Alright folks, here’s the deets.
November was an emotional roller coaster for me. My job is letting me relocate back west to either CO or WY. Now, before you say “aNoThEr TrAnSpLaNt”, my wife and I are from the west. We just toured the Midwest for 7 years. We loved it, we hated it. We’re coming home.
That being said, the house needs to go on the market. We had some urgent repairs that needed to be done. That unfortunately took two weekends. Weekends of whitetail rut hunting. Big blow to me but you gotta do what you gotta do.
Fast forward to this weekend. I planned on going scouting for deer for my muzzy tag but got food poisoning before going out, so all I had left was two days of pheasant hunts. If you were following along, you know the results.
I get there yesterday and the GW asks where my dog is. “I don’t have one”. He laughed at me and wished me luck on a long walk of hunts. Whatever man. Later I learned he was looking out for me.
I spent the full day walking 5 miles of tall grass and didn’t flush any. People in adjacent fields were knocking them down, so I tried to hunt the pressure they applied. Nothing. I gave up and went back to the truck and took off for lunch. On the way back into a different part of the forest, guess what was crossing the road into a restricted area. “You sorry some &;!@“.
I get out and talk to the GW and he told me he might know a guy that would be willing to run with me. He asked I be back the next day at 7:30 to get hooked up. Said sure why not. It was 2 PM, last two hours to shoot. I walk along a service road and found four roosters gossiping on a bend. I tried to stalk them and actually took a shot when they started to run. No dice. It’s 3, one more hour left.
I take off back to my truck and try to zigzag in a field on my way back. No dice. It’s 3:50 when I’m 1/4 mile away and what do I see? Ol’ white neck a few yards from my truck on the service road. He spots me and takes off into the tall grass. I start to still hunt towards him and didn’t flush. I got 10 yards from my truck. 3:55, 5 minutes left. I start to tell myself that I don’t know where he went. I look in an open field and didn’t see him so he must have ran away somewhere past me. I sit there and decide to come back. As soon as I take two steps to my truck, he flushes out in front of me. I shouldered my gun, locked my bead on him and pulled the trigger. Feathers flew everywhere. Final time was 3:57. I barely made shooting time.
Now the shot was really bad, I admit that. I didn’t give him much chance to fly, and as a result, he lost a leg and his guts. All he had to salvage was the tail feathers, heart, one breast and one leg and thigh. Even then, both had a lot of shot in it that I had to pick out. In the end, I was able to clean it. It’s in the freezer now. I pulled the tail feathers for the decor and pulled the wing for a cat toy. They’re bathing in salt for now.
I finally did it.
