Butte, a Labrador Retriever
Corey Mulhair at SPLIT REED
- For Butte -
A dog is by no means a simple creature.
Take a young man or woman on even just an average duck or goose hunt, and waterfowling will burrow its way into their DNA. Some of us are born into the lifestyle, and some of us find it somewhere down the road- but regardless of how we enter the world of ducks and geese, it rips into our being and anchors its beautifully haunting ways into our souls like a welcomed disease. For the retriever, it seems to take an even more natural grip into their beings. Some dogs are simply made for it, and witnessing their drive and work ethic can be inspiring. These are the dogs that watch birds fly high above, circling and working into the decoys, licking their lips in anticipation. The dogs that sit silent and steady, ready to rip across the sheet water to tackle a crippled bird or scoop up a lifeless greenhead. The dogs that disappear into the cattails for 10 minutes, and return with a winged bird long after you’ve figured you’d never find it. My buddy’s lab, Butte, was the embodiment of these qualities. She was a damn fine dog, and she appreciated her role as a bird dog. This is a little bit of her story.
Anyone who knows Jerah Frye can tell you a few things about him. They might start with his enormous laugh coupled with a perpetually upbeat and charismatic attitude, his ear to ear smile or classic sideburns and/or mustache (depending on the year), and his hard work ethic. Those who have really known him for the last decade will bring those things up, but will also undoubtedly mention his trusty sidekick, Butte. I met Jerah during my college years, he was an alumnus of UC Davis and of Alpha Gamma Rho, our shared fraternity. He was something of a party staple, living just a few miles up the interstate from the fraternity house, he was an always welcomed alum to the Alpha Gamma Rho house and he rarely visited the house without Butte, unless we were hosting a big party. When I moved to North Dakota, he and Butte were annual guests of mine for a week each year, hunting waterfowl and pheasant, loving every minute of their time on the prairies.
A perfectly average-sized yellow lab female, Butte was a feisty, fun, and loving companion, but at her roots, she was an absolute hunter. She was the product of an accidental litter when Jerahs sister’s neighbors’ lab made its way into the backyard of Jerah’s sisters’ house, knocking up his sisters’ dog. Jerah selected Butte from the litter and she was on her first hunt at 12 weeks old, chasing pheasants and biting at their feathers with no regard for the chatter of the 12ga reports. From the get-go, Jerah was hardly ever without that little yellow dog.
Butte was tough. Loving and sweet, but tough. The first time the two of them arrived at my place in Kenmare after a 24 hour 1500 mile drive, my chocolate lab Deacon was eager to meet our guests at the door. Now, Butte and Deacon have met before but it had been some years since their last visit. They are the same age and Deacon is a large male, but it didn’t take long for Butte to give a couple of snarls and let Deacon know (re: remind) that she wasn’t to be messed with and he had entered her personal space rather hastily. From there on it was peaches and cream. They played and they hunted together, getting along as two bird dogs will. She was a friend to mannered dogs and a friend to any person who wanted to be hers. But that shouldn’t be a surprise because Butte wasn’t just a great hunting dog, she was a great dog.
Jerah is a man of many means. He works on habitat restoration projects and raises a productive garden along with domestic ducks, chickens, and hogs. For as much as Butte was a warrior on a bird hunt, she knew that the chickens and ducks at home were off-limits, she was their protector. She didn’t just go on waterfowl and upland hunts, she was a deer hunter too, but not the type you might be thinking of. Jerah will tell you of a story where he took Butte on a multiple day pack in hunt into the rainy forests of Northern California, where Butte would sit quietly with Jerah in a makeshift ground blind. For three days in different locations, she would quietly and without movement wait next to Jerah until a blacktail buck appeared and Jerahs tag was filled. How many dogs do you know who could do that?
On their second trip out to North Dakota, in 2017, we were hunting an alfalfa/oat hayfield and had shot a couple of ducks and honkers when we snuck along the slough behind our decoys and I filled my Tundra Swan tag. Butte broke the ice and chased down the crippled swan and retrieved it for me. The visual of this little yellow dog hauling back this massive bird through 1/4” thick ice has always stood out to me. She chased that bird for 10 minutes before finally catching up to it and once she did she never let go. You can bet I snuck her a few goose jerky treats that afternoon. From pheasant to dove, to honkers to teal and mallards, specks, divers, and swans as well, she was relentless.
On Monday, December 21st of 2020 at around 11 am central time, Jerah called me. Jerah usually called around late September to tell me he and Butte were coming out to hunt, so I wondered what he had to say. You wouldn’t know it because he doesn’t have a sad tone of voice to give off, but it wasn’t good news. Butte was coughing up blood the day before and Jerah figured maybe she had chewed up some bones and she had cut her throat or stomach. He dropped her off at the vet and when he was called back to talk about the situation, the veterinarian had much worse to tell him than anyone would have expected. It turned out that Butte, by every means a healthy dog, had advanced lung cancer. She was given a grim prognosis- merely a month to live. Jerah was in shock, and that shock found me by word of the news from him that morning. Butte was 8 years old, and if I had to guess, I would say she would be one of those dogs that lived to 14 or 15. It was a blow, and I couldn’t even imagine what Jerah was feeling.
Jerah had called not only to share the bad news with sympathetic ears, but also to tell me that he was planning on leaving California as soon as possible to get Butte on a few hunts with her, and wondered what I had going on out my way. With freeze-up come and passed, all we had around were pheasants, grouse, and partridge to shoot out of the CRP, tree rows, and sloughs. The ducks and geese had bailed about six weeks earlier and I mentioned he could head to South Dakota and Nebraska, to find water or cornfields to get permission on. It seemed like a good option with how many birds were still there and the two-day drive might be nice. I made sure to let him know they were always welcomed to come up my way despite the migration having pushed the birds out already.
Two days after that phone call he sent me a message. A photo of Butte, resting on the rice check outside the pit blind, surrounded by birds. Along with the photo was the message “Butte came out this morning and made the first retrieve at full speed and then she was done. Laid there and we shot two limits. Spent a couple of hours with her and my friend actually came out to the duck blind and put her down.” He followed up, “Went out faster than I thought, but she did it full speed. Running laps at the clubhouse this morning she was so excited to be there”.
A phone call would follow, and I learned about Butte’s last two days with Jerah.
They were wonderful. They were casual but epic. They made perfect sense for a dog named Butte. You see, California has wonderful hunting but two great days in a row at average duck clubs or leases isn’t something you hear about all that often. On Tuesday, Jerah hunted a blind with a friend and they shot 13 ducks and a goose, in a heavy fog. The next blind over only shot 2 birds. Butte retrieved everything for Jerah, after all, it’s why she wanted to be out there. She even left the check to go after a bird Jerah had missed, and despite Jerah calling her back with a ‘no bird’ holler, she made her way into the tules eventually returning with a crippled bird no one knew was in there. She gave it all that day, and returned home where she slept for nearly 16 hours straight!
The next day arrived at 4 am and she was ready to go. It was on a Wednesday that she hunted up her last bird. It was on a Wednesday when she saw her last sunrise, twitching at the sound of wings cutting the wind into the pre-shooting time decoy spread. It was on a Wednesday when she let her dad Jerah know that she was done, that she was tired, and thanked him for one last hunt before she went eternally to that great big pond in the sky.
It was sad to hear at first, especially having known Butte, and selfishly knowing that my dog Deacon was the same age- it reminded me that that anything could happen. However, as we talked about Butte and her last day it became clear to me that Jerah knew that she went on her terms and that she would not have wanted to go any other way. You see, when Jerah and Jeran (yes, two great friends with two equally unique yet strangely similar names) went out to Jerans duck club with Butte that morning, they flushed nearly 10,000 ducks off the flooded rice field. It was something Jeran had never seen on his club before. It was as if the duck gods were looking down and promising Butte one last great hunt before they called her home.
As shooting light opened, and the first bird was shot, Butte sprang into action and tackled a fatally crippled bird and without hesitation retrieved it for her dad. One last glorious retrieve. Blood was slowly coming out of her mouth and nose as she handed the bird off, a bird that Jerah will be putting on the wall. Wigeon. A bird she has retrieved a hundred times over, but never with any less ferocity and intent. Through the morning the birds continued to return to the water and Jerah and Jeran continued to shoot them until they had each taken their limit. During that short 36 minute two-man limit, Butte did try for another bird but was too spent to make it happen. She got to the bird, and looked back at Jerah as if to say, “Dad, I’m tired”. So for the remainder of the hunt, Butte hung out and rested on the check next to the pit blind as birds were stacked up beside her as a way to tell her ‘these are your birds, Butte, they are for you.’ She would poke her head up at birds continuing to work the decoys as Jerah spent a couple of hours with her. She was fading but still had that spark.
It was time, it wasn’t fair, but it was time. Fortunately for both Jerah and Butte, she wouldn’t have to leave the blind in any discomfort. Jerah’s veterinarian friend Chey was able to leave the office to come to administer the medicine to give Butte a compassionate send off right there in the duck blind. As he did, Butte lifted her head to look at Jerah as if to say for one last time, “I love you, thank you for a wonderful life full of adventure and happiness”.
As Jerah said in his own words, “Butte’s first hunt ended exactly like her last. She gave everything she had doing what she loved, and then I threw her over my shoulder and carried her back to the truck.”
Butte. Stoic ‘til the end.
It isn’t by definition a happy ending- but it is a celebration of Butte. It is never fair when a dog dies, and it certainly isn’t easy to let a great one go. Butte lived a full life, in her 8 years, and while we all wish she’d have been able to squeeze a few more years out of hers, we don’t have a say in that kind of thing. Instead, we will appreciate what we had and what we do have. After all, Butte did as much.
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