Blues in the Reefs

1 glanced to the east, but my headlights were still the only light, and I wondered again about being out so early. I checked the speedometer and looked at the white square of the upland bird regs pinched between the dash and my coffee cup. I'd read them over yet again while I'd waited for the tank to fill. The daily limits allowed 15 doves, though I couldn't remember ever having seen more than two in the same day. The regs also allowed eight partridge and five grouse. And though the old man and I had gone entire seasons without bouncing a covey of partridge, and my record low for grouse was two, both taken with a rifle, I knew those were within the realm of possibility-the bright possibilities always aglow before the season's first light. I took a sip of coffee. Eight Huns, five grouse. Opening day. It could happen.
I kept checking my speed, easing off the gas again and again.
I laughed a little and rolled the window the rest of the way down. Labor Day weekend, five-thirty in the morning, already 75 degrees, on its way to a hundred. I told myself again that the temperature was the only reason I was out so early. It wasn't the opener, I thought, it was the heat. I wanted to get the walking done before it became ridiculous. The old man would've laughed himself sick if... Read More »



he'd seen me packing my vest and gun at four-thirty in the morning, the coffee just starting to dribble into the pot. I glanced at the dash and eased off the gas.
By the time I pulled off at the lake and wound around its shore on the gravel track, I could go without headlights. I tried to take it easy by the summer homes, but I drove fast enough that I had to keep my eyes tight to the road. Right in the middle of all the houses I saw the birds, and I skidded to a stop just in time, my dust swallowing me from behind. Six or seven Huns picked their way across the road, glaring at me like so many miniature chickens. They reached the ditch and watched unflustered as I crept by, glancing from them to the houses and back. The only houses on the whole road.
When I left the lake, I drove into the hills, remembering the year we'd found 15 Huns standing in the middle of this stretch of road. At every corner I craned my neck, but the Huns weren't there. I couldn't decide if the Huns at the houses were a good omen or bad. I still hadn't figured it out when I pulled over at the sharp bend and shut the engine off.
The day had brightened, although the sun still had a ways to go before clearing the mountains in the east. I smiled again, shaking my head at my shorts and tank top, my long socks rolled back down over the tops of my boots. I stuck two water bottles-one water, one ice-in my vest's game pouch. I couldn't remember ever having worn shorts hunting before.
I filled my front pockets with shells, No. 7-1/2 shot, and looked back down the bottom I'd driven up. There was too much country here, I thought, though I backtracked immediately-there could never be too much country. But the old man and I had hiked through the long grass of those rolling hills and through the heartbreaking tangle of cottonwood and willow and rose in the bottom, where we could sometimes hear birds breaking out-ruffeds, we guessed-from the cover. But we'd never seen one, let alone gotten off a shot.
We'd bumped into Huns in that open land, and once they were up, there was little better. The coveys flushed along the tails of hills rolled down from the high ground and could be worked again and again. The first rushed shots could be made up for, and we could jump them until our shooting was smooth and we'd taken what we guessed was the covey's limit.
But I knew the Huns appeared only once in every 10 or 15 sweeps, and I didn't have the heart to go through all that land alone. Instead I turned my back to it and started up the steep part, toward where the high ridges were broken by jutting teeth of black stone, what the old man, a Navy veteran, used to call The Reefs. That's where the blues would be, could be counted on with something beyond wishes, picking up kinnikinnick and grape and snowberries on the edges, and pine seeds and needles in the thick stuff in the lee of the reefs.
I couldn't quite give up on the Huns, though, and as I headed up, I walked through the bits of cover-low juniper and scrub-with my shotgun at the ready. But nothing rose, and pretty soon I was into the huffing part, picking my way up the loose rock, taking time to rest crouched with a hand on my knee, the lake more jewel-like the farther it fell away. My white socks had already turned the color of the grass, stuck full of sharp seeds. I took a drink from my unfrozen bottle and wiped the sweat away from my forehead. The sun would be on me soon, and I began to climb again, wanting to be up top before the heat beat me down.
The next time I stopped to blow I was on the edge of the first saddle, a small hollow holding a loose knot of pines. I waited until my breath was back, then I held it and crept through the trees, waiting for the grouse to explode out of the ground around me.
But no grouse had come by the time I crossed through the timber, and I pushed hard up the last steep part, leaving the sharp scent of the trees for the dry, dusty smell of the grass. When I cleared the ridgetop, I was in the sun, and I sat down to take another drink. Now I'd hold the ridges, the grouse's realm, the hard part over.
The grass here was short, inches short, as if sanded off by wind. I looked back down at all the rich country below, and though I knew better, I had the familiar feeling that I'd tricked myself into working the barren land, leaving the most productive area behind. I wiped the sweat away again, checked my shells, pocketed my water bottle, empty now, and started to walk.
I hadn't gone six feet when I saw the blue. He was standing a foot below the ridge, on a broken chunk of granite, watching me, already fidgety, bobbing his weight back and forth from one foot to the other. I glanced quickly around, saw an avenue through the trees I wished he'd take, and moved back a step, to leave the lane open. The grouse ducked again but didn't take off.
I lifted my gun half up, fingering the thumb safety, wishing the grouse had just blown up when he'd seen me. I always did better that way, before I had time to think. But I knew that this time to collect myself was a gift for the first bird of the season, and as I glanced again at the open slot through the trees, the grouse launched, wings clattering, and I raised my gun the rest of the way.
He followed the slot and I pulled the trigger, too fast the first time, just like always. I barely saw his tail flare at the shot, and I followed him like I knew I should, and the second shot knocked him tumbling to the rockslide that had cleared the path through the trees.
I pulled my empties and reloaded, knowing the blues usually hung in coveys, but as I picked my way down to him, nothing else came up. I sat on a rock like a chair and smoothed out the first bird of the year on my lap. His tail was wide, dull and dark, the flash of orange above his eye startlingly bright.
I climbed back to the ridge with the grouse and sat down in the sun before it grew unbearable. I gutted the bird quickly against the heat and slipped him into my pouch beside the ice bottle. I wiped my fingers in the brittle stems of grass and knew that even if I saw no others, this morning had been a success. Even in the reefs there was no guarantee. There'd been plenty of times when the old man and I had walked through here with nothing but ourselves for company. He would've teased me hard about that first shot, the rushed one, though I'd seen him do the same thing often enough.
I checked my shells again, a habit of his I couldn't break, and I followed the ridge until it dropped off sharply. I swung north, through a long, grassy rise, toward the next ridge. But it was a false ridge, the next real one farther back behind it, and I stood looking up its rocky spine-a classic reef. I had taken my first step toward it when I caught movement in the bottom.
It happened too fast to be sure, but it had, for an instant, looked like grouse-two or three, set-winged, settling into the snowberry scrub in the bottom of the bowl. That was a half-mile off, and I wondered if they weren't really robins flitting around, and I stood a long time to see if they might not make another flight. The longer nothing rose, the surer I was that they were grouse, out of the trees for the first time in the morning, flying to the feeding grounds. I couldn't remember ever having seen grouse fly in anything but their wild flushes, and I smiled, thinking of them flying like geese to their feed. It made me doubt that they were really grouse, but I started down to see just exactly what I had seen.
I had marked them carefully by a lone snag and clump of boulders, and I dropped back into the shade of the ridge as I neared the spot. Nothing happened, and I began to think I'd been fooled by a flight of robins. But then a big blue burst out from the base of the snag, starting with the crazy headlong rush down the draw before setting his wings and curving away and back up to land on the spine of the ridge, in a clear stretch of grass long enough that the sun was touching its tips-the one golden spot on the dark face of the reef.
I'd crouched at the flush, gun rising before I'd seen the grouse was out of range. Then I took a step forward, and two more burst out from below me, again out of range, and I began to wonder what I had stumbled upon. I turned down the hill, and a whole group launched, five or six of the big birds, again too far away. I fired anyway, wasting two shots, too excited not to.
The shots shook out the rest, some closer, in range, where I had to watch, gun empty, as they swung down and arced back up, all somehow following the leader into the golden patch of sunlight.
I swore and laughed and reloaded, imagining the old man really giving it to me now, dumping my shots at the hopeless while the possible escaped so cleanly. A whole fleet, he would've called it, and I didn't have a bird. Standing in the cool shade, I squinted against the brightness of the grouse's new cover, marking with care each spot I'd seen the birds settle into. I saw how I would climb the ridge, swinging wide to avoid flushing them early, how I would follow the ridge down, the sun at my back, that sparkling grass marking where the grouse would come up, scattered now, flushing in singles or pairs.
They would head for the draw, setting their wings and sailing, bright in the sun while the land I'd just crossed lay dark below them, still hidden in the shadow of the reef, leaving me and danger a half-mile behind with only those few shockingly strong, fast beats of their wings.
And I pictured, too, how open the land was, how nothing could get in my way, how much time I would have to swing with the birds in those golden seconds of sunlight, how they would tumble with the shot, back down to shadow, and how I would stare after them, wondering what I had done, wondering what I had ever done to deserve this.
I began the stiff walk up to the top of the reef, and when I crested its rocky lip, I wiped the sweat from my face and opened my gun and checked my shells. Then I turned back down to the stretch of sun and grass, and I started off to open my first season without the old man, the sun strong against my back, the grouse scattered and waiting before me.

Editor's Note: "Blues in the Reefs" is excerpted from Pete Fromm's King of the Mountain, published by Stackpole Books; www.stackpolebooks.com.

Pete Fromm, a four-time winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, is the author of three novels and five story collections, including a collection of hunting stories, King of the Mountain, and one of fishing stories, Blood Knot, as well as the memoir of his winter alone in the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness, Indian Creek Chronicles. He lives with his family in Great Falls, Montana.