Bittersweet Day of Hunting…

Saturday, October 27th, 2007

Scott and I set out early this morning with Luke. A friend had told me about this new “hot spot” last night. Although, sitting in the parking area at daylight things didn’t look very promising. There didn’t seem to be cover to hold many pheasant; a few well-mowed, small fields separated by wooded areas about 30 yards wide. Well, we were here so we may as well get the dog out of the box, eh?

Well, Luke did a fine job and Scott ended up limiting out on pheasant. In fact, Luke had three nice points, one point in particular after tracking up a hill for a very long way. He was locked down tight, tail straight up and shaking. Scott and I worked our way toward him and kept looking at each other… thinking, there can not be a bird there. We kicked all around in the wide open wooded area. Luke was still locked down… Scott finally kicked the smallest little tuft of grass and the pheasant exploded into flight.

We decided to stop by home, let the puppies out, grab a bite to eat quick, switch dogs — and grab my gun (I had grabbed the wrong one in my rush to leave earlier). We decided to take Brier for the afternoon hunt and brought little Dora along as well. Our son decided to join us, also.

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The wind really picked up in the early afternoon, but that didn’t seem to bother this veteran bird dog. Brier worked the woods and fields like a pro, as usual and Dora tried with all her heart to keep up with him. She was not able to, but she would follow him and then hurry back to the three of us. We talked with a gentleman hunting with a lab. They were having a good time and had bagged a bird. Our son had a couple of fine shots and soon limited out. Little Dora actually found one of the birds and had a grand time carrying it around. Cute as cute can be… I think she’ll be a bird dog!

We tried another area but didn’t find any birds and decided to call it a day and get home and catch up on chores and such. It was a fine day of hunting, although bittersweet… you see, my dear brother died 4 years ago today. Where we were hunting, we could see the giant stacks from the power plant where he died. We remembered him today and relived some of the things that happened that day… Scott recalling that he was hunting up the mountain and when all the fire whistles blew, Scott sat listening to all the coyotes howling along with the sirens. Later, learning those sirens were because of the accident that took my brother’s life. Michael would have appreciated that we spent this day hunting and if he were here he would would most likely have been up a tree with his bow hunting “the big one”.

As we were talking about it, oddly enough sirens started blowing in the distance. We later learned one of our son’s friends was in a hunting accident. An accidental discharge peppered the young man with bb’s. He will be okay, but took many bb’s to the chest and face.

Hunt safely friends..