A while back I wrote about
my first
pheasant hunt of 2007; it’s taken me a long while to get the
time to write about my second hunt.
Bill B——, Bruce J—— and I drove out to
Goodland, Kansas the weekend before Thanksgiving. We got there Friday
afternoon and met up with Dave M——, a high school teacher
in St. Francis who owns some fallow land outside of town. Our first
hunt of the weekend was on his land. It used to be his
grandfather’s and has an old railbed running through it, but now
it’s all tall wild grasses which reach up to one’s waist.
I got my first shot ever at a pheasant there—missed, but it was
still great to have the chance, particularly considering that it was
my fourth hunting trip. We walked around for about an hour
or so, and figured that we’d spooked anything that was there.
On the way back to the car I flushed a couple of roosters, but the
angle was bad (they were silhouetted against a road and power lines,
neither of which is good to shoot at) so I wasn’t able to make
my shot. Still, it was an auspicious beginning.
Dave took us by his friend Jeff B——’s spread; Jeff
has one large fallow field that he stocks for paid hunts, but he also
has some farmland which he walked with us, bringing along his dog. As
the sun was setting Bill killed his first bird of the trip (the first of
many) and I got to see my first pheasant up close and personal. They
are truly beautiful creatures: neither words nor pictures can really do
them justice. Their feathers are iridescent, shimmering as the air
catches them. There are reds, blues, greens, purples, oranges, black,
brown and white. They are a sight to see. After working that field for
a bit, Jeff was kind enough to let us hunt his stocked field—for
free! We worked it until dusk; towards the end the dog flushed a bird
right in front of me and Dave; Dave shouldered, shot and lowered his
shotgun before I even had a chance to do more than be startled. He was
very apologetic, but I didn’t mind: you have to take your shots
where you have a chance, after all; besides, it was a privilege to see a
gunman like Dave at work. The man’s been hunting all his life,
and it shows. No wasted movement, no hesitation: just top-notch
shooting.
That evening Bill, Bruce & I headed to Bird City to have dinner
at Big Ed’s Steakhouse (104 W. Bressler). The place is a
complete dive (long tables with ratty old chairs, nothing but
Budweiser, Michelob and Coor’s on tap or in bottles), but it was
simply the best steak I have ever had in my life. No doubt part of it
was due to having a good worked-up appetite from walking around all
day (probably something in the neighbourhood of nine miles), but
I’m pretty sure that wasn’t all. The steak was worth
every penny—something I’ve never been able to say about a
steakhouse steak before.
Saturday morning we were up bright and early to hunt Greg
L——’s land. Greg doesn’t hunt himself (he holds
the distinction of being perhaps the only man in the world with a
perfect hunting record: he has shot at one bird, hit that one bird and
has never hunted again), but he lets folks hunt his fields after the
harvest. His land has the ruins of an old farmhouse and tornado shelter
on it, surrounded by corn fields with wheat planted in the corners. We
sat there waiting for the sun to rise and then pushed across the first
corn field, where Bill bagged his second bird. I then got my first
taste of a tailwater pit. This is a smallish pit (maybe a dozen yards
across) dug in one corner of a field with the dirt from inside forming a
berm around the edges, used to collect irrigation water back in the old
days: it fills up with wild grasses and provides the birds lots of
cover. They cover in the pits, then venture into the fields for food,
then cover again, moving back and forth over the course of the day. If
you surround a tailwater pit properly and then send one or two hunters
into it, the birds will flush into the air rather than running away or
hunkering down; once in the air they’re fair game.
We worked fields and pits all day long, making some good progress and
bagging some more birds. Hunting’s strenuous work, but
it’s fun work: a man’s body was made for this sort of
thing. Tromping along in the fields, senses at the alert, legs and
arms actually working for once in one’s life:
it’s exhilarating!
That evening I learnt how to clean a bird. It’s not nearly as
bad as I’d feared: you clip the wings and one foot (the other is
left on to prove to a game warden that it’s a rooster and not a
hen); then the skin and feathers come off in one piece; then you
remove the head; then you open the cavity and pull out the viscera;
finally you rinse the whole bird, making sure to clean any feathers or
dried blood from the meat. The whole process takes a few
minutes.
Normally Bill comes into town and takes the various landowners to
dinner to thank them for allowing us the use of their land, but
instead this weekend Greg and his wife invited us to join them along
with Dave, his wife and small daughter for dinner. Dave’s wife
brought a green bean casserole and brownies; Greg’s wife cooked
potatoes and bread; Greg put on some pork ribs and we had a great
feast. There was even some tasty microbrew on hand (one of
Greg’s sons works at a microbrewery in Kansas)! They were
wonderful people to sit down and eat with—true salt of the earth
types. And contrary to the Hollywood stereotype, far from ignorant or
untravelled (Dave’s wife had toured Europe in college as part of
their college’s choir). They’re all great people.
Sunday morning we hunted Mr. H——’s farm. He
doesn’t normally permit hunters to use it, but he and Bill are on
good terms; Bill brought some wildlife cards for his grandsons, and I
believe he sends him a fruit box for Christmas. H—— lent us
his son’s dog, but it was a mistake on our part to accept it. The
beast was happy to roam the fields; the problem is that it
wouldn’t stick close to us. It scared up bird after
bird—hundreds of yards away, where no shotgun could reach it. It
was…dispiriting.
That afternoon Dave rejoined us and we had one of the greatest days
of hunting that anyone in our party had ever experienced. For
whatever reason (the wind, the temperature—who knows?) the
tailwater pits were chock-full of pheasants. We’d drive up in
two trucks with our shotguns already loaded, throw open the doors and
run into position: birds would fly out in every which direction.
Rooster after rooster flew up; rooster after rooster dropped from the
air. Bruce finally got his bird: a particularly wily one, it had
clung tight to cover until other birds had flushed in one direction;
it then started running in cover in the other direction; when the
cover ran out it flushed up just as Bruce happened to glance in that
direction. It was a smart rooster (two years old from its spurs), but
not quite smart enough.
Finally at one pit I got a good shot at a bird. Three of us fired:
Dave from in the bottom of the pit; I from the side, Bill from another
side; I don’t know which of us hit. Bill believes that his shot
was wide, so it was probably Dave or I. To be honest,
I think I saw it start to drop right before I shot, which
would mean Dave got it—but it all happened so quickly I really
don’t know. But I do know that I was the one to find it on the
outer rim of the pit. It was lying on one side in the grass, looking
a bit stunned. I put one foot on its legs (the spurs
are sharp, and a rooster can slash very well with them) and
grabbed it by the neck. It really didn’t care for that, and
started struggling. Bill had said to break its neck, but I
couldn’t figure out how to do that with the bird flapping about
and trying to pull its legs out from under my shoes. Then I
remembered how Dave had wrung his bird’s neck: he just picked
the bird up by the head and spun it a few times. So I let the
rooster’s legs free and spun him once. Not good—it was
still flapping and now it was trying to spur me. So I spun and kept
on spinning two or three times…only to see the pheasant’s
body go flying off into the grass. I’d broken its neck all
right—and then centrifugal force had done the rest. The rest of
our hunting-party were pretty amused; I rather suspect they were
trying to keep from laughing at me.
All very embarrassing, and I really don’t know if it was
Dave’s bird or mine (it was probably his) but I can honestly say
that it was the first pheasant I’ve killed, if not the first
I’ve shot. Later that week I stewed it in its own stock with
apricots, prunes and onions, and brought some over to my folks’
house on Thanksgiving where all my family (save Stephen) were able to
have some. Pheasant’s a delicious meat, with almost no fat at
all and a delicate flavour different from chicken. To be honest, I
prefer it, and not just because I hunted it.
That afternoon Dave caught his limit and took four birds
home—those, plus the one he had bagged and the one Bill gave him
on Friday, went towards his family’s Thanksgiving feast. Bill,
Bruce & I ended the evening on Greg’s fields, sitting on a
piece of farm equipment, drinking coffee, smoking cigars and watching
the sun set across the flat prairie. It was quite a day, quite a
marvellous day indeed.
Monday morning we got up early once more to get a little last-minute
hunting in. We when by Mr. H——’s and hunted a row
of corn he was harvesting, hoping that the combine would push the
birds to us. While I was sitting at the far end of the row waiting
for the combine to turn around, I grabbed a corncob which had gone
through the combine (which strips the kernels off) and hollowed it
out, bored an airhole and stuck a piece of wheat stubble in it, then
put a few pinches of tobacco in it. Ever since I was a boy and read
Huckleberry Finn (I think that was it) I’ve wanted to make my
own corncob pipe; now I’d finally done it! To be honest, it
didn’t smoke very well, and in fact the cob started to burn and
burnt corn cob is not the greatest taste in the world.
Still, I think it can be considered a moral victory.
We got home late Monday evening and divvied up our birds. Bill was
kind enough to let Bruce & I have his share, and so I took home
four pheasants. Considering that I’d taken off two days of work
and working in my share of food, lodging and fuel for the weekend,
those four birds are the most expensive meat I’ve ever eaten.
But man was it fun! I can’t wait until next year.
