Finally awarded a complimentary seniors hunting license, I'm on a cusp between ornithological espionage at my bird feeder and venturing afield. From the bank of my riverside home of 60 years, I toss tennis balls for my deaf retriever, Bailey White, for whom bird watching lacks closure.

The author's dove shoot in an abandoned quarry with a deaf retriever that favors fetching tennis balls was a challenge. Photo by K.K. Snyder.

Bailey, addicted to tennis balls, is gray around the muzzle like me and full of sleep, but he'll chase sporting clays in spurts and bring back the biggest shard if you don't miss it. He'll retrieve one that lands unbroken with a couple of fang holes punched through the center you can swear to what's left of your cronies that you drilled with birdshot.

Hunting is no longer important to Bailey, but I love to shoot doves and have since, as a pick-up boy for Daddy in 1951, I shot my first one off a corn stalk with his 12-gauge, foxing a purple bruise that won me celebrity status in the fourth grade.

Nowadays, I shoot less and commune more, not so much in transcendental veneration as arthritic sensitivity in the same shoulder I famously discolored 60 years ago. I've downsized to a .410 I used as a kid, finding it and the ammo easier to tote. In cahoots with dimming eyesight and burning joints, the smaller gun discourages shooting at birds out of range, reducing the area high-stepped among rattlesnakes munching cripples.

I'm from a generation who automatically run from the law because our fathers did and because until first light you can't know if a field is baited or not unless you trespass it the night before with a searchlight. Few hunters lucky enough to get invited to morning shoots demand full disclosure like my hunting buddy, a chief of county police, did one night before a shoot.

For a card-carrying conversationalist, I've had a disproportionate number of run-ins with the conservation officers. I've beaten a charge in the last half century for shooting over bait I didn't know about but should've. I also fought a ticket for having one dove over limit and lost.

In this case, when word spread the law was afield, I put down my gun to help my fellows hunt lost birds while my enthusiastic retriever -- a Boykin named Geeche -- stealthily added a bird to the pile I'd arranged for investigating officers.

Don't expect the law to cut you any slack. If there's a ticket in it, they'll write you one. They know outlaw dove hunters will lie to a game warden quicker than to their wives, so your average field cop has heard every alibi that can come out of a human mouth. Judges, too, are apathetic when you blame your dog's accounting. Punctuating with gavel, his honor ordered me to teach Geeche to count and to squat right down there with her to collate the bag -- case dismissed.