Opening Day

As far as the number of pheasants shot, this year was the worst since I moved over here six years ago. For me it was two shots and one pheasant. I had predicted that this would be the case a long time ago. We had a very wet cold spring while the hatch was on. Through the summer very few young birds were visible. The up side of all this is that the cover is amazingly thick, and tall. What birds we do have, have all the food and cover they could want. I think I spent half the day walking in grass that was at least chest height. A fourth of the time it was over my head. Twice today I was looking for a dog that I thought was on point, and found her when I stepped on her.

There is a pretty good sized creek and fence row between my partner and where I'm standing with the camera. Jumping ditches was an act of faith. One knew the one had to jump because it was too steep to stand on the downward pitch but the other side was a wall of grass.

This was the sight of great disappointment. A big roster hung tight in that clump of grass in the upper right hand corner. I was standing 6 ft. back towards the camera from the clump. My partner was 3ft. slightly above the clump facing me. The dogs were to my right and left holding point beautifully when up he came straight up out of our huddle. He went over my head, leveled off at 15 ft. flew directly down wind, and survived four shoots. The two shooters had good excesses, while the dogs looked pretty perplexed." What more could we have done?" they seemed to say.

A lot of the best hunting is along abandon railroad grades. They provide a nice path to walk on, and usually a stream with brush. Just like the birds like it. This is a picture of one of the hundreds of old bridges now used by dogs and hunters.

The dogs followed a scent trail up this hill from the small stand of trees at the bottom. One pheasant, and five or six gray partridge flushed out of range. The creek bottom in the distance is what I call " the triangle". It is where I planned to start the morning. However I slept a little late and by the time we got there some guys were already in the middle of it. I'll will probably hunt that spot 10 times before the season is over.