Joined: 15 Oct 2004
Posts: 787
Location: Indiana
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I'm slow to start scribing my hunts this year; Senior Management bought another bank to our west and I've been driving 40 miles one way every day to run it...We've had a fairly good start to the waterfowl season, as my son and I have 19 wood ducks and 2 Greenwing teal so far, just jump shooting the irrigation ditches and sloughs near home, using our 16's and my Model 12 20 ga. IC with factory Bismuth loads. We have seen ZERO mallards so far....now for the Main Event: Pheasants !
Yesterday, November 9, was opening day in Indiana and we open the season with trepidation...there has been quite a bit of habitat loss due to the influx of specialty crops such as edible beans, seed corn, and tomatoes in Northern Indiana. In my area the big driver is commercial corn for ethanol---when #2 yellow shell corn is close to $4 and soybeans are $10, farmers will maximize profits, growing as much as their land base will allow...most of us would too, were we in their shoes...but I digress....
Bottom line is, I wonder how many birds we'll see as CRP contracts may not be renewed and marginal land goes back into production....
Friday morning was a cloudy day, brisk and chilly with a stiff breeze. The wind was wailing as I let down the tailgate and my two dogs, Pal, the Golden Retriever, and Joy, the one year old female Boykin Spaniel, hit the ground, had their constitutionals, and got down to business. I started the day with my Model 12 20 gauge improved cylinder, stuffing the magazine with three folded-crimp 1 oz. #5 Winchester loads and then heading down the two track lane behind the dogs. After crossing a continuous filter strip of fescue and negotiating the creaky footbridge over a shallow pump ditch, we entered a CRP field of about 40 acres, with horseweeds on the east and north sides, corn stubble to the south and an open ditch as the field's west boundary. This field has light cover consisting of foxtail, native grasses, and patches of various weeds with a couple of brushpiles on the east end.
We worked to the north, not seeing any birds, and then shifted our direction to the west, straight into the wind. I was watching Pal's tail for a sign that birds were near; I did not expect much from Joy, who is just shy of 1 year old. Sure enough, as we approached the ditch to the west, I watched Pal's tail gyrate feverishly as he bounded toward the weeds on the bank. A hen, and a second later, a rooster exploded from the cover as I swung past the hen, overtaking the cock, seeing a bit of daylight and slapping the trigger. I wish I could say I killed this rooster with the first shot of the new season, but honesty compels me to say the first one missed cleanly--it was the second shot that tumbled the rooster in a spray of feathers, and I saw the grass move as the bird's wings beat in its last throes of life. Seconds later, Pal came to me with the bird...I can never quite believe the sequence of events, even though I am in this case the predator; how suddenly the action takes place and the finality with which a life is taken in the natural world.....
After pocketing this bird, we switched direction and headed south, toward a patch of foxtail and the fenceline marking the tract's southern boundary to an adjacent cornfield. Both dogs were working well, reasonably close and not resorting to the distracting "idiocy" we sometimes see when two dogs are working scent at the beginning of the season. The wind had increased but it was good to be afoot again---the season was fresh, and all things seemed possible; you know the feeling. I was not expecting my little Boykin Joy to bump the next bird, but that she did, to the chagrin of my 4 1/2 year old Golden---the rooster, cackling raucously at the unwelcome disturbance, streaked over my left shoulder, and I barely got the Model 12 to my shoulder in time as the butt settled in my shoulder pocket, I focused on the bird's front end and killed him cleanly with the first shot. In Indiana the limit on pheasants is only two, so we walked back to the truck through the damp grass, the dogs nipping at the second rooster as I carried him, the season successfully begun, and the promise of tomorrow, ripe and full as the harvest itself, aglow in our hearts.... |
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One Man with Courage is a Majority
---Andrew Jackson |
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