Hunting season is here and this year I made it out for opening day.
This is a rarity for me. An annual conference I attend in late October almost always overlaps the first day of pheasant season, but a calendar quirk meant I was home this year when my favorite season began. I took advantage.
The hunting wasn’t all it might have been — I didn’t fire a round — but I was out on a bit of prairie watching my dog work birds and that’s all I really need for a day to qualify in the top 1% of days.
I am moving into a new home so Sterilite chaos defines my existence. I’ve unpacked my kitchen stuff and I’m making progress on the rest, including hunting gear. I found most of it, though I had to hunt in a pair of blue jeans rather than my favored brush pants.
All that chaos at home led to my first mistake of the season: I drove 20 miles to one of my favorite spots, beating much, but not all, of the crowd. I put out my water bowl and checked my vest for sufficient ammo, both quail and pheasant loads, then reached for my shotgun.
It was a long reach, about 20 miles back to the house.
For now, my guns reside in the closet of a spare bedroom. I haven’t yet chosen the ideal location for firearm storage, so my pre-trip routine is presently a shambles. More than once before I left, I reminded myself to grab my 20 gauge out of the guest room, but I failed to heed my own advice.
It’s a short there-and-back so the day wasn’t shot, but by the time I returned to my spot it was crowded with vehicles and out in the grass, throngs of hunters sporting fluorescent, new-for-the-season orange vests marched with military precision through the field, a slow march designed to scare up a pheasant or two before the afternoon football game kicked off.
Hunting the spot was now out of the question, but there was the matter of my water bowl, which in my haste to retrieve my gun, I’d left behind.
The bowl was gone, or so I thought, and only one vehicle in the crowded parking area was occupied, by a wildlife official. This is where my forgetfulness turned to my advantage as I struck up a conversation with the young warden, who pointed to my bowl hanging from a fence post. We chatted a bit and it was soon clear we shared an interest in bobwhite quail.
Pheasant are fine birds and in these parts that’s where most of the action is. But here and there, in little corners of native prairie holding out against the onslaught of expanding corn fields, coveys of America’s game bird still exist.
I told the warden that there’s usually a covey on the edge of the field where the pheasant soldiers now marched. I said I’d come back in a week or two, when I’d have the prairie to myself, and maybe take a few birds out of the covey, but not too many.
My conservation credibility established; he shared another promising location.
I drove to the warden’s suggestion, and I could see why he spoke highly of the spot. There was the usual cedar windbreak, but out in the field, instead of a monoculture of bluestem, there was a mix of grasses and woody shrubs. Pheasant can plow through that tall-grass thatch, but not quail.
As I approached a covey of bobwhite leaked out of the big bluestem and crossed into the still-standing corn across the road. A pair of hunters were nearby, in the grass.
Like watching my dog hunt up birds, the mere sight of quail sets me in a proper frame of mind. I’ll return soon to find them, when the crowds have lost interest.