Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
Can you have a family tradition that takes a break for a few years and then resumes? We think you can, and this one ties multiple generations together. Some have gone on to the other camp, as my friend Chico Her Many Horses calls the afterlife, and some are just taking their first steps with the big boys. Either way, Thanksgiving morning has been the source of many memorable gatherings.
These gatherings involve shotguns, dogs, pheasants and camaraderie, all in varying amounts.
Last Thursday, Thanksgiving morning, the latest rendition of the holiday pheasant hunt resumed with a rendezvous at the Fast Lane in Shoshoni at 6:30 am.
My son-in-law, Adam, is here from Pittsburgh with Staci and the girls, Jayne and Norah. We picked up a one-day $37 out-of-state upland game bird license on Wednesday evening for him at Rocky Mountain Sports, along with a box of 20-gauge 7 ½ lead shot.
I have a lifetime Conservation Stamp and purchased one for Brian when he was 16 for $75, a bargain. He bought a lifetime fishing, small game and upland bird license, and I “timed out” a few years ago with an “old guy” Pioneer tag that adds all three for me in perpetuity.
We met my nephew Jake, his son Bridger and a potential new member of the family, Robert Anderson, in Shoshoni. They had their Gordon Setter, Xena, in the truck. The hyperactive little long-haired dog was eager to hit the brush.
We met Rob and Leslie Hendry at one of their fields east of Lysite, filled out paperwork, paid a fee, and soon were out on the hunt on a perfect 35-degree morning.
The sun had just broken the horizon when we set out.
Xena worked back and forth in frenetic, but controlled bursts, sniffing, spinning and occasionally stopping in her tracks, frozen with her tail wagging. She was a great bird dog.
We had a variety of armaments. Adam asked to use my favorite shotgun, an over-under Stoeger 16-gauge. Brian hunted with my dad’s 870 20-gauge, a vintage shotgun that dates back to the 1950s, and has taken more birds than my entire arsenal combined.
Bridger had a 20-gauge single shot, a perfect choice for an 11-year-old setting out with the “big boys” for the first time. Robert had a 12-gauge pump, and I was shooting one of Brian’s shotguns, an over-under 28-gauge.
It was the first time I took a 28-gauge to the field. Brian later switched to a 16-gauge side-by-side and finally to an over-under .410. He took birds with all three.
The 28-gauge is my daughter-in-law Katelin’s shotgun. It had an external choke on each barrel, and it felt almost like shooting an air rifle. There was so little recoil that only the noise of the shell indicated you’d pulled the trigger.
I wrote of the 28-gauge shotgun a long time ago. On February 11, 2006, late Vice-President Dick Cheney shot his 78-year-old friend, and attorney, Harry Wittington in the face with a 28-gauge Perazzi. They were hunting quail on a Texas ranch when the accident occurred.
The attorney recovered, but I found it amusing as the various network news teams tried to grasp the story of the incident.
It became immediately clear that the more liberal elements of the news media had absolutely no idea what a shotgun could do, how bird hunts are organised or even what to call shotgun pellets.
I watched the boys and girls with perfect hair and gorgeous smiles try to explain how the VP had just nailed a Texas attorney with buckshot. Buckshot…Did they ever consider why it was called buckshot? Even if Cheney had accidentally shot his fellow hunter with buckshot instead of birdshot from the purported 30-yard distance (and not from the 10 to 15 feet range that the shot pattern indicated), he would not have been available for comment a few days later in a Texas Hospital.
Buckshot is used to kill bucks. It’s also used in sizes from 00 (double-aught) to number four by goose and turkey hunters. But the fashion model broadcasters wouldn’t know that since hunting is only for Cro-Magnon, knuckle-dragging types.
It was an interesting paradox for several of the newsmen. I could tell by their reactions that they knew much more about bird hunting than they let on, but to acknowledge that was to admit to forbidden knowledge that no self-respecting liberal should ever possess.
At the other extreme were the conservatives who knew all about bore size, shot pattern and the difference between a high brass, a low brass or a range shell. They weren’t about to talk openly about the relatively short range and light pattern of even a full-choke 28-gauge, since an open discussion would shred the official story being presented by the Cheney spin team.
An over-and-under 28-gauge is often considered a preppy, rich boy gun. Most hunters probably couldn’t afford the shells he was shooting.
Whatever shotgun you use is really a matter of taste as well as strength.
A 10 or 12-gauge is often too much gun for a weak person to use comfortably. I’ve hunted geese with a 10-gauge, but most often I use my Remington 870 12-gauge or my vintage single-shot Iver Johnson with the extra-long barrel and extremely tight choke.
It’s hard to believe that the late vice-president is today considered a “liberal” by the right-wing extremists that control what was once the reputable Republican Party. Dick Cheney, a wide-eyed liberal. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic.
A couple of years before the shooting incident, I sat at an outdoor table in Western Missouri with a group of far-right individuals. They were fun to listen to. Ignorant, arrogant, misguided, occasionally misogynistic, but funny. People can be so strange.
My conversation with the true believers ended abruptly after several expressed a desire to see Cheney run for president. I made the comment that Americans would never vote for a man who shot a woman’s gun, as Cheney did with his custom, recoilless 28-gauge shotgun when he’s out gunning down captive birds. The lobbyist didn’t see the humor in this at all.
As usual, my wife Sue asked me why I always “poked the bear” figuratively speaking when confronted with far-right or far-left ideology. “I don’t know,” I always say, “It must be a character flaw.”
There was no need to poke any bruins on Thanksgiving morning. We got along famously. Bridger at 11, learned how to “talk smack” with the older guys. It was great to see him popping off.
We didn’t set any shooting records. On a similar hunt five years ago in Butler, Pennsylvania I hit the first 18 pheasants I jumped. Not so Saturday. I blamed the 28-gauge’s lack of power, but maybe not.
We took eight of the 17 birds we jumped. Xena jumped 14 of them, and we almost stepped on three more that flushed a few yards in front of us.
A fabulous tradition that needs to become an annual one.
The only caveat to the day was the absence of my dad, Luther Forrest, and my late brother-in-law Matt Conilogue, though I could feel their presence.