When heavy March showers finally washed into April sunshine,  my "new" friend James Ramsey brought his young English setter, Mt. Storm, for more work on released bobwhite.  To say James is a "new" friend is a bit of a misnomer;  we have known of each other for decades, through the writers and English setter breeders George and Kay Evans.  James was a close friend to the Evans's, and I tease him about being George's "gun runner," ferrying shotguns for stock or barrel work back and forth between Old Hemlock and the Ohio gun wizard Ken Eyster.  James was good enough to stay in touch, sometimes with a kind word about something I'd written or with a news clipping he thought I'd find interesting, like when Nash Buckingham's cherished Fox shotgun "Bo Whoop" was miraculously recovered long decades after the legendary writer had left it at a gun warden's check point.

James and I renewed our friendship over a litter of setter puppies James and his friend Tony Losco whelped at Tony's beautiful home, not ten minutes from my farm.  When James learned I had a few quail left from our winter releases, he asked if he could bring Mt. Storm over for some bird work.

Quail here at Longhunter's Rest are coddled creatures kept as "wild" as possible.  Bought when they are still about two months away from mature flight, our quail are kept in roomy pens Bob Thompson built on plans from Nilo Plantation, John Olin's Winchester show place in Illinois.  The three pens are above ground, covered on one end and designed for 150 birds;  we never harbor more than 125 in each one for the season.  Overcrowding is the root of all evil in housing everything from people to peafowl;  our birds have plenty of room to grow and feather out.

They are kept in relative isolation.  Generous feed hoppers and waterers mean that I am only at the pens every few days, keeping them from being habituated to humans as much as possible.

This farm is a better place to live when there are quail around.  My working day starts before dawn, but my study is on the end of the house closest to the quail pens.  When the first quail calls float into my consciousness as I'm writing, I know it's time to wrap up what I'm doing and get out to do horse, pigeon, cattle, and kennel chores.  So much better to be called to duty via quail chatter rather than some iPhone's canned alarm.

We train our quail before we use them to train our dogs.  Toward the end of September, I pull the feed hoppers and position a bright orange catch 'n' carry crates along one mesh wall of the pen, the looped end of stiff wire that opens and closes the crate's side door protruding through the mesh on the woods side of the pens.  I pour the kibbled quail food and some wild bird seed into one corner of the box; when the birds become hungry enough, inquisitive enough, they will eventually walk into the crate to feed.  I will feed that way for two days, then put the big hoppers back in for two or three, go back to the crate again for a couple, alternating the food sources until we're finally ready to use the birds in front of our dogs.

Then I pull all the feed one day in advance of the release.  At dawn on a training day, I will slip one of the orange crates into the pen, bait it, and tie a stout length of baling twine to the looped end of the gate wire nosing out of the pen mesh.  I back up into the woods, playing twine out as I go, then hunker down to wait for birds to begin clambering into the crate to feed.  When I feel like I have enough birds for our use, I pull the twine until the side gate on the crate slides shut.  

There's always a commotion as the birds realize they are caught.  I wait for them to calm down, slip down out of the woods, ease the crate out of the pen doors and immediately cover the box of birds with a section of old carpet.  This calms them as they're carried to the golf cart we use to ferry birds into the field.

The point is never handle the quail until a dog makes the retrieve.  No matter how careful we are, handling struggling bobwhites breaks feathers.  Damaged flight feathers impact bird performance...and we want these birds to get up and get gone when they're flushed.

We drive the covered box out into the release area, ease it into thick cover, then ease the gate wire back into the crate to open that side door.  If the birds fly out, that's OK; we mark them as best we can. We'd prefer them to walk out so that we have the best possible idea of just where a young dog is most likely to begin making game during a training session.  Once all the birds have melted into cover, we remove the box and head back to the house.

For our morning with Mt. Storm, I ending up walking nine birds out in the first release, six the second.  James opted for me to carry a camera, rather than a gun as we worked the beautiful young dog up the hill behind the farmhouse, quartering toward the release point in order to make the best use of cover.  Mt. Storm has a great deal of puppy still coursing (and cursing) his run out, but on this, his second trip to the farm for birds, he settled in to hunt with very little skylarking.

The birds had been released about two hours before training and had moved a bit away from where I'd put them out.  Mt. Storm's first point was a good one, punching the big setter up into a staunch point that he held long enough for a photo up.  The bird blinked first, whirring out of a clump of spent winter's grass. The dog chased it a fair bit before coming back in where James could style him up at the spot he'd stood on point.  As Mt. Storm calmed down and finally stood still, James gave him the OK and heeled the dog in the opposite direction of the flush. 

For the rest of the morning, Mt. Storm's sins were of enthusiasm;  he got the bit in his teeth and mishandled several other finds, crowding birds into flight.  In between hijinks, Mt. Storm had two more staunch stands.

For most of this dog's life, James has had family obligations that have limited his time afield with his dog.  His emphasis on our two training sessions was to make certain Mt. Storm was hunting hard and hunting happy by giving him all the bird contact he could manage.  Those sporting quail kept our Storm brewing, the big dog growing keener by the encounter, going to his game with slashing style, even through some of the nastier multiflora cover I have on the farm.  

He is a good athlete, this young dog of primarily Alder Run lines.  The Alder Run dogs trace their beginnings to the friendship between Walt Lesser and George and Kay Evans. George and Kay ended up placing a female named Ryman's Blue Heather with Walt.  She was the fountainhead for Walt's kennel and one of the matriarchs to what some of us refer to as true "Allegheny ruffed grouse dogs".

By morning's end, Mt. Storm had managed a good number of bird contacts, and James had a clear idea of the obedience work he has in front of him, especially with Mt. Storm's compliance with the "hold" command (both he and I say "Hold" rather than "whoa," a small homage to George Bird Evans).  But it is more clear to me than ever that this Mt. Storm certainly has "it," that elusive quality that the really memorable dogs always have.  Maybe "it" is a personality spark, a particular facility for finding game, some connection made during training, a performance on a particular day that marks that dog (and its owner-partner)forever.  Mount Storm, puppy-reckless, hard-charging, maddeningly headstrong, has "it," and James couldn't quit smiling as Mt. Storm rested in his crate as James brought out two puppies from this year's litter by an Old Hemlock dog named Buckeye Casey.

As we sat in the warm April sunshine, watching two lanky adolescent puppies tear around the farmyard, it occurred to me that James Ramsay has worked hard and dreamed big in order to deserve young dogs like these.  I looked up into the back of Ramsay's Land Rover where Mt. Storm peered through the bars of his travel crate.  I couldn't help but think that, come this autumn, a different kind of front is going to move through James's grouse coverts.  Best batten down the hatches and get ready for Mt. Storm.