Hmmm
Twenty hunters.Nearly 100 acres that had not been hunted for pheasants.
Supposed (and possibly inflated) numbers of birds in the ground.
Temps in the mid 20's to start the morning.
We shot 12 roosters.
What went wrong? Several things, I think.
The first was our plan was WAY too inticate. Instead of spreading out and working the edges, we had two seperate groups meeting in the middle, with one bunch of guys not allowed to shoot at birds flying a certain direction. (Guess who was in that group? Oh yeah, I was.) There were also radios involved, which backfired as instead of having the "group leaders" at different positions co-ordinating everything, they were standing side-by-side. That didn't work. We had people not listening to the radio commanders.
The second thing was, the assumption by our "General" that these birds would react just the same as they did when it was only him in his deer stand. He was wrong. Gen. said that the birds will all go west rather than south. How did that work, you may ask. It didn't. The first rooster of the day went south, over the guys who were supposed to kill it. Granted the birds surprisingly did try to fly west, but they were sitting very very tight. Almost so tight that you had to literally step on them to get them to fly.
The third thing was people that didn't listen (i.e. my father.) Jar and I were following orders trying to cover way too much ground for two of us, while Don and my dad were so close that they could have been holding hands. Dad was yelling at me to slide his way which would have made the hole between Herb and I even larger. Now that I look back on it, I'm thinking we had birds skittering out between Jar and I as we struggled to cover about 70 yards between us.
The fourth thing was there wasn't a Shorthair Pointer in the bunch. I'm totally sold on German Shorthair Pointers. Hollie is such a joy to hunt with but that's beside the point. These guys all have Labs, and while I've seen some Labs point, none of these have ever pointed. Of course, that was assuming that they could even smell a bird as it's so dry that most counties around here are in a burn ban.
The fifth thing is that we had some colorblind mother fuckers in our group. There were at least four misidentified birds. People were calling out "Rooster" on hens. Guess what, it's not that hard to tell them apart if you see them flush within a reasonable range. Male pheasants have a dark head and a bright white ring around their necks. At one point I was in trees and brush, when I heard the group call out "Rooster." I jumped/crashed out of the crap so to have a clear shot. I saw a pheasant flying high, coming at me. I drew up, and as I was pulling the trigger, I realized it was a hen. Thankfully, I was behind it.
I think we'll have a better shot in two weeks as time is winding down in the season.
posted by Rusty @ 9:16 PM
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