The Groundhog Hunter (from the "Riley" series)
Posted: Monday, October 31, 2011
by Jack H. Schick
A mile or so down the road from our place there are two small lakes. They are actually filled in quarries at the old brick yard. They dug out huge amounts of the red shale and made building blocks for many decades. It’s a common fishing location and a great place to run the dogs. There is a path completely around one of the lakes. Most of the area is over grown with brush and grass with woods along the whole the back side of the lake. The place is teeming with wildlife, ducks, geese, herons, egrets, cormorants, rabbits, squirrels and, most significantly, groundhogs.
When I got over to her, I saw Riley. He looked exhausted, was panting, red eyed and drooling. His chest was stained with blood. On the ground in front of him was a large, dead groundhog.
“Look what he brought!” she said. “Get it away from him. Get rid of it!”
I didn’t know what she wanted me to do with it. Riley was extremely proud of his kill. I didn’t want to discourage him. I needed some groundhog meat for the Game Feed at Deer Camp and considered keeping it. It was a nice, big one. She wouldn’t stand for me bringing it home in the back of the jeep, though. I knew if I took it away from him and tossed it in the bushes, Riley would just go get it again.
I figured he’d lose interest in it sooner or later, so we just continued on our walk around the lake. Riley picked it up and carried it along. It weighed at least ten pounds. At his biggest (until he got old and fat), Riley, an orange and white American Brittany, weighted about 40 pounds. He’d put the carcass down and rest, then pick it up again and follow along, lagging further and further behind. Finally he did lose interest and left it. It was only the first of many similar experiences, though.
Riley was a premier, once in a lifetime gun dog. He had an unsurpassed desire for and skill at hunting of any kind. Besides his phenomenal career as a professional bird hunt guide dog, he developed an intense passion for killing groundhogs. Over his career, he ‘got’ 41 of them. Some of the kills involved intense, vicious fights. Several times I had to intervene. He was only wounded three times, and one of those was because his ‘step-brother’ got involved and distracted him. It was a pastime for him, a sport. We never went, specifically, “groundhog hunting.”
His method of killing them was to grab them in the middle and shake them vigorously, throw them down, then dart in and do it again. The attack was always accompanied by loud and frightening snarling, barking and growling. Riley had an insane streak that prompted him to uncontrolled violence. He often “lost control,” but in many cases was able to focus the energy on groundhogs. Once he’d cornered one, there was no stopping him, no calling him off, no restraining him. I could only stand back and wait until the fight was over.
Several times, when he was engaged with an exceptionally large one—a few times they were nearly half his size—I had to help. On time, he had a large one among some dirt hills at an excavation site. The fight had gone on for at least five minutes. Riley (and the groundhog), were exhausted. I picked up a large slab of shale and finished him off. Once, the groundhog was so large and vicious that I waited until Riley backed off a few feet and shot it. We were headed for the goose pond and I didn’t want him wounded or too exhausted to do retrievals. Once, I held the animal down with my walking stick so he could safely get in and finish it off. Another time, he was fighting one in a large puddle after a heavy rain. I waded in and stepped on it, holding it under until it stopped fighting.
Riley was only wounded three times during groundhog kills. Once, he had one trapped in a drainage pipe. It was too small for him to get in at it, but he forced his head in as far as he could and got a bite on the end of his nose. When he was young and still learning how to handle the larger ones, he lunged in, grabbed it in the middle and began to shake it. It was able to reach around and chomp down on the side of his face. It gave him a nasty laceration, but died in the process. Another time, Riley and his ‘step-brother,’ Cody, had a big one cornered in a lagoon along the lake shore. All three of them were in the almost knee deep water splashing around making horrible noises. When Riley lunged for it, Cody lunged too. Riley hesitated and the groundhog gave him a deep cut on his tongue that left a flap of skin hanging loose. He eventually killed it, though, even with all the distractions.
His groundhog fixation was notorious. I had him at work one weekend. We have a groundhog problem on the sewer plant grounds. There was a huge one feeding about 30 yards away, out in the middle of the mowed grass field adjacent to the administration building. Riley spotted it. It was leery. It saw us. Riley slowly began stalking toward it. As a co-worker and I watched, I said “He’ll never get it.”
“I bet you lunch he does,” the guy said.
It took Riley a good five minutes to get close. He’d walk a few steps and freeze when the groundhog looked at him. He’d take a few more steps then freeze. Finally the groundhog realized he was in danger and ran for a gap in the chain-link fence. Riley was on him before he got through the hole, grabbed him, shook him and threw him down. The groundhog got through the hole in the fence and turned around, realizing he’d never get to his den in time. They fought, face to face for a few minutes before Riley got a hold of his head, dragged him through the fence and finished him off. I had to buy lunch.
When Riley was around, we always had groundhog at the Game Feed; sometimes in chili, sometimes as barbeque, sometimes in a fricassee. Groundhog meat tastes exactly like turkey thigh meat. But, Riley is gone now; gone but not forgotten. He was the best natural gun dog I’ve ever had or ever will have. He had an instinct for the kill like no other. I have never seen, or even heard of, a dog that had such an almost perverse desire to hunt and kill groundhogs.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Fabulous story. I just lost my hellacious, wild and nutty Chihuahua. Still emotional over that. Your bio of Riley is one for a magazine article. I love the way you describe his kills. Dogs are amazing creatures.This is the sixth or so from the "series" that I've posted here. Yes, a once in a lifetime dog.Well, I wasn't always your fan. I will catch up.
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