But before I got sick, Cliff and I pushed Mongo for some pheasant on Monday, and I worked for them on Tuesday until midday to no avail.
Monday I had already seen 3 pheasant, 2 on the road and 1 that I bumped and still cannot believe I whiffed on. But that's hunting I guess, Cliff got to Mongo by 10:30ish in the am after he got his kids on buses and dropped off homework for one.
With the knowledge of where I saw the 2 birds by the road we set up a slow push that should at least let us see a bird. So we dropped off Cliffs vehicle at the pick up spot and I drove us down to the start spot in my pos. Well, before we started the drive he put his key on the dash, I don't like leaving stuff people might want to steal on the dash so I put it in the glove box, and off we went. We didn't see either of those wiley pheasant but we did manage to walk 1.5 miles through the thick stuff looking for them before we made it to Cliff's car. As we were getting closer to the car we both came to the same realization at about the same time.
Yep you guessed it, his key was back in my car, I didn't even think about it when I was putting it in the glove box. I have always put my guests keys in the glove box. Since we were both there we decided to not place any blame and just start walking the .75mi back to my car to move on to the next spot.
But we really know it was Cliff's fault, what was he thinking leaving his key in my car.
Anyway I'm over it.
So we really only had enough time to make a very small push on 1 more spot. There was another spot that I had been seeing a pheasant on the road so we were going to walk for about 15 minutes to the west then pop out on the road and get back to the cars, so he could get home in time to get his kids from school. He's a pretty involved dad which I think is pretty impressive in this time and age. I've told him numerous times to just leave a trail of food from the bus stop to the house and everything will take care of itself. 👍
Anyway we got to the spot and I gave a brief outline of what we were going to do.... when I looked in the direction of which we were going to travel and saw 2 hunters coming our way. After we chatted them up very briefly we changed our course and headed North to the back fields to try our luck. I wanted to see what Cliff had learned through the day and let him pick where we were going to push and walk, since we have very limited time. He started by straight up gar holin' me, the brush he took to walk through looked really pheasanty and the brush he gave to me looked... well, kinda anemic. So, I choked down my criticism of the unfolding events and watched as he weaved through the the brush stopping at the best clumps of grass and trees and waited for the flush, all the while I stood in the barren wasteland that he gave me to push. By the way this little chunk of property couldn't hide a quail let alone a pheasant. After 20 yards or so of walking through the pheasant desert I looked up and all of a sudden my side started looking good. As my attitude and eyes started looking up and forward I saw our quarry. A lone ringneck pheasant staring back at me, well, as we are well aware of I take pride in ground pounding my birds, with no dog they can't get away that way. This one was especially tough I had to shoot twice to get the desired effect, which was a bird for the game bag.
Cliff took this pic with his phone and since our time was pretty much done we called it a day. He said he had a really good time and liked that kind of hunting because he was always moving. I couldn't work him too hard because of the limited time but I'm sure given one whole day I could send him home tired and sore.
Muzzleloader season opens next week, I need to get a deer.
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