“Come on Sadie, load up girl, there’s birds out there!”

By Marc Puckett

Having had dogs that wouldn’t load, like Tilley at 70 pounds, Sadie is a pleasure. Like a gymnast leaping up to the parallel bars, she clears the tailgate and disappears into her straw stuffed kennel. She is only two and on her first trip west.

I won’t make the same mistake with her that I did with Tilley.

Tilley never went west. She died just short of five from an undetected infection that remained symptom free until it was too late. It was a shocking and heartbreaking loss. To love anything is to risk heartbreak, but perhaps the greater risk is a life of fear and timidity.

Tilley’s death made me realize that in my late 50s I had become what I loathed — scared and worried most of the time. Tilley was happy and fearless right up to her last few days. I, on the other hand, always had a reason to decline when invited on a bird hunting trip.

“Man, I’d like to, but Mom and Dad aren’t doing well. I hate to be too far away.”

I’m not sure how I’d come to where I was. I guess life takes a toll. You stop taking chances and start playing it safe — and you end up not living, just existing — standing in place like a stalk of bluestem waving in the breeze.

After another declined invite in a long line of declined invites, a friend finally said to me, “Marc, my parents are old, too, but you have to live your life. You’re not getting any younger either.”

He was as right as an Adams dry fly on a trout stream in May.

And then it was too late for Tilley. She lived a great but short life and never saw the vast prairies.

On the ride west, I had long stretches of road to think things through. As the speakers played Robert Earl Keen classics, I wondered what had happened to me. When did I transition from the young man who skipped two weeks of grad school to fly to Oregon and hunt with my mentor and classmate just before exams? When I came back my credit card was maxed out and I had six dollars left in my bank account — tired and penniless, but happy.

I’d taken trips to Nebraska, Kansas, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia with my old setter, but now I had become old and afraid. I used to live like there was no end to the sand in the top of my hourglass. Then I started trying to hold on too tightly, but it was like trying to hold a squirming trout fresh out of the water. No one knows how much time they have left so you might as well live like Tilley, right up until the last little speck of life fades from your eyes.

Two days later, on the blustery prairie of western Kansas, Sadie settled into the classic setter crouch as combine chaff rolled across the plains like smoke in the distance.

Then the quail were up like finger mullet breaking the water above a school of bluefish. With the sun in my eyes, I lead one of the escaping shadows and felt the recoil against my shoulder. One bird fell. I fired again, but the scatter of shot found only bluestem scented air.

When we found the bird, I reached into the talc bag in my game vest and grabbed a handful of Tilley, only ashes now, and sent them into the wind across the prairie.

Three days later in the Nebraska Sandhills, sharptails spookier than brook trout in a mountain rill had us panting and frazzled. Time after time they flushed just out of range and then teasingly settled down still within sight. The problem is that on the plains that can be miles away.

Then, topping a low rise, the hot wind in our faces, Sadie got birdy. I dropped into a crouch, looped far to the right, and slipped over the rise back towards Sadie’s silhouette. Then the covey was behind my gun barrel, and two fell from the sky. Upon finding them we collapsed. I pulled out the water and we both took long, celebratory drinks. Then my fingers were back in the talc bag. This time I dug a little hole in the dirt and mixed Tilley into the prairie.

A few diner breakfasts up the road and we were in Ben O. William’s land of Huns. Much like I always wanted to fish the Fryingpan River after reading John Gierach’s fly-fishing classics, I also wanted to see Montana behind a bird dog. Sadie had seen bobwhite coveys of 12 or 15 birds, but never anything like a 25-bird bevy of Huns. While the flight of the covey was exhilarating, the subtle beauty of the individual birds was unmatched. Their feathers reflect every hue of a prairie sunset.

Our trip continued for many weeks. Sadie found chukar on the ridges above Oregon’s John Day River and I shook my head in amazement as she sped along rock ledges, somehow managing to avoid a slip into thin air and die with a chukar in her mouth 200 feet below.

As our journey continued through several more states, we made more memories like this until we simply ran out of go. Somewhere along the way, my fear dissipated like the odor of burnt gunpowder into the wind. I stopped counting the time I had left and started living for now — feathers to mouth, fur to briers, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

I plan to spend the rest of my days, as long as I have left, making this story come true.

Marc Puckett is a lifelong outdoorsman. He is less than two months away from retiring from the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources where he has proudly helped lead their private lands biologist team for the last 15 years. He resides in rural Virginia with his wife Sarah, daughter Grace, and dogs Sadie and Biscoe.

Editor’s Note: In lieu of payment for his essay, Marc has generously donated the money to QF for a Dog Life membership for Sadie. Sadie will join Tilley as a QF Dog Life Member.

This story originally appeared in the Winter 2024-25 issue of Quail Forever Journal