A Pleasant Autumn's Pheasant Hunting, Pt. I
Almost three years ago I went pheasant hunting and had a good time; this year I went again, twice.
The first time was a day’s hunt in Burlington, Colo. two weekends ago. One of my fellow parishioners, Bill B——, has a political acquaintance with some farmland out there, and so seven of us set out to see what we might scare up. Bill’s brother Charlie was there, as was a fellow parishioner of ours, Maj. D——; Rick W——, a friend of Bill’s; Bruce J——, another friend of Bill’s; and a friend of Rick whose name I forget. We also brought along two hunting dogs: one of some experience belonging to Rick and another belonging to a friend of Charlie which had reputedly been quite successful last summer.
There are a few different ways to hunt pheasants. The party might be hunting a harvest crop-field in hopes of flushing birds as they feed. In this case the best procedure seems to be to position a few fellows at one end to block; the rest of the party then line up on the far end and walk across the field to the blockers. Once they quarry notice the hunters, they have two options: to run or fly. If they run one mayn’t shoot them, and will very probably not see them (pheasants are very stealthy creatures); if they fly within range then hopefully one can shoot them. For whatever reason or reasons, they seem to prefer to run (maybe they’re scared of hawks or falcons?); thus the blockers serve a very valuable purpose: any birds running away from the hunting line will see the blockers and flush, hopefully giving either the walking or the blocking hunters a decent shot. In a way, this method uses the walking line as armed beaters.
Thus we hunted our first field that day: two men posted at one end to block and the rest of us walking against the rows of dryland maize. We flushed a good-sized bouquet of pheasants (that’s apparently the appropriate term of venery), but the angle and distance weren’t quite right for any shots; the blockers also saw some running off. Still, we all took this as an auspicious sign for the start of the hunt.
Another way to hunt is on wild
land (generally returned to
nature via the Conservation Reserve Programme). In this case the land
is covered with thick grass and shrubs; the hope is to flush the birds
from the cover there (they alternate between eating and hiding; their
lives are kinda sad really). This is where dogs shine: they will hit
the scent of a bird, track it to where it’s covering, wait until
the hunting line gets close, then flush the birds. One could use
blockers too, but I think they’re less effective with thick
cover than with the relatively sparse crop-fields.
After walking a few more maize fields and some fields of wheat stubble (the grass-straw left over after wheat is harvested) and seeing not a single thing other than a pair of jackrabbits, we decided that the birds had probably finished eating for the morning and had headed back into cover, so we followed them into CRP land. We were no luckier there.
In fact, the only shots of the day were walking back from the far sides of fields we’d already hunted—in each case, one guy spooked a single bird and fired two shots (semi-auto shotguns are nice…); in each case, the flush was so sudden and unexpected that he wasn’t really ready (one might ask why he wasn’t ready; one might try being at full alert with a several-pound-gun in one’s hands for hours on end) and consequently missed.
It was still a lot of fun, though.
