete is either dumber or meaner, but he sits in his cat bed on the table and growls at them. Of course, every time they forget he’s there, he reminds them and then they’re all baying again. If they run into him on the ground, the two females will give chase like their instincts tell them to. I never let them come into contact; for one, I don’t want my cat hurt, and for another, I think he could kick their asses. And getting their asses handed to them at this age could very well turn them off of hunting forever. This is an excellent age to ruin a good dog, and I’m going to try to avoid it.

I haven’t been laying down drag scents with them either. There are several schools of thought on that, but I don’t want them to burn out and get too used to the smells. I have a bear hide in the freezer that will be perfect for training; it’s a little too freezer-burned to be any good for anything else. For now though, they can still be puppies. I’m weaning them off of being treated like pets, which is difficult to do with the human kids involved. If they all get too attached, the dogs won’t want to leave those kids who play with them and go hunt, so I’m minimizing that now. They do need to be socialized with people and noise, so I may crate one or two up and let them be in the truck at the trapshoot tonight.

My future-predicting skills are fairly weak, and things can definitely change as they age, but I’ve got a good feeling about both Foxy and Cara. I think Cara will be the easier one to train, and she’s a hair more interested in chasing game. Fionn, I just don’t know. I’ll give him a year or two unless it’s completely obvious, but I don’t think he’s going to be anything special. But it’s a ton of fun to watch them go through the range of hound instincts, just in our own backyard. You can see light bulbs going off in their wee little knotheads now and then, and that’s very satisfying. It’s still a ton of work, but at this point, I’m still glad that I tried.

On the day that I met Grey Fox, Bobcat and I were deer hunting. We came across a hound trotting up the road and Bobcat, being an ex-houndsman, stopped to read the collar. Once he saw who it belonged to, he said, “Oh, you’re going to love this.” He got someone named Grey Fox on the radio, who asked us to pick the dog up and meet him up the road.

The houndsmen were after a bear and didn’t have a shooter with them, so they asked if I wanted to shoot one. Actually hunting a bear had never really crossed my mind before, but I happened to have a tag in my possession, as a result of running across one accidentally the year before. I wanted a tag just in case I got into a sticky spot with one.

So my first day bear hunting was spent listening to an exciting race. They caught the bear halfway up the mountain, past a whole drift of poison oak. I was about two hundred yards shy of making it to that tree on time, and they had to let someone else shoot it. The thrill of the race and almost making it got to me. At the trucks, Grey Fox told me that if I wanted a bear to come see him next year.

So the next year, I bugged Bobcat to take me back up there. He found Grey Fox running dogs alone this time, and sure enough, they treed a bear. I made it to the tree that time, and took my very first bear, and from then on, I was completely hooked. Grey Fox liked the way I did as much work as I could, and invited me back up to hunt with him any time. I’m not sure that he expected me to take that quite as literally as I did, but I haven’t missed a year yet since that first one.

He always said that I’d make a good houndsman. Too many things were in the way though; first money and room and then time. Eventually he took my “no” for an answer and stopped asking. He wasn’t surprised to hear that I got puppies this year though. I was kind of counting on bending his ear regarding their training now and then, as that’s what he loved to do; train young dogs and new hunters.

Grey Fox never looked at me and thought that I couldn’t do it. He never once dismissed me for being a woman in a man’s sport. He never thought that I wasn’t tough enough. He always encouraged me and took me under his wing. When he told Junior that he was looking out for me and that he had to treat me right, he meant it. And he did love it when I’d bring him pie; coconut cream was his poison, but he’d eat half of any pie that crossed paths with him. He gave me my call sign a couple of years ago; I am Bird Dog, even if nobody ever remembers to use it. It’s mine because Grey Fox gave it to me.

Grey Fox was diagnosed with all sorts of cancers this year. He sold his dogs and told us that he’d just be riding in the truck with Bald Eagle and Senior. We went to see him a couple of weeks ago, just after the cancer got to his brain. He was doing pretty well that day, ignoring the pain and going through photo albums. Most of the core of our little hunting group happened to show up at the same time, and it was nice to see him animated.

Grey Fox passed away a little bit ago today. I know damn well that he wasn’t ready to go, but I have to think that going this way was a decent compromise. He had a little notice, and got to say what needed to be said, but he didn’t hang on in misery for years like some people do. I’m going to miss him. I don’t think the group will be the same without him; he was the human pack leader for a lot of years, and even after he started to take it easy, he was still very respected.

I hope he’s enjoying himself now, running that giant pack that left out ahead of him. He’s got a bunch of good dogs lined up waiting, and enough coon and bear to keep him busy for a good long time. Thank you, Grey Fox. You made a hunter out of me.