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.

The best teams all have one, the guy who finds a different gear on game day. Sure, he goes hard in practice too, but when things get real, he’s just a different animal. We’re not talking about ‘apples and oranges’. You might as well compare pineapples and hand-grenades. He’s a gamer. It’s fundamental, not, Read More