Since I probably won't be hunting today I'll tell an old story. Well not all that old; maybe three weeks ago.
A friend and I had been hunting a little patch of flat CRP. We each started from opposite ends and met in the middle. No birds. So we headed for the pickup. The grass cover was quite deep; he's a slow walker besides. Instead of just waiting at the pickup I decided to go across the road and go around an abandon equipment shed and barn that set on the hill back from the road a few hundred feet. I'd been around it maybe three times before but had never seen a bird there.
The pickup was nosed into the old driveway down the road to my left a couple hundred foot. I climbed a twenty foot bank,went around a house sized clump of brush, then through some knee deep grass that bordered the back of a fifty foot long equipment shed. The whole area is an elongated twenty acre triangle. One side runs along the road while the two sides narrowed as they ran up a draw hemmed in by two plowed fields. The most promising cover was across the triangle from me to my left. Not wanting to leave my hunting partner waiting too long, my idea was go up one side, cut across the top, leaving the long narrow projection at the top unhunted,and head across to the good stuff on the other side.I was hunting just the shorthair Lilly, and she seemed to be on a fairly good scent trail that led up the draw that I had planned to not hunt. I tried to talk her out of it a couple of times by veering to my left hoping she would follow my led, but she headed on up the draw disregarding my suggestion. So I followed her. A couple hundred feet up the draw she went on point. As I moved to my right toward her a rooster flushed. I shot. It fell. She retrieved the bird. Pleased at having made our little side trip rewarding with our first bird of the day, I turned to head down hill to our pickup. As I situated the bird in my vest, I looked around to find my dog and was surprised to find her back at the same clump of grass on point again. Could this be true? I moved in her direction. We were in about the same positions as before. Up went another rooster following almost the same path of flight. I fired,it fell, Lilly retrieved. Wow! what a bonus. I again placed the bird in my vest opposite the first one and turned to head down the hill. I Looked for the dog, and you guessed it,another point, same grass clump. Up rocketed the bird. He left in a hurry. That made it into a long shot. Down he fell. Another retrieve, my bag was full. All this took only as long as it took the dog to run out and back three times with a slight pause to point.
Down the hill and approaching the pickup my slightly impatient partner leaning on the door yelled,"Where have you been?" I walked up, pulled out a bird, tossed it to the ground and answered,"I've been hunting." His expression of slight reprimand turned to satisfaction that I hadn't completly wasted his time. As I pulled out the other two birds his expression turned to amazement. He quietly gasped,"I didn't hear a thing!"
No comments:
Post a Comment