Edited by Will Ryan
An early ode and some welcome company
by S.T. Hammond
(Adapted from My Friend the Partridge: Memories of New England Shooting by S.T. Hammond, New York, 1908.)
There is a charm in the pursuit of New England upland game that appeals to the heart of the sportsman, that fills his soul with a sweet content and delight that seldom comes to him in other, even the best game, sections of this broad land…
In the silent watches of the night, while camping out on the broad Iowa prairies with my companion and three strangers who had joined us at sunset, I answered, in response to the question as to how I liked Western shooting, that one day among the forest-crowned hills of New England was worth weeks on the plain. One of the strangers grasped my hand with a grip that made my fingers tingle, another threw his arms around me with a fervent “God bless you,” while the third gave by far the most flattering and impressive endorsement of opinion I had expressed by hastily drawing hand across his eyes as he arose and with head down walked away. I afterward learned that the man was born among the Berkshire hills in Massachusetts where he had spent many days in pursuit of his favorite sport, and it was his description of the wondrous beauty of locality that led me a few years later to one the fairest sections of country for the sportsman that I have ever seen. When I gazed upon his former home surrounded by the everlasting hills and feasted my eyes upon the beauties of nature in its rugged wildness here displayed, I could not doubt that the well springs of his heart were stirred to their utmost depths when on the bleak and desolate prairie he heard from stranger lips ardent words of praise for the old home of his youth so fondly loved…
This love for the shooting in New England is not merely love for the sport in itself but is a far deeper holier feeling than ever comes to him whose joy in the life of the field is inspired by success. A profound appreciation of the beautiful in nature for the grandeur of our ever-new, ever-changing panorama of hill and mountain, of sequestered nook and lovely dell, of laughing brook and bubbling spring, of whispering pine and stately oak, of balmy air and deep blue sky, creates and fosters this love until it permeates the whole being.
There is an endless diversity of happenings as well as surroundings, when in pursuit of our game birds, that adds much to our enjoyment when summing up the pleasures of the day. In many sections different varieties of game are to be found in the same coverts and there is often a glorious and deeply interesting uncertainty as to just what bird it is that is crouching before your dog. The partridge crank grips his gun with firmer clasp as he walks in to flush the bird, fondly hoping to hear the thunderous roar of the swiftly beating pinions of his favorite. The man who best loves the royal woodcock advances with eager step dreaming of the weird music of that querulous whistle and the gentle swish of the silken wings so pleasing to his ear, while he whose choice is the gamy quail with satisfied smile is reveling in thoughts of the tumultuous rush and roar of the startled bevy and by faith he sees the air thickly dotted with the flashing forms of the little bird he loves so well. Who shall say that this glorious uncertainty is not almost the best of the whole?
Surely not I, for I have enjoyed these pleasing sensations too many times to deny their power. I have a choice as to the bird I would flush, for my first favorite is that best of all game birds, the ruffed grouse, but I so love them all that I am cheerfully content with what the gods provide and am truly happy when either of the beautiful trio blesses me with its presence…
[Still] a brief period with the expert grouse hunter in the haunts of his favorite bird will nearly always prove to the cynic or tyro that there is a hitherto undreamed of wealth of sport and pleasure in the pursuit of this splendid bird and if he is possessed of true sportsmanlike instinct and has patience to persevere, his reward is sure and regal sport awaits his pleasure. The late Hon. George Ashmun — than whom a more finished gentleman or truer sportsman never went afield — was not in his earlier days a lover of the partridge in the way of sport. He was often the shooting companion of the immortal Webster and the only criticism of the great statesman that I ever heard him utter was that “he loved the partridge not wisely, but too well.”
My first two shooting expeditions with Mr. Ashmun were devoted to the woodcock covers and no attempt was made to search for grouse. Of course we took an occasional shot at them when we found them intruding, as he called it, on the woodcock grounds, but his distaste for following them was so pronounced that I rather reluctantly suppressed my inclinations and devoted my time to his favorite bird, the woodcock. The third time we were out together we visited the quaint old town of Holland in the southern portion of the old Bay State, a town that can boast more ragged rocks and rugged hills to the square acre than any town I know that holds or rather did hold so many birds.
On this occasion we very fortunately found one of his favorite woodcock covers without a single long bill, but we did find a noble covey of grouse that flushed wild and settled in some small detached patches of dense cover that looked most promising. With the most serious expression of countenance and voice that I could assume, I launched torrents of abuse at the intruding grouse for usurping the ground that was the birthright of the woodcock. Then, as the next friend of the evicted innocents, I appealed to my companion, as a lawyer, for advice as to the proper course to pursue. With a merry twinkle in his eye and a broad smile upon his countenance, he took a firmer grasp of his gun and in a melo-dramatic tone exclaimed Fiat justitia ruat cælum. [or, let justice be done though the heavens fall.]
Then we went for those intruders and for more than two hours we reveled in the enjoyment of such sport as only comes to the elect when, with congenial companion, the best dog in the world, beautiful surroundings, plenty of birds and straight powder, he adds one more priceless gem to the store of memories that shall come back to cheer and bless his joyless hours when shooting days are over.
Mr. Ashmun — as he afterward acknowledged — proposed going for the birds more to please me than with any thought of sport. He well knew that the royal bird had the warmest corner in my heart and that every nerve in my frame was still vibrating with responsive echo of the music of the quickly beating pinions. I plainly saw that his countenance lacked the animated expression that illuminated it when following his favorite bird, and it was with unbounded pleasure and satisfaction that I noted the gradual change in his features as the sport became more and more exciting, until even the “woodcock expression” was intensified and glorified, and I did not need the assurance he gave to know that he too had become a “partridge crank.” Mr. Ashmun never forsook his first love, the woodcock, but ever after this he had a good word for the bird he had so often condemned and was always ready to try conclusions with them…
Many years ago I took no little pride in the belief that I knew about all that was worth knowing in relation to this bird, but as the years rolled on I learned — and enjoyed pleasure in the learning — that my boasted knowledge was in truth insignificant. The more I learned of the habits and characteristics of my wily favorite, the less inclined was I to make a fool of myself by pretension to knowledge that I knew was far removed from perfection. Each season for more than a half century I have devoted considerable time to the pursuit of my favorite bird and I believe myself to be fairly proficient in their capture; but even now, with all my experience, they often get the best of me by playing some new dodge or trick, and so well do I know them that I feel sure that no matter how proficient I may become, their wits sharpened by experience, will often cause me sorrow as I realize that I have again been outwitted…
Within the limits of this goodly city and not more than two miles from where I am now sitting there is an extensive tract of forest and swamp with several little outlying alder runs that was a famous place for birds some years ago. Even now one can occasionally enjoy a little sport there. The queen of that section of country is a famous old hen partridge. She has lived in that vicinity and reared her family each season for several years. This veritable ghost bird has seen enough powder burned to annihilate her race and heard profanity enough to put to shame “our army in Flanders.” Tricks and subterfuges without number are part and parcel of her daily life throughout each open season. Strong of wing and ever watchful, she is up and away before danger approaches within harmful distance and so long and deviously uncertain is her flight that it is rare for one to find her the second time. I once saw her rise two gun shots away and fly straight as an arrow for a favorite cover, approaching it with every indication of alighting even to lowering near the ground and setting her wings; but just as she was near the edge, she swerved sharply to the right and with the seeming vigor of a newly started bird, she laid her course in the direction of another cover.
My companion joined me a few minutes later, when I explained matters to him and assured him that this was the turning point in this bird’s career, for we now had her down fine where she could not escape. With mutual congratulations upon our good fortune in getting on to this well-planned dodge, we wended our way to the cover with never a doubt that at last, after so many inglorious failures, the long-sought prize was ours. Arriving at the run that I had seen the bird making for, I sent my companion around to the point where she would be forced to pass and, ordering on the dog, I followed along the edge of the run feeling perfectly sure that there was no escape for our very uncertain friend. But when we came to the upper end and the dog had carefully worked out every foot of the cover, we found upon comparing notes that we did not feel quite so sure of the result, for she most certainly was not there.
There was a patch of birch cover a short distance farther on and we decided that she had taken refuge there. We proceeded to investigate the stronghold by deploying to the right and left. My companion was to take position at the far corner, while I entered the cover at the opposite end. We started for our respective posts. Some thirty yards away and right in my course was a patch of hazel about the size of a hogshead, which I passed so near that some of the branches brushed me, but it was not until I was twenty steps beyond it that I gave it a thought and then I had no time for much deliberation, for out from the clump came the roar of the quickly beating pinions of a grouse. It took me only the fractional part of a second to right about face and present arms, but there was not a feather in sight. Intuitively I realized that this ghost bird was flitting away out of sight under the protecting cover of that bunch of hazel. Instinctively I cut loose at the center of it. At the crack of the gun my companion gave a cheer that filled my heart with unalloyed pleasure, for I well knew that the escape of our long-sought quarry could never inspire a shout like that. When he joined me, my dog was delivering the bird into my hand. As I looked at it I cut short my friend’s exordium upon the wildest most crafty exasperating of birds, by telling him that this was not the bird he was holding an inquest upon, but only just an ordinary young bird that had made an ordinary mistake in leaving its stronghold at least an hour before the one we had been searching for would have stirred. The only item of interest to add to this tale is that our crafty friend still lives for we did not get even a glimpse of her…
There is a favorite cover among the Berkshire Hills that a friend and I have shot over for several years. A portion of this cover is a wide strip of alders along a small stream between two high and very steep hills. Upon one side there is open ground about twenty yards in width, with a hedge of hazel in the center some ten feet in width extending about a hundred yards. Nearly every time we visit the place a partridge flushes from the strip of hazel before we are within two gunshots of her and climbs straight in the air to the top of the hill and safety, for it is almost impossible to follow her. We put up with this treatment on several occasions without protest and rather admired the performance, but finally it became monotonous. We held a council of war and, after considerable deliberation, decided upon a course that would surely outgeneral the bird.
My companion went around at the foot of the opposite hill, beyond the head of the strip of hazel, where he crossed over and took position where the bird must give him a chance. When he was in place, I sent on the dog and followed him with perfect confidence that there would be no more of this exasperating nonsense, for my companion was a sure shot and both of us had already counted the bird. The dog had gone but a short distance along the hazel thicket when I heard the bird rise nearly at the upper end and soon saw her over the top of the thicket going in the right direction and I knew she was our meat. My companion stood facing me but when the bird was within ten feet of him he turned around and brought his gun into position intending to give it to her after she had passed him, but he never had a chance to pull trigger. That blessed bird no sooner caught sight of him than she pitched down to the ground not twenty feet beyond him, alighting under the shelter of a big stone, where she ran for her life until at a safe distance, when she again took wing and was soon over the hills and far away. We brought home sixteen birds that day but we always call it forty eight for we are both agreed that we had twice the fun and real enjoyment out of the bird in the hazel thicket that we did with all the others…
A congenial companion adds greatly to the pleasure of a day afield. As memory harks back through the long vista of years, I am profoundly grateful that I have been so singularly blessed in this respect. As I realize that these memories can never be wrested from me so long as life shall last, the coming days when the easy chair shall claim me for its own are shorn of their terrors and deep down in my heart is unutterable joy in the bright treasures so bountifully stored for time of need…
[I would like to call the following story] a lost opportunity, but a calm reconsideration of the matter assures me that this is a misnomer. I had flushed a partridge in front of the dog, and it had dodged behind a tree. As I side stepped to beat the move, a woodcock rose at my feet and flew between my arm and the gun. My companion very nearly had a fit, and even the dog laughed at the performance and plainly showed that he enjoyed it. I still have a hazy recollection that I must have done something abnormal to have aroused both man and dog, but I cannot remember the particulars well enough to give an intelligent description of the affair. I feel, however, that instead of jotting down in my note book another lost opportunity, I should simply have recorded a miss with both barrels. It was indeed a true sportsman who said, “It is not all of shooting to shoot, for amid the thronging memories of bygone days, when sport galore was sure, it is often the case that the big bag secured is dwarfed almost to insignificance by some unexpected occurrence that will ever remain a source of pleasure.”
Even the mishap that caused pain and wounded my pride…is often remembered with something very near akin to pleasure. This, at least, is the case with me for when in pursuit of the partridge, I have always tried to round up the many haps and mishaps into a satisfactory and pleasing whole, and I am very pleased to say with almost perfect success.
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And so with easy humor and a sly wink did the first of many wingshooting poets offer his self-effacing paean to the north country partridge. As Hammond confessed, “The more I learned of the habits and characteristics of my wily favorite, the less inclined was I to make a fool of myself by pretension to knowledge…” His humility has been duly noted. More than 50 years later, H.G. Tapply astutely observed that “Many a purple paragraph has been written in praise of the ruffed grouse, but not nearly so many about how to hunt him, which speaks well for the common sense of outdoor writers in general.” Said outdoor writers should all thank Hammond for the heads up.
If your main goal in life was to hunt partridge, Stephen Tillinghast Hammond had the advantage of being at the right place at the right time—that is, in New England in the 19th century. Bird hunting in America was still in the pre-sport stage of John James Audubon collecting samples and townsfolks clubbing passenger pigeons when Hammond was born in Webster, Mass., on December 21, 1831. For most of his adult life Hammond and his wife, the former Miss Emma Day, lived in the Springfield area of Massachusetts, where they raised a family of four children, and from which Hammond launched a half-century worth of forays into the partridge covers of New England, the Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts, especially.
Hammond’s spiritual attachment to the ruffed grouse and its environs began at an early age, probably even before he snared his first one at age 11. He loved the outdoors for its hunting and fishing, but also for all things plant and animal. The same year that he snared his first partridge, for example, he won a $300 prize in a national contest for the biggest flora collection.
Before long Hammond picked up a shotgun—and was never again the same. At age 22, he set out west to Iowa (as noted in this excerpt), then in its seventh year of statehood, and spent a year wandering the plains and, well, hunting—all this, 10 years before the Civil War, a full quarter-century before Little Bighorn. In what would become the story of his life, he jammed as much shooting as possible into a single year. As his editor, George Bird Grinnell, noted, that included everything “from deer to cottontail, from wild turkey to quail, from swan to butterball (buffleheads), from sandhill crane to jack snipe.”
Hammond continued his enthusiastic pursuit of feathered game for more than 50 years, hunting up, down and across the country. Like other notable sportsmen of the late 19th century, he pursued a variety of careers and interests. He didn’t have the daily motor of TR, who constantly read multiple books, wrote others, all the while planning safaris and running the country. But Hammond would have won on longevity. He began as a commuter, working during the week in New York City and returning to Massachusetts periodically on weekends. He enjoyed initial success as a businessman, but overinvested in real estate and lost a bundle in 1878. He signed on with George Grinnell and served as the kennel editor for Forest and Stream for 10 years, where he made his name as a dog training expert, judging field trials and writing two books on the subject.
Hammond then retired (sort of) and moved back to Springfield full time and, with his reputation for good fellowship and knowledge of horticulture, opened business as a florist and (of course) spent even more time hunting and fishing and writing. In time, he secured a position with the Springfield armory and worked there until age 80, when he (again) retired. He wrote his last outdoor story at age 90. He retired (once more) from that work too, though he stayed active with his 60th wedding anniversary, which according to newspaper accounts was a quite the shindig and open to the public. The Hammonds celebrated several more anniversaries, but they were more age-appropriate apparently, befitting a couple of their senior status. Hammond died at the age of 93.
Whew.
Through the careers, interests and pater familial duties, there was one constant: his friend, the partridge. To be sure, there were times when grouse populations fell to precipitous lows in their characteristic cycles. Those were dark days. He rather stoically allowed that, yes, “I have survived several seasons when partridge were decidedly scarce.” His dedication to the hunt was such that, as George Grinnell wrote in the foreword to this book, Hammond had had an accident at work two years earlier and “smashed up his ankle so badly that he will be a cripple for life, but he hunts partridge just the same.” Hammond was 77 at the time.
New England of Hammond’s time would have been unrecognizable to us today, with 60 to 80 percent of it cleared land. Put another way, when Hammond waxes on about “the forest-crowned hills of New England,” he means that literally. The small-scale, hodge-podge farming communities of late 19th-century New England did provide enough secondary growth to sustain good populations of birds, given the light hunting pressure. William Harnden Foster, author of New England Grouse Shooting (1941), wrote of that era, “there were not many…dyed in the wool pa’tridge gunners… Each country town could number three or four…” An example of the minimal pressure: Elsewhere in My Friend the Partridge Hammond writes of a beautiful warm November day sometime around 1875 when he and his wife took the horse and buggy out hunting and, while she worked the reins, Hammond killed 16 birds, half within the Springfield city limits.
By the time this book appeared, however, the landscape was changing, with the desertion of small farms, which Hammond alludes to with “the grandeur of our ever-new, ever-changing panorama of hill and mountain.” The key element as far as the partridge went was the profusion of regrowth that became the region’s great wildlife habitat of the 20th century. At the same time, the new industrial order also brought a dramatic increase in hunting pressure from city folks finding joy in recreational hunting. Nobody was shooting eight grouse inside the city limits of Springfield by the turn of the century, given that its population had more than doubled in the 25 years since Hammond and his wife took the buggy for a ride.
The takeaway: Hammond’s perspective is singularly unique in that he had the experience of extensive partridge hunting in two different ecological periods. George Grinnell called him “The Nestor of American Sportsmen,” a reference to Greek mythology, in which Nestor was a well-travelled, champion warrior as a young man and became a wise ruler who gave sage advice as an elder.
As always, Grinnell knows about these things. His point is less that Hammond is a highly skilled hunter, which he was, of course, and more that in his wisdom he understands and treasures the richness of sport hunting for grouse. When Hammond came to hunting as a boy in the 1840s, New England partridge hunting was, for the most part, a commercial enterprise, and snares were a key part of the ensemble. The idea of enjoying the hunt because the birds were tricky critters to start with and difficult to hit with a shotgun once you did get them in the air, would have been out of people’s consciousness. Employing a dog in such an undertaking would have been even sillier.
As sport hunting gained traction in the years before and after the Civil War, shooting over pointing dogs became increasingly popular, and Hammond was at the vanguard. In fact, he rues the one season in his hunting life when he didn’t have one, writing that “I was entirely out of a dog.” He insisted that “my nights and Sundays were devoted to making solemn resolutions that next season I would have matters arranged more to my satisfaction.” But “I was far from being in my normal condition.”
It wasn’t often that Hammond was short on dogs. He was recognized as a national expert in training them and was remarkably far-sighted in his humane and analytical approaches. As he wrote in Practical Training; or Training vs. Breaking (1882), “Nearly all writers on the subject of dog training appear to think that all knowledge that is not beaten into a dog is worthless…[with punishments that extended] to an occasional charge of shot.” Hammond, by contrast, laid out a positive-reinforcement approach of getting the dog to develop an internal sense of self-control, and included such unusual (for the time) steps as training dogs in the yard as puppies. Put another way, the same philosophy of seeing the forest for the trees, so to speak, that characterized his approach to partridge hunting, characterized his approach to dog training, as well.
Grouse are no easier quarry for dogs than they are for hunters. They flush wild when its windy, hide in pine trees when its wet and run like rabbits when hunters pussyfoot up to the point. Hammond adored his dogs, although he never required one, per se, to fill his bag; rather, he saw dogs as necessary if you wished to derive the ultimate in richness and enjoyment from the hunt—which he surely did. All the great writers on grouse hunting through the years—Foster, Spiller, Evans, Tapply Ford—felt much the same. An untrained or inferior dog can ruin a hunt, but a good, well-trained grouse dog can result in more birds in the air, more in hand. And, you never know—you might get that great grouse dog that comes along once in a lifetime. But even if you don’t, the relationship is worth it. As Charlie Waterman once wrote: “Old Kelly. He wasn’t the best bird dog in the world, but none ever tried harder.”
For better or worse, the dog is part of the hunting team, and a solid point is to be admired as much as a good shot. More so, perhaps. After all, outfoxing a partridge, unnecessary really in the days when Hammond started hunting as a boy, had become the coin of the realm as hunting pressure increased in the late 19th century. Hammond had the self-awareness to realize the evolution didn’t make partridge hunting less interesting. Quite the contrary. Matching wits with them became the essence of grouse hunting. And as Hammond writes, “that will ever remain a source of pleasure.”
As with all other things partridge, Hammond was money. We never think of other upland game as outwitting a hunter. But if you are a grouse hunter, you’ve no doubt had one roar out of the same overhead tree you’ve been standing under for 10 minutes, or flushing from a stonewall just as you are answering nature’s call. And anyone who hunts a string of covers, knows how one seems to always have a certain solitary grouse that flummoxes all pursuers—just as Hammond describes here. In “Keep Out of My Grouse Covers,” written a half-century after MyFriend the Partridge, H.G. “Tap” Tapply and his partner chase around one hen they even name (the Stinker). In grouse hunting cosmology, it could well have been a written descendant of the bird that made fools of Hammond and his buddy.
Hammond does write with a florid style, typical of nature writing of his day. This book appeared at a time when the New England “view” was just becoming commodified, with farms overgrowing and “leaf peepers” traveling north by trains and paying money just to look at, in singer Jesse Winchester’s words, “a million flaming trees.” Hammond revels in this scenic backdrop, and his descriptions not only bask in the sentimentality of New England’s “genteel tradition” but treat the beauty as integral to partridge hunting itself. Grouse hunting in general tends to venerate setting and celebrate the particular location, be it the upper Midwest, Pennsylvania or northern New York. But New Englanders can start to act like they’re the real grouse hunters. As Foster wrote a half-century later, “Those friendships made in the New England pa’tridge covers usually lasted because they were founded on something wholesome and real and solid as the country itself.” Hammond’s literary plow started that furrow too.
His enthusiasm notwithstanding, Hammond’s genius was to take what he loved and write about it in a way that made others want to follow his path. Grinnell and Roosevelt and others pointed to the sporting challenge of game as the source of its nobility. Hammond took matters to another level, insisting that the elusiveness produced our affection—and the more the partridge eluded, the deeper our affection. “Even the mishap that caused pain and wounded my pride,” as Hammond writes, “is often remembered with something very near akin to pleasure.…[These] moments often come back to me when in over hauling memory’s storehouse and I find myself again threading the leafy aisles of some favorite cover of the good old days.” Understandable he is looking back, given that he is 77 at the time, but in a sense, anyway, you know that he is still getting after ’em. I bet Hammond would have been a great guy to hunt with.
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Will Ryan grew up as assistant trainer for his father’s Brittanies and has swung and missed on countless grouse up, down and across the beautiful hills of northern New York and old Vermont.
