Saturday Dec 10
I drove to DFW where I met Woody and he and I drove up to meet Chris at his place in Amarillo after work on Friday with plans to
hunt early the next morning for pheasant.
Two gentlemen that Chris knows from work came right on time and we all piled into Andy's pickup.
The places that we were hunting were both adjacent to very large dairy operations.
The first location was a rolling piece of land covered with several types of cactus and large weeds that eventually drained
into a large pond at the south end of the property. When we arrived on the scene we noticed that there were thousands of geese,
white and dark mixed on the lake. Everyone rummaged through their vests and ammo bags for any steel shot they had an we were off. There were five guns and no two were the same model.
We walked up to the edge of the pond and started to shoot at some of the late arrivals as they coasted slowly in to a landing.
The five shotguns going off caused the many thousands of geese to take off. The birds were very hesitant to leave the large pond and
they kept circling around, giving us many opportunities to shoot at them. However the geese seemed to be aware just how high a 12 gauge can shoot into the air
I personally saw several of the geese I shot at wobble in midair as they were peppered and then fly off in perfect health. After many shells were expended and two geese dropped
the five hunters decided to go after the pheasants we had driven so far to hunt.
As we did throughout the day the five hunters spread out and walked through the brush in a long line. We had just started walking when a bird jumped up in front of Woody and flew straight away from him. Woody blasted the bird with one shell and we had our first pheasant.
I thought this was a good omen and initially I thought we had brought far too many shotgun shells for a two bird daily limit.
We continued to push the open cactus infested area, always seeing the birds flushing far in front of us. Woody and I each shot the first couple of jackrabbits we saw, until we realized that we would soon be unable to carry all the rabbits we could shoot Andy shot a rooster on the drive and the rest of us wasted shotgun shells at
the pheasants which were surprisingly fast in horizontal flight once they got airborne resulting in many missed shots. When we returned to the truck we had two pheasants. Everyone carelfully inspected the colorful birds and marveled at the irredescent feathers. We loaded up and drove to the "honey hole". On the way there Woody, Chris and I stopped to buy some more high brass field loads since we were all nearly out of the lead shot ideal for turning roosters into dinners.
The honey hole was aptly named since as we stopped to survey the land and look for something "pheasanty" we saw nearly a dozen in the tall weeds between a lake and the road. Three of us dismounted and the other two drove to the end of this long strip. The two smaller groups then drove toward one another, A pheasant launched into the air from within a foot and half of me, I was so startled I couldn't even shoot at it, it flew directly toward our friends and was blasted out of the air, this drive resulted in two roosters being shot as they flushed from the frying pan into the fire.
Here at the honey hole all of the weeds were very thick and at least hip high, typically chest high. It was exhausting to push your way through them, knowing that any smart birds would just shoot around your legs unseen to freedom behind you. Luckily many of the birds got antsy when a person got very near and they would jump into the air and fly for it. All day we were surprised as the birds burst from cover incredibly close to us. Several times people were left scratching their heads saying "I don't know how such a colorful bird can be invisible"
On two occassions we were pushing areas of heavy cover when birds burst up in amazing numbers. The first such occassion I shot my three shots, reloaded, shot those, tried to reload, had to shoot when I only had one shell in. The second time I was too far away to get a decent shot and sat amazed as bird after bird flew from an impossibly small piece of cover. We pushed many more acres and eventually everyone but Chris had shot a couple pheasants we went back the pond with thousands of geese and shot one more. Everyone was utterly exhaused after wading though the brush all day.
We loaded up and drove out the way we came in between the two ponds when we spotted more pheasants in flight land in the brush in front of us. Chris dove out of the truck,
grabbed his Remington 870 and stalked toward the spot where the bird had landed in a last ditch effort to avoid being utterly skunked. A rooster burst from the dense cover and chris turned him into a burst of feathers. Chris then bragged all the way home about how nobody had to look for his pheasant since it landed in a pile right in the road.
Back at Chris's we enjoyed a meal of goose breast, sipped some egg nog with bourbon and passed out.
Sunday morning we played with Chris's chonograph and Woody's new .222, shot steel targets with the pistols and then took the .22's after a couple of prairie dog towns before we had to load up and head south.
Eight and half hours later when I got home I explained to my wife that I now decided I love pheasant hunting.
Thanks to Chris for inviting us, Stephanie for putting up with us and Andy for Driving us. I had a great time.
