Highs and lows
My holy holiday has arrived and nearly passed as the sun is beginning to dip in the western sky. Personally, I’m thinking that I’ve never had so many highs and lows in an Opening Day.I managed my average of 3 hours of sleep, so I thought I was doing well. I popped out of bed, raring to go at 4:30 a.m. Naturally; I needed some coffee, so I preceded to make a pot. However, my head was somewhere else and I made incredibly weak coffee. I promptly poured it out and made a new pot. Fueled by stronger java, I was ready to face the day.
Of course, Dad’s only friend was late. The alarm was not set, or so he said. We were hanging out chatting, when he finally called saying he was on his way. It didn’t matter as we got to the headquarters at 6. Thanks to DST being so late, it was still dark.
We spent 40 minutes catching and banding birds. This is when the first low of the morning happened to me. One of our roosters escaped the cage and was running around the pen. I grabbed a net so I could pursue the little shit. After a brief chase, I netted him but I didn’t have the net down completely and took a flying pheasant to the face. I now have a scratch above the left eye and scratch that stars on my nose even with my right eye, trails down to the end of the nose, skips a little and runs down and around my mouth. Many bastards laughed at me when I took the rooster to the face.
We released the birds in the two patches we were going to hunt and then the battleplan was drawn up, literally on a white board. Yes, there was much laughter. My role was to be the edge guy, trying to help cup in the pheasants. Gsquared told me one of his coworkers said “You’re going to reload shells tomorrow? (the Gman nodded) Is Rusty going? (Nods again.) Why even take shells?” My rep as a good shot is flattering.
The first high of the day was my first shot as I folded up a rooster with one shot and it landed on the green wheat field out by the ahead man on my side. The low was that it was my only shot I took in that entire field. I got a little pissed as no one listened to me and I ended up having to cover between 60-70 yards all by myself. I know birds were moonwalking past me. Ok, it was more than a little pissed, I was furious.
But, we continued to the next patch, a much smaller area. This time I experienced a high as I shot four more, including one above everyone after they had unloaded guns. One more patch later and I bagged two more bringing my total to 7, a very nice high.
Now, I’m tired and stiff, but all in all pretty dang good. Tomorrow..we’ll see what happens.
posted by Rusty @ 5:45 PM
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