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The Pheasant Flush

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The Pheasant Flush
It was early in the morning, in the fall of 1957, Dad walked into our bedroom and said boys lets go get us a pheasant. We were always ready to grab our guns and head out to go hunting. We quickly got dressed and went on into the kitchen where Mom was fixing the usual Saturday morning breakfast, a pan of 24 biscuits with gravy, bacon and eggs. We would have biscuits for lunch and most times supper too, that way she would have to bake only once per day.
Dad said you boys hook up the tractor and wagon and we'll will go up on the hill to that patch of corn and shuck us a load of corn before we come back for lunch.
I was a lean 13 years old and brother Dane was going on seventeen and already gallivanting around doing things most couldn't even think about. He could whip a bull dog with buzz saws for paws and wouldn't hesitate to do it. It seems he got connected up with a group of guys up at the Clinton air Base in Wilmington who had their own Levi jackets printed up with their names on them and they thought they were tough. Dad didn't take to it very well, but that's another story.
It took a while to get up to the top of this big hill as we had to follow the creek for a ways to another branch off to the left and then start climbing up the hill in order to travers the country with a tractor and wagon. I always hated to have to go after the cows at milking time because that's where they would always be. I remember at one time we had this beautiful collie dog and when I would get home from school he would have the cows in the barn lot waiting for me. I guess that's why I loved the movie about OLE YELLER; he was the best daggum dog in the world.
As we pulled up to the corn patch I could just feel the pheasants get ready to jump out and fly away, but nothing moved. We climbed down off the tractor and walked over to the patch and grabbed a couple of stalks of corn to twist them together so we could lean our shotguns up against them like a tripod. That would keep the guns up off the ground and away from our flying ears of corn hitting the wagon, which was why we couldn't load them in the wagon. About that time a big ole cock rooster flew up out from under our guns, knocking our guns down and scaring us over into the next farmers field. Sell Art Online
After we got ourselves composed again we started shucking corn and proceeded to fill the wagon. If you have never had a pheasant fly up out from under your feet cackling and flapping those wings , well you just can't seem to ever get ready for it. They most always want to run or just plain hide like this one, only he waited until we walked away and then he flew the coop.
I thought at that time there wasn't anything as good as roast pheasant and we had it often, but times and things changed and the pheasant population of the fifty's was gone for many years,
it's just now starting to come back . But the big problem now is there are no longer any small farms with small patches of corn with weeds growing up around the corn stalks for the birds to hide in. We have become too adept at farming and spreading insecticides and such cleaning out even the fence rows. I guess that's why when I see a pretty little old farm stead like this one I stop and starting shooting with my camera. I took so many pictures of this little farm that the farmer came out to see what I was doing, we had a good talk and I left. I love the country and old barns.
Uncle Ran