The spot

It's embarrassing, really. I have a pretty good hunting spot for pheasants. It's a short drive from my home. Unlike a lot places where you hunt pheasants, it's pretty to look at. And it holds a lot of birds. This place, however, gets pounded. It is hunted hard. I'll pull in the turn off at 10 AM on Wednesday and there will often be two or three other trucks there. I think to myself "who gets to go bird hunting at 10 AM on a Wednesday?", then I remind myself that I am one of those people.

Anyway, most of the hunters leave the lot and walk on the trail into the fields. To the left of the trail, there is a vast expanse of grasses and mixed cover. Most guys focus their efforts there. To the right of the trail, there is a swamp. Nobody goes to the swamp. Except me. And the roosters. In fact, nearly every time we've hunted the swamp, we've put up a rooster. It's no more than 100 yards from the parking area and 15 or 20 yards from the main trail. It is uncanny how often this area produces birds. They are almost always in the same spot, a thick patch of "cover within the cover". Now here's the real embarrassing part: I've never hit one of these swamp roosters. It's almost like I don't believe there will actually be one there, again. The scenario that unfolds reminds of the movie "Groundhog's Day": Whit gets birdy and then goes on point. I start to move in, doubting there could actually be another rooster there, that a bunch of other guys and dogs walked by, only a few yards from the trail. Then the thing flushes, startles me and I miss like a rank amateur. For all I know, it could be the same rooster every time, a mythic swamp rooster, capable of dodging a hot load of #6 shot. On the other hand, I could just be a mediocre wingshooter. The score so far this season is swamp rooster 2, Mike zero. Last season I think I went 0-4 against the swamp rooster. If this keeps up, I might start rooting for the bird.

My wife mentioned to one of her girlfriends that I was out bird hunting on a recent morning. Her friend responded, "Oh, my ex-husband used to do that from time to time. I never understood why he would want to get up at the crack of dawn and then go lay in a field, hoping for some birds to fly by". My wife responded, "that's not how Mike does it. The way he hunts birds is more like practicing an art form". I'll keep her.

Reunion

I've known Matt for a pretty long time. We first met in kindergarten and became fast friends. My family moved to the other side of town the following year. Imagine my surprise, when as a newly minted second grader the following year, the new kid in the class was my old friend Matt. His parents had moved within bicycling distance of our new neighborhood. From that point on, we were just about inseparable. We did a lot of typical kid stuff, but one of our favorite activities was "playing guns". There was an empty woodlot near his house where we built bunkers, machine gun nests and staged juvenille military campaigns.

Matt will be the first one to tell you that things did not go well during his adolescence. At first, I tried to be the supportive best friend, but as his troubles grew deeper, we grew further apart. By our early 20's we had lost touch with each other entirely.

Nearly a decade and a half later, we were re-connected by the social networking phenomenon. At first, I was just relieved to learned that after many troubled years, Matt had landed on his feet. Turns out he got pretty good at landing on his feet. In the depth of his troubles, Matt enlisted in the Army. He served in the airborne infantry, and after several years, left honorably, a changed man. He married a young woman that first caught his eye in high school. He held down a respectable job and was close to finishing his college degree.

Improbably, our paths crossed again. Matt took a new job, hoping to relocate closer to family. He ended up in Madison, Wisconsin, less than thirty minutes from me. We met for coffee a couple times after he moved. After so long, I think we both wanted to test the waters and approached things cautiously. Perhaps we needn't have. After all that time, hurt on both sides, we picked we up where we left off.

Matt and I both shared a love of the outdoors as kids, and in the pre-political correctness era, a boyish fascination with guns. Turns out guns would end up playing a substantial role in our lives, Matt as a serviceman and now sport shooter, and me as broken birdhunting addict.

I invited Matt to come with me pheasant hunting. I knew he wouldn't be all that interested in hunting, but thought he might enjoy the hike. I took him to one of my favorite spots. Unlike most terrain that holds pheasants, it is hilly an pleasant to look at. This time of year, much of the ground cover turns a golden hue, framed by the tree-lined hills, which were nearing their peak colors. If anything, we'd have a nice hike on a gorgeous fall day.

After busting cover for over an hour with nothing to show for it, I decided to take a little break and actually walk along an established trail. I was pleased with the way my dog Whit was quatering, covering the edges of the trail. Regardless, I think even the most dedicated birddogger starts to lose a little faith in the pup if you aren't finding any birds. It was about that time that Whit found religion and got on a bird. There was a small game trail off the main thoroughfare that caught her interest. She pointed briefly, and then began a low, cat-like crawl. Each footstep seemed to fall more deliberately than the last, until she finally froze into a point. It was clear that the bird was on the move, as this sequence repeated itself several times. We made our way down the game trail, a jaunt of about 75 yards. The trail then came to a small clearing. Several things tend to happen at clearings like this. Sometimes, the bird will loose its nerve and flush. That didn't happend. Other times, they will hunker down at the end of the cover, which can make for some nice shooting. Often, they just keep running. Thankfuly, this bird took the second best option: it ran across the clearing and into the closest patch of thick cover, where it sat. It wasn't fooling Whit. She made right for the tangle and went on point. The bird had had enough and flushed, offering a relatively easy quatering-to-the-right shot. I missed cleanly with both barrels. We watched it fly, Matt at a slightly better vantage point than I. We both lost track of the bird as it dipped below a small rise. We followed it and were greeted by acres upon acres of unbroken, chest high cover. I knew the bird was as good as gone, but we tried anyway. We never found any sign of the bird.

After many years, Matt and I were forging a new bond, with similar constituents to when we were kids: guns and the outdoors. I'm glad to have my oldest friend back.

The old and new

The thing about hunting is that you are almost always looking for new places to do it. Today, I hunted the "home covert", my woodcock hot spot from last year. We put up two birds, only one of which had to worry about dodging my shot string, which it did nicely. Coverts that are golden one year my be barren the next. That's why most the time I drive anywhere I am also scouting for land to hunt.

After picking the through the home covert, I went on to explore an area I scouted last spring. After high-stepping through marsh grass, loosing a boot in a sink a hole and taking a tumble in a mud wallow, I once again began to question why I do this sort of thing. There were no birds to speak of and just a lot of misery for me and the dog.

Yesterday, I hunted an entirely new area with a new friend. After about 3 hours of boots on the ground, we put up exactly one woodcock. At least I don't have to take credit for the miss. We still drove home happy. I spent the day feeling like I was walking through one of those paintings that idealizes hunting in the fall. It was ideal, except for the no birds in the bag part.