12 years, that’s the age of the blackjack oak cut by my dad and I on the eve of North Carolina’s 2023 dove opener. We were killing time, having already made runs to the nearest town both east AND west of our opening weekend headquarters. 38 and 46 mile round trips respectively. One for shotgun shells and the other for cheeseburgers, both worth the trip in their own way. We had run every errand we could think to run and the braves game wouldn’t start for another 6 hours. It was one of those moments where we were faced with the age-old choice of: find something to do or start drinking beer. Since the sun was still a little too high in the sky for the latter, we chose the former. 

For some time I had been meaning to find a blackjack oak 2 or 3 inches thick that I could cut and cure for smoker fuel. I don’t know if other folks are like this or not, but I’ve usually got a list of 30 or 40 things in my head that “would be a cool thing to do one day”. These things are not necessarily productive tasks and are unencumbered by urgency. In fact, most folks would probably characterize them as meaningless pursuits. Nevertheless, “cut a blackjack oak from the family property and use it to cook for my family” made the list. I didn’t cut the tree with any sort of documentation in mind, which is something I’ve got to get better about, but as I laid the wood in my smoker on christmas day the concept for this piece began to materialize in my head. I was blown away when I sat down to count the rings and write my opening line on the second day of 2024. 

12 years ago (11 and some change really, but I’m claiming artistic license here) in October of 2012, my wife and I drove to Camden, SC to pick up a puppy. He was the fattest yellow lab in a litter of 8, born to dogs owned by my parents and sister, and the only one who would allow himself to be carried on his back like a baby so into the truck he went. I could write pages and pages about Ham, and if you stick around through the rebirth of this account I can guarantee you’ll read more than a few Ham anecdotes. He was THAT dog. He and I hunted together for 8 seasons and in that time he brought 521 wild birds to my outstretched hand, checked off 27 of the 41 species of North American waterfowl and for the 340 days a year we weren’t hunting he was the best dog a person could ask for. He was there for every major event of our adult lives, all the highs and lows. From the ups and downs of being a young married couple to bringing our daughters home from the hospital, Ham was there with us. That morning in November of 2021 when I found him pacing the kitchen, not acting like himself, will forever be one of the hardest days of my life. Ham and I hunted in a lot of places but there’s one in particular that stood out above all the rest when I thought about where I wanted to put his ashes. There’s a little corner of our dove field where water from the wood duck hole nearly touches the field edge, separated only by a thin strip of river birch and switch cane. I was in that corner when I shot a dove 2 minutes after legal time on opening day in September of 2013, Ham’s first retrieve. A few months after that Ham and I waded out into the aforementioned flooded timber to check ducks off of his list of firsts. We would revisit that spot many times over the next 7 seasons, only walking out skunked once. Seemed fitting for things to end where they started.

12 days. There’s that number again. 12 days after Ham died I jumped in the deep end and picked up an english cocker puppy. I had met the new pup’s litter by chance about a week before everything happened, and had taken notice of one male that had let me hold him on his back. After some back and forth with Black River Kennels to confirm that the lemon ticked male was still available, I set about figuring how I might loop my better half into the proceedings. At the time our daughters were 2.5 and 6 months, both still in diapers. Delicate conversation doesn’t even begin to cover it. I can’t remember exactly how I broke the news to my wife that I had a dog picked out and was going to get him, but with enough requests for trust and assurances that she wouldn’t have to lift a finger, I was out the door and headed south on 421.

Having hunted over cockers for the first time a few years prior, I knew I wanted one eventually but didn’t think I’d be in the market as soon as I was. I fell in love with their personality in the field and felt like training and hunting alongside a cocker would be different enough from doing it with a 90lb lab, that the new pup could avoid any unfair comparisons and write his own story. We named him Cheese as a bit of an homage to his predecessor. The change came with its own growing pains as they all do, but after 2 years he’s taken his place as part of the family. He’s turning out to be pretty damn good in the field too, certainly won’t be the best to ever do it but that’s not why I originally got into gundogs and it’s not why I got Cheese.

So why is this piece called The Long Game? 12 years after that acorn germinated on a sandy ridge between two creek bottoms and 12 years after I got my start in the world of companion gundogs, I set out to check two more items off of my “would be a cool thing to do one day” list. Cheese and I waded out into that same stand of flooded timber, right next to that same corner of the dove field, to try and make a bonafide duck dog out of a field bred english cocker spaniel and more importantly to do it in that place. I’m not a religious man by any stretch of the imagination, but I have been known to get a little bit spiritual from time to time. I’ve watched the world around me awaken from its slumber in that exact spot more times than I can count. I’ve sat out there on days when I felt on top of the world. I’ve also sat out there on days when I felt it crashing around me, just so I could make sure the sun would still rise in the east. This time felt unlike any other. Legal shooting time was 6:42am and we had a two drake/one hen limit of wood ducks on the strap by 7. Cheese took some coaxing before he picked up the first bird, it being twice the size of anything he’d retrieved before and still kicking vigorously, but eventually grabbed it and brought it to hand. The next two couldn’t have been more textbook. He threw himself into the cold, black water and picked up those ducks like he’d been doing it all his life. Like there was something buried deep inside that compelled him to go. Something that neither Cheese or myself, nor anyone else that’s ever taken off in pursuit of a game bird could ever really explain. We sat to watch the last few birds filter through the trees and soak it all in before picking up decoys, a sausage biscuit in both of our futures. Afterwards I couldn’t shake the feeling that this particular limit had been a foregone conclusion well before my alarm went off that morning. 

As it usually does right after a successful hunt, my mind turned to the kitchen and what would become of these birds. They were, after all, far too special to be lumped into a gumbo or hacked to chunks, destined to become overcooked vehicles for cream cheese, jalapenos and bacon. These ducks deserved to be turned into something more, to have a place on the Christmas tablescape alongside other dishes that we save for the time of year where we slow down, drink a little more than we normally would and break out the fine china. After the wood duck breasts took a 7 day bath in a pickling brine and spent a few hours on the smoker over dad and I’s blackjack oak, I layered the thinly-sliced duck pastrami over a rye cracker with some spicy dijon and gruyere from the fancy cheese part of the grocery store. As I laid the finished plate down on the kitchen island, contemplating a single bite over a decade in the making, waiting on three generations from two sides of a family tree to arrive at my house for Christmas dinner, gratitude was the only thing on my mind. I don’t always feel lucky, but every now and then a moment grabs me and smacks me over the head. Reminding me all at once that I am.

Ray Wylie Hubbard once said: “I’ve found that on the days I can keep my gratitude higher than my expectations, I have really good days.” I wish I could say that I live every day by those words, but I’m not perfect and don’t necessarily strive to be. What I can say is that if playing the long game keeps making me feel the way it did on Christmas day, then that’s what I’m gonna keep doing.