There are specific phone strains, particularly in small cities and rural communities, which have distinctive sounds. One buzzes like a bumblebee tangled in a clover head. One other makes with a low musical hum. I recall one, in a city within the Cumberland hills in Tennessee, that seemed like static in an old-time hi fi when a thunderstorm was gathering.
Harold Wilkins occurred to have a line of that sort, and that was how I knew who was calling me the moment I lifted my receiver, even earlier than he mentioned a phrase. Harold and I had held quite a few conversations through the fall, all of them involved with· the identical topic, pheasant looking. A lot good had come out of our long-distance talks all via October, and earlier than the month was over I had come to treat the sputter of his wire as one of the vital seductive noises I ever listened to. I had solely to shut my eyes to have it convey visions of frosty swales, weedy cornfields, setters at work, a cock pheasant rocketing out of the lifeless goldenrod.
However after I heard the track that specific morning I used to be puzzled. It was now the second week in November and pheasant season had been closed for greater than a fortnight. I puzzled why Harold was phoning now. He didn’t go away me lengthy in suspense.
“What are you doing subsequent Monday?” he requested abruptly.
“I’ve acquired a giant deal on,” I mentioned.
“I’ll guess it issues rabbits,” he snorted.
“Mistaken!” I answered, and went on to clarify concerning the white-tail buck that had fed all summer time in an deserted area lower than a mile from my again door.
I stay in southern Michigan, 100 miles or extra beneath the forested and cutover area usually reckoned deer nation. However within the farmlands the place I reside, forty miles outdoors Detroit, we’ve got a large herd of white-tails. They frequent the woodlots, the small swamps, and the brush-grown deserted farms. A white-tail could make out properly in a small patch of canopy if he’s not to mention, and this specific herd has elevated at a terrific charge lately.
Within the fall of 1948 the Michigan Conservation Fee, understanding from bitter expertise that too many deer in farming nation are a far greater headache than too few, opened each one of many state’s eighty-three counties to authorized buck looking, for the primary time in additional than fifty years.
And so a neighbor and I have been out to get a sure buck that we had watched at intervals from July on. We knew his methods, the place he fed, how he traveled to and from the sphere. We thought we might outsmart him on the primary morning of the season — the very Monday that Harold was asking me about.
“And what,” I requested, “do you keep in mind?”
“Oh, I believed you would possibly prefer to go pheasant looking,” he mentioned casually.
“I do know different methods I’d reasonably land in jail,” I retorted. “Possibly you neglect, however the pheasant season is over and achieved with, just like the final rose of summer time.”
“You reside too sheltered a life,” he jeered. “Ever hear of a spot referred to as Ohio?”
I began to climb down off my excessive horse. I might see a plot taking form, and it me.
“Yeah,” I admitted, “I’ve examine it. Someplace south of right here.”
“A few hours south as that jalopy of yours rolls,” Harold agreed. “And so they have pheasants down there. Birds with white collars. They hunt ’em.”
“In Ohio?” I requested incredulously. “Humorous I by no means heard about it!”
“There are many stuff you by no means heard about,” Harold assured me. “Now what are you gonna do subsequent Monday?”
“What’s so particular about Monday?” I demanded. “Why couldn’t it’s Tuesday or Wednesday?”
“Monday occurs to be the day Ohio pheasant looking begins.”
A Buck in My Yard
I used to be in a troublesome spot and I knew it.
“Look,” I implored, “each fall since I can bear in mind, I’ve pushed 100 miles or extra to go deer looking. Now I’ve acquired an opportunity to kill a buck in my yard and also you need me to go it up! This dog-gone deer I’m telling you about gained’t hold. If I don’t get him anyone else will. Everyone within the neighborhood is aware of about him. It’s Monday or by no means, so far as he’s involved. How about placing this Ohio expedition off simply sooner or later?”
“Pheasants don’t hold effectively both,” Harold jogged my memory. “You’ve hunted ’em lengthy sufficient to know that the primary two hours of taking pictures are the most effective of the entire yr.”
“However there’s a couple of pheasant in Ohio,” I persevered, “and this buck is the one one I find out about in these elements.”
“You imply he’s the one tame one about,” Harold sniffed. “Would you go alongside Tuesday if Clyde and I postponed the journey?”
Would I’m going alongside for another day of pheasant looking, three weeks after saying farewell to that type of factor for a complete yr? Would a condemned man settle for a reprieve? I did my greatest to get my emotions throughout to Harold.
“O.Okay.,” he agreed. “We’ll meet you for breakfast at Whitey’s place, south of Jackson, at 6 a.m. Tuesday. We are able to go in a single automotive from there.”
“Doesn’t 6 o’clock appear form of late?” I steered.
“Capturing doesn’t begin till 9,” Harold defined, and that settled that.
Thirty Minutes to Wait
I used to be on time on the rendezvous, however Harold and Clyde Anderson have been already ready.
“Get your deer?” they requested the moment I stepped out of my automotive.
“No,” I admitted. “However one other hunter did, about fifteen minutes after dawn.”
Harold shook his head sadly.
“I knew we must always have gone to Ohio yesterday,” he declared.
We drove south throughout the state line, into the extent farmlands of northwestern Ohio, and stopped at some city or different to choose up our nonresident licenses. Clyde and Harold knew a farmer a number of miles farther on, they usually had made the mandatory preparations prematurely. After we drove on, the authorized taking pictures hour was solely thirty minutes away. We waited for it on the nook of a weedy stubble area.
Six minutes earlier than 9 an impatient hunter off to the south jumped the gun with a salvo of three photographs. However no one else adopted his instance, and the fields have been quiet once more for 5 minutes. Then there was gunfire throughout us and Clyde opened the automotive door for the 2 setters, Invoice and Freckles.
“Come on,” he instructed them. “It’s time to go.”
They didn’t want urging. That they had been penned for 3 weeks they usually hit the stubble at high velocity, protecting half of it whereas we have been strolling the primary fifty yards from the automotive. Out within the heart of the sphere, Clyde’s canine, Freckles, whipped all of a sudden sideways and slammed right into a inflexible level. Invoice got here circling cautiously in to honor it.
They obeyed their orders to be regular. They have been like marble statues there within the weeds as Clyde walked in with Harold on one flank and me on the opposite. The hen lay till Clyde was alongside the canine. Then it went out with a telltale whicker of wings.
“Hen!” Clyde warned sharply, and we stood and watched it sail off and go from sight past a brushy fence row. It was the primary hen of the morning and the canine needed to chase it, however Harold and Clyde checked them sharply they usually went again to work. They hadn’t gone thirty yards farther when Invoice made a discover.
His hen ran, and he broke level, circled, and picked it up twice earlier than he managed to nail it arduous sufficient to make it keep put. Then it flushed whereas Harold and I have been nonetheless a protracted gunshot away. However that didn’t matter. It was one other hen.
About then we missed Clyde. Trying round, we noticed him shifting down on Freckles, stanch on a 3rd hen midway to the far fence. We waited for motion, nevertheless it turned out to be a dud. One other hen.
“Watch your step,” Clyde referred to as again throughout his shoulder. “There’s sure to be a cock in right here someplace, with this bunch of hens.”
It appeared seemingly he was proper. Working independently, each canine acquired factors once more within the subsequent 5 minutes. Freckles’s hen acquired up wild, and Invoice’s waited till Harold all however stepped on it. Each have been the improper intercourse for taking pictures.
“You don’t suppose all of the pheasants in Ohio this fall are hens, do you?” I requested Harold.
He shook his head emphatically. “There was a cock on this stubble someplace,” he declared, “nevertheless it sneaked out on us.”
The conduct of the canine backed him. They have been protecting the sphere in broad sweeping circles, plainly satisfied there have been birds nonetheless on the bottom.
Then it occurred. On the fringe of a fence row 300 yards away, two cock pheasants lifted all of a sudden into clattering flight, squawking as they slanted off towards the subsequent farm. Harold turned an accusing look on me.
“That’s what we get for coming down right here sooner or later late,” he mentioned. “They realized their lesson yesterday, that pair did. I instructed you pheasants gained’t hold, as soon as the taking pictures begins!”
We watched the pair of cocks till they dropped into a giant willow swale half a mile away. Our host had instructed us we have been welcome to hunt on any farm within the neighborhood, so we went after them.
The swale coated 5 acres and it was grown up with a tangle of brush greater than a person’s head. The canine slammed in and have been swallowed up within the lifeless grass and goldenrod. We tried to observe them, however the going was so heavy that taking pictures was out of the query. We clawed our manner again to the sting and took up positions at three bordering factors.
Inside 5 minutes, 4 hen pheasants zoomed out of the comb and flew away. However the cock birds we had marked down didn’t present up, though we gave Invoice and Freckles ample time to work the swale. Both the 2 ringnecks had slipped out to a different hiding place, or they’d merely stayed in and given the canine the run-around.
“They get sensible in a rush,” Clyde remarked considerably after I met him on the higher finish of the swale.
We crossed a pasture with out discovering birds, then got here to a ditch grown up with weeds and brush. Harold took one aspect with Invoice, whereas Clyde and I took the opposite with Freckles. Earlier than he had gone half the size of the ditch, Clyde’s canine made recreation in a patch of thick cowl, pussy-footed forward a number of steps, and stiffened out on a scorching scent. A second later the hen tried a get-away. We heard the flailing of wings within the grass forward of the setter, then an outraged cackle of alarm and resentment. A giant cock pheasant burst out, his white collar and chestnut breast gleaming within the morning solar as he climbed to clear the bushes alongside the ditch financial institution.
Clyde’s automated boomed, and the hen turned shapeless and fell. Freckles picked it up and introduced it again to his boss, and I felt higher about the truth that I had stalled this journey sooner or later. No less than, the ice was now damaged.
However for the subsequent two hours it appeared as if that was all we have been going to perform. The gunning within the fields round us had died right down to rare rumbling. We knew effectively sufficient the that means of the lengthy durations of silence. Different hunters have been discovering no extra birds than we have been. True to customized, the pheasants had holed up for his or her noon siestas. The perfect taking pictures interval of the day, the primary hours of morning, was over. And the most effective taking pictures of the yr was ended, too. The looking would turn into quite a bit leaner for the remainder of the season.
Simply earlier than we went again to the automotive for lunch, Invoice gave Harold an opportunity at a good-looking cock hen close to the sting of a cornfield. Harold made good. However even with that, our kill of two birds for the forenoon was hardly what you can name spectacular.
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“You and your depressing deer looking!” Harold grumbled whereas we have been consuming. “We allow you to speak us out of catching opening day, and look what occurs. Each pheasant in Ohio has picked himself out a bomb shelter by now. If we get one hen this afternoon we’ll be fortunate.”
For a time after lunch, issues appeared dangerous. The lull lasted for a few hours. In that point the canine discovered three birds, one by one, however none with even a hint of white across the neck.
Invoice broke the jinx lastly in a area of scrubby corn, and gave me the primary taking pictures I’d had all day. We have been inside fifty yards of the tip of the sphere when the canine circled throughout in entrance of me, in a manner that indicated he had a hen working. In the identical immediate a pheasant flushed on my left, in entrance of Harold, and he referred to as a pointy warning of “Hen!” because it cleared the corn. Then I noticed the setter slide to a cease and stiffen. I walked forward three or 4 steps. The hen flailed up. It was the proper gender and I nailed it. Invoice introduced it again, his head held excessive in satisfaction.
I used to be nonetheless telling Invoice what a terrific canine he was when Clyde let go a shot on the far aspect of the cornfield. I whipped round to see a cock spinning down and just a little cloud of feathers drifting on the nonetheless air. Then there was a commotion within the corn halfway between Harold and me. Two extra birds, a cock and a hen, rocketed out aspect by aspect. Harold dropped the cock cleanly, and Invoice raced over to maintain his half within the affair.
On the fence we laid our birds out on the grass and took stock. We lacked solely one among our authorized restrict of six pheasants for the day.
The willow swale the place we had misplaced the 2 cocks within the morning was simply throughout the subsequent area. Any person steered we give it one other whirl, so we went that manner.
On the margin of the comb, Freckles picked up information that stopped him chilly. I walked in. The hen should have been the granddaddy of half the pheasants in that nook of Ohio. He was as huge a ringneck as I had seen in a blue moon. His tail appeared to stream out a full yard behind him. He cleared the grass, banked at proper angles, and climbed to hurdle the willow clumps. I despatched three photographs after him and — by no means loosened a feather!
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It took the canine an hour to search out me one other hen. In that point they put up three hens, and one cock that acquired away from them on the bottom and flushed wild. They positioned one lastly in a fence nook. in a patch of canopy no greater than a tablecloth. It was a kind of unlikely spots {that a} cock pheasant is apt to depend on after a few days of dodging canine and weapons. This one knew he was cornered the moment the canine pointed him. He wasted no time. He sneaked via the fence and began down a grass-grown furrow on foot.
However Invoice broke stand and headed him off, and he had the selection of mendacity to the canine or getting air-borne. He flushed with none delay, however I had had loads of warning by that point and I used to be shut sufficient to chop him down earlier than he acquired aloft a dozen ft.
Harold walked over to assist stuff the hen into the again pocket of my looking coat.
“Did I hear you make a note some time again about pheasants not retaining?” I requested him dryly. “Appears to me you mentioned one thing to the impact that if we couldn’t get down right here yesterday, we’d as effectively keep at residence. How about it?”
“ I used to be proper!” he retorted. “Each hen we’ve killed right now has been as jittery as a rabbit at a canine present. Pheasant taking pictures will get to be a troublesome enterprise after the primary three or 4 hours of the season.”
He broke off and stood for a minute scratching Invoice behind one ear. “However that’s the best way I prefer it,” he grinned. “I by no means did care a lot about armchair looking, and these Ohio ringnecks have been precisely proper. Particularly since we gave up on pheasant taking pictures for this yr about three weeks in the past!”
This story, “Pheasants Gained’t Hold,” appeared within the March 1951 concern of Out of doors Life. Have a request for an previous OL story you need to learn once more? Write us at letters@outdoorlife.com.
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