Katie readies herself for a flush by one of her flat-coats.

When the dogs had rested and the three of us had regained something like a normal heart rate, Bill struck off uphill with Fanny and Katie and I took Doc to work the edge of the clearing below. Minutes later we heard Bill fire, then fire again.

"Aw, damn!" he said.

We made an abrupt about face and headed in his direction, just in time to spy a blue as it came sailing back across the meadow above us, out of range. Doc watched it with interest. I marked it down in trees 75 yards to our right, and Katie and I hustled over to investigate.

Up here in God's country, flushing limb chickens is an accepted part of bird-hunting protocol, but it's tough to reflush a bird if you haven't seen it land. I'd seen the grouse disappear in a thick copse of spruce trees, but whether it had stopped there or had continued flying I had no way of knowing.

Walking through a dense, gloomy thicket waiting for tree flushers is as close to jungle warfare as I ever hope to get. Blues flush with a slow, throaty roar, sometimes close enough to fan the back of your head with their wing tips, although more often than not they rocket down and away from the very tip of a 75-foot Douglas fir. By the time you spot them, they'll have already reached terminal velocity while simultaneously careening through a canopy of fir and spruce limbs. It's crisp sport.

READ UP ON FLAT-COATS
For a breed as obscure as the flat-coated retriever, the dogs have plenty of tech support. Here's a partial list of Web sites, phone numbers, books and organizations:
Flat Coated Retriever Society of America (FCRSA) newsletter. Mary Beth Bissig mbbissig@interl.net 128 Glendale Dr. Burlington, IA 52601-1502 (319) 754-4169
Breed Club (For information booklets and brochures):
Flat Coated Retriever Society of America, Inc. Membership Secretary, Miriam Krum 16705 W. 32nd St. Paola, KS 66071 (913) 849-3218
Ways and Means, Ann Yuhasz 5601 Liberty Rd. Chagrin Falls, OH 44022
Books
A Review Of The Flat-Coated Retriever Laughton, Nancy Pelham Books Ltd. 44 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DU, United Kingdom ISBN 0 7207 1228 9
The Complete Flat-Coated Retriever Petch, Paddy Boydell Press, P.O. Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP123DF and 27 South Main St., Wolfeboro, NH 03894-2069 ISBN 0 85115 463 8
1994 Flat-Coated Retriever Directory of North American Dogs, Fourth Edition Mark Cavallo 7230 Peachtree Dunwoody Road. Atlanta, GA 30328 $38 plus S&H

When Katie and I reached the trees, Doc plunged into the middle of them and disappeared. Then I saw Katie stop, peer around a limb and throw her gun to her shoulder. An instant later I heard the unmistakable deep thump of a flush. Katie stomped her foot in frustration. She'd seen the bird and had a wide-open shot, but had slid her thumb over the top of the safety rather than into it. Wish I could say that has never happened to me.

Turns out Bill hadn't fared much better. "It was classic Keystone Cops," he told us as we regrouped in the meadow. "I was just stepping over a log when Fanny flushed a pair. But my foot slipped on the log and I couldn't get my gun up right." He shook his head, laughing at himself. "God, that was probably my only chance for a double all season," he moaned dramatically.

The typical flat-coat is friendly, good-looking and eager to hunt…but don’t expect them to embrace too many repetitive training drills.

The way I saw it, though, was that Fanny and Doc had given the birds a run for their money.

Some of the literature about flat-coats describes them as garbage eaters, mud rollers and prone to die at a young age from cancer. But Bill doesn't buy the bad press.

"As far as eating garbage? They do that," he told me. "But so do a lot of other dogs. But once we're hunting, they never mess with it. They're basically laid-back dogs, but when they know we're hunting, all that nonsense stops. And they only seem to roll in mud during their first year or year and a half, when they're still teenagers."

Cancer is a more serious consideration, however. But Bill says that his own findings indicate that the high reported incidence of cancer in flat-coats, one of the more closely monitored breeds in the country, is probably due to cases simply being reported more often than with other breeds. Of his four dogs, only one has died of cancer, and his first lived to 12, a respectable age for any pooch.

Bill does suggest one thing, though: Flat-coats, he says, need plenty of attention and exercise. "Fanny, if she's around the house for five or six days, she'll start walking around carrying my sock," he says. "It's like she's saying, take me out! Take me out!"