Penance in the Prairie

Or, why I will take a skillet shot when it presents itself...

“Do you think this is penance for that skillet shot on those rock ptarmigan in Alaska last August,” I asked my hunting companion Tyler Webster as we stopped to give water to the dogs.

“Yeah. I think it is.”

Tyler and I are both crazy for upland birds, but we’re not the “leather patches on our tweed jackets” kind of bird hunters. Tyler is from North Dakota, and I am from Jersey. We’re both happy to take what Nature presents — and that includes the much maligned ground pound.

Obviously we both prefer wingshooting, but we’re both trying to hunt and eat all the upland birds of North America; I was with him in Alaska when I got my grouse grand slam. One not so glorious part of that adventure was killing several rock ptarmigan within sight of the road we traveled to get to the tundra.

I wasn’t going to pass up an easy opportunity, but even still we both wanted to get them “the real way,” over dogs deep in the tundra. We even walked through it for several hours looking for more, to no avail.

At the time, I thought that fruitless walk, plus the grueling willow ptarmigan hunt that followed it, was penance enough to the Bird Gods. Apparently not.

Flash forward from August to last week and Tyler and I are on his home turf in NoDak, on an unseasonably warm day somewhere near Crosby, which is basically Canada. It was Sunday, the second day of pheasant season. We had struck out on Opening Day, which was mystifying.

Tyler is one of the best bird hunters I know. He lives in that part of North Dakota and hunts almost every day in season. To not bag a limit of three pheasants on the opener was unthinkable. But it happened. Close to dusk, I got the only legit shot at a rooster. I missed. Sad faces all around.

Sunday dawned, and we were determined to come back with our shields, or on them. Six roosters or bust. It was the final day of a four-day hunting trip for me, with at least six miles of walking per day, and often more than that; I am happy to say my bad knee held up, which was an open question all week.

Tyler knew where to go. Crosby. Literally next to nothing. The nearest big town is Regina, Saskatchewan, two-and-a-half hours away. Tyler lives near Stanley, ND, which was itself 90 minutes away. So we got up early, grabbed coffee at the Cenex, and drove in near silence to what we hoped was the Pheasant Promised Land.

He had a spot. Tyler has lots of spots. One of the coolest things about hunting North Dakota is that you can hunt anywhere you’d like, unless the landowner has posted his ground with a “no hunting” sign at the corners and any point of entry to the land. So chances are, if you see pheasants, you can go chase them.

“This is a spot I shot my three pheasants in,” he said, gesturing to a tiny patch of cattails and brush in the center of a fallowed field.

So we got out, got ready, and released Rusty, Tyler’s oldest dog, an English setter. At nine, he’s the old man in the pack. He doesn’t waste energy, and knows where pheasants live. He went right for the cattails.

I made sure Tinkerbelle, a Franchi Veloce 20 gauge I’ve had for two decades now, was loaded and ready. Tyler is always ready, and, since he is an infinitely better shot than I am, he loaded his CZ Sharp-Tail .410. Yes, the man shoots disco chickens with a .410. He’s that good.

Rusty worked the cattails. I could feel my pulse swell as we neared the end of the patch. Pheasants, if you are not familiar, prefer running to flying, so when you get to the end of cover, they have no choice but to fly or risk running in the open. Sometimes a cloud of pheasants takes off all at once, and it’s up to you to pick out the gaudy roosters. This is easy later in the season, but not so much on opening weekend, as we shall see.

But nothing exploded out of the cattails. We worked this patch of ground, almost all of it perfect pheasant cover, for several hours. Nada. the closest encounter we had was a skunk, which, thankfully, remained nonchalant and didn’t spray anyone.

Finally, walking back to the truck, a rooster flushed near Tyler, but he missed it. Rusty got birdy along the dirt road, but no more pheasants showed themselves.

Beaten once again.

“Now you know what California pheasant hunting is like,” I joked. Tyler was not amused.

“I hate opening weekend,” he said. “The birds are all scattered, it’s hot, they can be anywhere.”

“We’ll get ‘em,” I replied. My knee was holding up, Tyler can walk for miles, it was my last day, and it was not even lunchtime.

Desperate times called for desperate measures. Tyler called a farmer he knew whose land was practically groomed for pheasants. It would be posted against random hunters, but if he asked, he could probably get permission to hunt it. The phone rang a long time before a groggy sounding Midwesterner picked up the phone. Seems the farmer was in Arizona, two time zones away.

After a conversation that sounded like a scene from Fargo but had the ritualistic exchange of a Japanese kabuki play, Tyler got us permission to hunt.

As we rolled up to the farm, pheasants started running everywhere. Everyone — Tyler, the dogs, and me — were jacked up like a spider monkey on Mountain Dew (extra points if you get the reference). And this was across the road from the posted farm even!

This time is was CJ’s turn. CJ, better known as Fur Missile, is a tiny English setter compared with Rusty, and is still very young and full of energy, thus her nickname. We got ready, and immediately hens started flushing.

More cattails, only this time they had pheasants in them. Tyler finally got one, and his shoulders visibly lifted. “We have removed the schneid!” he smiled.

Still more pheasants blasted out of the brush. Tyler dinged one and I anchored it for my first rooster. It was young! I’d shot because Tyler had shot, and to be fair the bird had started cackling as only roosters do, but the sight picture was all wrong.

This bird’s head wasn’t dark and its tail wasn’t especially long. It was what I’d call as a duck hunter an eclipse drake — a male bird not yet in full, fancy male plumage. This is, apparently, something you need to be aware of with early season pheasants in many states; California’s pheasant season starts so late we never see this here.

Things settled in after that.

We walked a long shelter belt, something Tyler normally hates doing«<WHY?«<, but as I said, desperate times call for desperate measures. Bird after bird flushed along the belt, but they were all hens or roosters out of range. I thought I dinged one, but it appeared to land under its own power, and when we brought Fur Missile to the spot to help sniff it out, nada.

We turned back toward the truck to walk a second shelter belt, and soon Tyler got his second bird. Another mile went by when finally a nice fat rooster flushed in front of me, flying from right to left. Bang! Bang! Missed. Goddamnit.

One more spot. We were now in the heat of the day. It was a long slough bottom that would ultimately end in a thick patch of marsh. This time is was Bo’s turn. Bo is a German shorthaired pointer. He’s the macho man of the group, and at four years old, is in his hunting prime.

Unlike Bo, I was tired, and initially took the high side downwind of the bottom. Mistake. Birds flushed from the center of the bottom to the upwind side. I got down closer. Worse footing, better hunting.

I missed a nice rooster. Another flushed in easy killing distance, but I held up. “That was a rooster!” Tyler said. Really? It didn’t look like it. Another one of those “eclipse” roosters. Part of me felt bad for botching the shot, but I kind of wanted a “real” rooster, which can be a full pound heavier.

We marched on, and a march it was. Hot, sticky, marshy, buggy. Bo started hunting for himself, away from us, which irked Tyler to no end. I came across a recently dead raccoon, which I think is a bad omen in Canada. At this point I was done. At least I had one pheasant. I didn’t get skunked.

Urk! Urk! Urk! Urk! Urk! Urk! A huge rooster flushed near Tyler. Then a hen. Then more pheasants of both sexes. Tyler shot his third. “You better get down here, they’re everywhere!”

The birds had been having a disco party in a big stretch of brush just uphill from the bottom, which had gotten marshy and thick with cattails. As I made my way down there, pheasants flushed to the left and right, potentially shootable, but I only had six shells left at the time. I was not taking a chancy shot.

Bo was pointing in the cattails. A big rooster flushed as I got close, and I smashed it with a crossing shot. I beelined to where it fell, and it was stone dead. Phew!

Rooster!

Tyler shouted, I spun around, saw the bird fleeing and dropped it — right into the marsh.

I had my eyes exactly on where it fell when Bo rushed to the scene. I took my eyes off the spot. Then Bo failed to find the bird. Shitshitshitshitshit. Stupid! Don’t trust the dog. Get your own birds. I went to where I thought the rooster fell, but it was not there. I started rooting around. Bo came back around and started looking, then lost interest. Tyler brought him back to the area, cajoling him to find the bird.

At this point I was soaking wet, muddy, sweaty, hot and desperate. I wasn’t going to find this damn rooster was I? I wasn’t sure how much more energy I had that day, so this might be it. And then Bo dove his head down fully underwater and came up with a very sodden, very dead rooster pheasant.

Photo by Tyler Webster

We had our six birds, but the Bird Gods had made us work for it. And there’s really no better way to explain to you why I’ll take those easy shots when they come to me. I’ve had far too many days where hours, even days, of effort result in an empty bag and sore feet. Days where everything goes wrong. Days you wonder why on earth do I do this thing I do?

But hunt long enough and it all evens out. Eventually.