THE BIRD HUNTER

My Father was the best pheasant hunter I have ever seen. I was his bird dog!

He would rather hunt the ruffed grouse than eat fried chicken on Sunday and he knew more about their habits than anyone I have ever known. In the Blue Ridge mountains of western North Carolina these birds were the smartest and fastest game birds and could be airborne within seconds. They would take flight with a whirring fluttering sound that was so exhilarating and so unexpected that most hunters were left starring at an empty place in the blue sky. The bird was gone!

No bird hunter worth his salt would shoot a ruffed grouse on the roost or ground. This was the unwritten code of the hills. In order to be counted as a kill you had to take the bird on the wing and it took skill to do this. I have seen my Father hip shoot and drop a bird almost before I heard the fluttering sound. He was fast and he was deadly at this sport. Pheasant hunting however, was never all sport. These birds were a large and planned part of our food supply during the winter season.

In the fall of the year when the last leaf hit the ground my Father would yell, "Hey son, get your hiking boots on. We’re going to get us a bird!" I was ready in ten seconds, flat. Come to think of it, I don’t think my Father ever called me anything but son! He always hunted with a long barreled, single shot, twelve gauge shotgun.

"Son, you go up that haul road over there. Turn up that fence row and come around behind that patch of grapevines up there on that ridge," he would say. "Flush those birds and they will come across this way and fly into that patch of trees right over yonder. I’ll be waiting for them. I flushed. He shot. The bird fell. Every time!

I got so good at bird dogging that we hardly spoke. We would point and use sign language. One winter my Father dropped thirty-seven birds. That was a lot of meat!

My Father would eat a fresh bird but he preferred that they ripen for a few days before my Mother cooked them. He would hang them by the neck on the back porch and would test the ripeness by pulling the wing feathers. He would yell to my Mother from the back porch "Hey honey, this bird is ripe!" The next morning we would have pheasant, gravy and hot biscuits for breakfast!

By the time I was grown I had become a fairly good pheasant hunter myself. But, you have to take into consideration that I didn’t have the best bird dogger in the world helping me……….and after all, my Father had thinned the bird population quite a bit!

A sportsman fair is duty bound
To take no bird on roost or ground.
With maidens fair he may have his fling
But he takes his birds upon the wing!