Before its hollow bottle baritone – “H’hoohoohoo… hoo… hoo” – interrupted the predawn stillness of a snow-draped January morning, I’d done most of my “bird watching” down the barrel of a 12-gauge shotgun. In fact, I was only in the backyard at four a.m. as a potty-break escort for our weeks-old Labrador, my new bird dog in training.