A Long Winter’s Night – Of Partridges and Men
Posted By Randy on December 23, 2012
My late Esteemed Friend Michael Baker came from a long line of shotgunners – men who lived for the hunting of waterfowl and upland game.
In Lunenburg County, where we both grew up, there lies an island connected to the mainland by a short causeway, and the name of that place is Herman’s Island. The name comes from a prominent local surname, and assorted members of Michael’s extended family maintained permanent homes or seasonal cottages there. At the farthest end of the island lay, in those days, Camp Villa Maria, a large and rambling tract of field, forest, and associated rustic buildings that was operated until December 1996 by the Roman Catholic Church as a youth summer camp. The place was deserted by hunting season, and we had permission to pursue the assortment of small game that lived there – Rabbits, Partridge, and Pheasant – and so it came to pass while we were still in high school that a tradition was established in which the twenty-sixth day of December would be set aside for a day afield to indulge in the primal joys of the chase.
Those were good days full of merry jests, camaraderie, and the best that Winter in the outdoors of Nova Scotia can offer, capped off with all the right kinds of warming and revitalizing refreshments at the end of it all. Sometimes game was taken, sometimes not, and it never really mattered. A kill was never the point.
My story today is a brief one, dwarfed in fact by the length of its preamble. It occurs on one of the few and rare Decembers twenty-sixth on which I was unable to attend the annual hunt. As it happened, Michael went in the company of his younger brother Peter.
The snow was unusually thick for the time of year, and it lay heavy on the spruce trees. Lacking a Dog, and with the quarry wearing its Winter finery, the hunting of Rabbits was rendered a hit or miss proposition – mostly miss – and after a while it was decided to call it a day. It was on the way back, as the hunters exited the woods and were approaching a small stand of fruit trees, that their presence flushed a Partridge causing it to fly a short distance before alighting in one of them. Our two worthies froze in their tracks, mindful of their now safely unloaded shotguns as the Bird stood on its perch watching them.
Whatever became of that Partridge will forever be unknown to Men, for it was left unmolested by those hunters so long ago, and if anyone has encountered it since he has neither spoken nor written of it. What is known is that in relating his sensibilities to me some time later, Michael explained them thus: “I looked at the Bird, the Bird looked at me – and then I saw what it was sitting on. There was no way, in the Christmas season, that I was going to flush and shoot a Partridge from a Pear Tree.”
Well done , Mike use to come to my cottage years ago.
Thank you David. I have a vast assortment of tales from my long friendship with Michael, many of which can't be told publicly.
Randy Michael was much younger when I lived in Lun. But he was friends with Dr. Abriel who was my neighbor and we then became friends. They got the brain wave to buy windsurfers and came for lessons at my cottage as I did it for years. I remember when he bought his new dark blue Volvo and could not wait to take me for a drive. I use to see him on TV all the time and ran into him from time to time in HRM what a waste to think he is gone.
I've driven with Michael too, more than once, and can attest that to have done so demands no further need to prove one's bravery. A story about Michael and Dave Abriel was told to me by Michael himself shortly after it happened. Michael had some sort of back issue he wanted checked out. Lying face down in his underwear on Dave's examining table, Dave was twisting Michael's leg in assorted ways. Two large and portly men, grappling. At one point, the good Dr. Abriel stopped the twisting and said to Michael, "Do you know what we look like? Two Sumo wrestlers."