My First Pheasant

    I am going to start with saying I didn’t grow up hunting.  I didn’t pick up a gun until I joined the military at the age of 18 and they handed me a M16 in basic training to shoot at paper targets and since it was the Air Force, that was also the last time I picked up a gun for a very long time.  But I did grow up on a farm, unfortunately or fortunately (if you knew my family you would understand) my dad didn’t hunt.  I do remember once that my older brothers did some rabbit hunting but there was an issue about my mom’s rule of “if you kill it, you eat it”.  I don’t think the grilled rabbit went over very well and they went back to fishing.  I also had some cousins that had bird dogs but the only thing I remember about those dogs is that they were kept in kennels and were white and brown and had long legs.  Oh, and we were told to stay away from the kennels because they weren’t pets.  So my experience with hunting as a youth was nonexistent and honestly I didn’t even think about going hunting until we got our lab a couple of years ago and my husband trained her to hunt pheasant. 
    Now, my husband, Mike, doesn’t do anything halfway… ever.  When we moved into the suburbs of Chicago and I pushed for a “real” dog that weighed more then 20 pounds, he pushed back with “it has to be a hunting dog”.  After much negotiating, we narrowed the selection of breeds down to Labrador retriever, and it took him 2 years to find a breeder with dogs that he liked.  When we brought Dixie home at the tender age of 9 weeks, I had no idea what type of obsession I had been pulled into.  Such an innocent, cute little ball of black fuzz, I could never have believed what paths she would lead us down.  When we got her we had also decided to train her ourselves which would have been catastrophic if Dixie hadn’t been as smart as she is or have the natural drive that could overcome most of the issues of her “trainers”.  Thank goodness for good breeding because it made up for our mistakes. 
    After a year of our fumbling our way through training Dixie, Mike took her out pheasant hunting for the first time and was hooked.  He said hunting over his own dog was incredible.  He would talk about walking through the fields and watching Dixie work back and forth.  How excited Dixie would get when she found a bird and it flushed up for him to shoot.  And he even admitted to the dirty look she would give him when he missed the shot.  I just smiled like a good wife and told him to clean the birds and figure out how to cook them.  (I have an issue with touching raw poultry but we won’t go into that).  Every time he went out, he came back a content man, even if he didn’t come back with dinner every time.  In total, he and Dixie actually managed to bring home about 10 birds last year which I thought was pretty good considering there is a 2 bird limit where he was doing most of his hunting. 
While Mike and Dixie were out hunting, I found other things to occupy myself like meeting the girls for lunch or going shopping with my mom.  But I began to see a trend develop, every time he came back he talked more about making it a family outing thing “next year”.  He would say things like “We need to get Sean into hunter safety, so we can go out as a family next year”.  I would smile and say “that’s a good idea”, still thinking I would be able to avoid trudging through the cold wilderness because SOMEBODY would have to stay home with our 5 year old daughter because she isn’t old enough to go hunting.  I thought it was smart on my part to agree with him at the time.  So I got our 13 year old son into a hunter safety class and thought I was good to go.  Sean would be able to go out with Mike instead of me.  But Mike’s stories of watching Dixie work intrigued me and were slowly drawing me in which was probably his plan all along. 
    When this past spring came, my husband was finding ways to get around all my excuses for not going out hunting with him in the coming fall season.  My first excuse of SOMEBODY needing to stay home with Helen, he got around by suggesting we take a day off during the week and go out hunting because the kids would be in school so no worries about getting a babysitter.  A day off with my husband is not something I turn down, just being able to say a complete sentence to him without getting interrupted is worth a trudge through a field.  He also found a hunt club that would allow Helen to walk with us so we could hunt as a family on the weekend.  Next was my refusal to shoot his 12 gauge at the skeet range.  I told him I was uncomfortable with it, but that of course gave him the excuse to get a new shotgun, a 28 gauge.  (Note for the future, don’t give the husband an excuse to buy a new gun, he can come up with them on his own.)  We continued going to the skeet range but I was still uncomfortable shooting even with the 28 gauge. By this time, I had resigned myself to having to go out hunting at least once so I made the decision to find a way to get better at shooting so I could at least hit the broad side of a barn.  I found a wingshooting class for women only through the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and talked a friend of mine into going with me.  My hope was to at least get comfortable with the gun and to stop the 13yearold’s snickering (it is very annoying being out shot by a kid who also just started shooting).  This turned out to be a great class and I would recommend anybody just starting out to take a professionally trained class.  I learned a lot in a very comfortable setting and it actually got me hooked on shooting, at least shooting at clays.  As the spring and summer progressed, we went to the range more and I became comfortable enough to shoot just about any of the shotguns we have.  I started to look forward to going out pheasant hunting.
    Opening day came in October and so did Dixie’s heat cycle.  That was a little disappointing but we dealt with it.  At least she waited until after the hunt test to come into heat.  Our first outing as a hunting family came in November at the hunt club we joined.  Unfortunately that is not the day I got my first pheasant.  In fact the only one of us that got a bird that day was Dixie.  She flushed a cripple that couldn’t fly and actually caught it.  The weather was nice, about mid to upper 40’s with a slight breeze.  The area we were hunting was right along some fields and actually through some partially cut corn fields.  The walking was easy, which was the plan because the kids were with us.  I actually missed 2 birds that flushed my direction.  Sean laughed until he missed the one that flushed his direction.  It amazes me that we could miss a bird the size of a chicken, flying across an open field but we did.  We saw a couple of other birds but weren’t able to get shots off at them.  By the end of the morning, we still only had the one pheasant that Dixie got and we were at the end of the kids’ endurance for communing with nature so we headed back to the truck.  Best part about this first venture into hunting is we all wanted to do it again, including the kids.  I actually got to do it again 3 days later without the snickering 13 year old along.
    Mike and I had scheduled a day off during the week to go out to a nearby state park that he did most of his pheasant hunting at last year.  Kids had school/daycare and the park didn’t open for hunting until 8:30 A.M. so we didn’t have to arrange for extra care for the kids.  The day turned out colder then the previous Sunday but not bad enough to cause me to rethink going out.  I took Helen over to daycare and Mike loaded up the jeep and we headed out to the state park.  Check in was between 8:00 and 8:30, we got there in plenty of time to stand out in the cold morning to get our field assignment.  One big thing I noticed while standing in line, I was the only woman there.  My husband referred to it as the “old man’s club” because those are usually the only people going hunting in the middle of the week.  After check in, we went back to the jeep and had some coffee since we couldn’t go out to the field until 9:00.  I could hear some of other dogs going crazy in crates loaded in the backs of trucks and vans parked around us.  Dixie was just sitting in the back of the jeep looking at us.  For a hunting dog, she is pretty laid back when not in the field.  I joke that she is the epitome of a couch potato because she hates getting up before 7:00AM and sleeps on the couch all day.  As 9:00 approached we drove out to our assigned area.  There were 3 other groups hunting in the same area and after we parked we took our time getting ready to go out to let the other groups get situated.  Since Mike had hunted here before he had a strategy and knew where he wanted to go.  Turned out where he wanted to go was in some of the tallest and roughest cover in the area.  The other groups had spread out to the partially cut corn fields and shorter coverage.  As much as I wanted to follow the other groups to shorter coverage, I trusted my husband and didn’t argue about his path choice.
    As we walked, we could hear shots off in the distance.  I was beginning to doubt my beloved husband’s strategy since Dixie hadn’t shown signs that there were birds anywhere near us but I kept my opinion to myself and trudged along through the high grasses.  As the morning progressed and we made our way toward the end of our designated area, Dixie finally got birdy.  Next thing I knew a hen flushed and flew a straight line away from us.  Mike got a shot off at it and Dixie took off in hot pursuit.  We didn’t see where or even if the hen fell because it flew over some short trees.  Mike didn’t think he hit it and was calling Dixie back so she wouldn’t chase it.  After about 5 minutes of calling and paging her (with colorful descriptions of her stubborn personality between whistles), Dixie came trotting back with the hen in her mouth and a smug look on her face.  Mike took the bird from her with a short ‘good dog’ and sent her back out to see if we could find some more.  I kept my comments to myself about the dog knowing her job better then her trainer.  We finished walking to the end of that section and turned to work our way back towards the parking area.  Unfortunately we didn’t see any more birds on the way back and the way they work the hunts at this park, you have to be out of the field by a certain time for lunch break, so one pass was all we had time for.  Mike was disappointed that I didn’t get a shot.  I was actually just enjoying the day and it wouldn’t have mattered to me if I didn’t get a shot all day.  We settled in at the jeep for lunch and a little relaxing.  The other 3 groups wandered back and only one other group got a bird.  The others didn’t even see any.  All of them actually loaded up and left.  We decided to stay where we were and just work a different section.  Mike was pretty confident that there were birds there that Dixie could find.  After lunch we geared up again and headed back out to the field.
    This time we worked a section between a row of big evergreens and a partially cut corn field.  Dixie worked back and forth but I could see she was getting tired.  For that matter so was I.  I heard one bird flush but never saw it.  Dixie flushed another but we didn’t get a shot off at it.  After another hour and a half, I was ready to call it a day.  We turned around and headed back to the jeep via a slightly different route so we could hunt a different track on the way back.  We worked our way through some tall grasses along the corn field at a relaxed pace.  About halfway back to the parking area, Dixie flushed a rooster my way but I missed the shot and it kept flying.  We continued on with Dixie ranging out in front of us.  She stopped at a spot in tall grass and it looked like she was playing with something but we couldn’t tell what it was.  Mike whistled her in and she came trotting back with a rooster in her mouth.  She had found a newly downed bird that somebody else had shot and left.  We got almost to the end of the hunting area and Mike was commenting that it sucked that we didn’t see any more birds when Dixie suddenly got birdy about 10 feet in front of me.  My heart started pounding as I walked up to her.  She was head and shoulders into some tall thick grass with her tail going 100mph.  This was the first time she pointed in front of me.  I walked up closer and told her to get the bird and she dove further into the grass.  The bird flushed up and out to my left.  I got one shot off but it was enough.  The bird dropped about 30 yards away.  Dixie bounded off after it and came trotting back with the rooster in her mouth.  I was grinning ear to ear and didn’t even mind that she returned the bird to Mike instead of me.  It was such a thrill and so hard to describe.  I definitely want to do it again.  Mike and I were chatting the rest of the way back to the jeep.  We loaded up and went to check out.  I couldn’t resist telling the guy that the big rooster was mine and the hen was Mike’s.  The old guy just chuckled about it. 
This was a wonderful experience.  I still can’t see myself sitting in a tree stand or in a duck blind hunting but I can definitely see myself pheasant hunting again and again for a long time coming.  The family time that pheasant hunting has opened up for us is indeed priceless and I hope we continue this through years to come.  And when the time comes (many years from now), I’ll be sure to tell Sean’s children that grandma missed her first couple of flushed pheasants too but with persistence and a good dog she was able to eventually get her first bird and many more…