EASTERN MONTANA PHEASANT OPENER

I WAS CAMPED....

outside a 3 star upscale oil-patch hotel built during  the recent BAKKEN boom. Although, those days are temporarily gone,  my hunting companions had suites with kitchenette. The comfortable lodging was quiet until the hunters from Pennsylvania arrived... More on that later.
Beside our hunt master another couple to added to the hunt party's stratosphere.

The two hammer gun guys who shot a WC Scott Premier and a James Woodward

Another Alpha male, he loved hunting birds and is afflicted with the need for fine weaponry like a tidy Woodward Hammergun. He was an Agriculturist and later each day he always had two or three birds tails protruding from his vest. His love for all thing Teutonic especially short hairs with names out Hansel and Gretel often forced me to think why I did not hunt with my Linders' What I really liked though was his immediate field dressing.

Pheasant ala picatta served over angel hair pasta

His wife is an artist with a passion for the sublime and could inhabit a world few of us scientists and engineer types can phantom. She seemed to peer sometimes into those multi-universes that only those living in the present can achieve. Their enthusiasms combined well to make the hunting party rival anything I had experienced on the Scottish grouse moors.

Opening morning  and I was unprepared to the long drive to the shooting fields as I usually camp within a few miles of our hunting grounds. The price of gas was astounding compare to my Nevada/California petro station.  We drove through several small towns that were clones of those in Saskatchewan. I felt at home. I understood people in these town maybe from the tales my mother would speak of about her South Dakota youth. He tales were always about the character that lived there. They came to life whenever I visited  a Prairie town.

Ahead the black suburban taillights stayed on. We were in the middle of nothing and I was comforted by my Labs moaning. She knew what was coming.  The hunt master got out of the cartel suburban and told us the nearby Russian Olive bush  usually held birds. He was right. 

The Swede and the Irishman both with English pre1900 doubles

Unprepared again, I walked to the bush and without a loaded gun. I sent the lab and a covey of partridge flushed, a single sharptail followed and finally two cock pheasants. It was a Moses bush and I had disobeyed the  1st commandment, "to always carry a loaded gun." I would get another crack at them later that week.

The Agriculturist and the Artist

My lab,Tess, came to heel looked up at me and almost pissed on Meindl boot.  We loaded and drove to the next coulee where I watched a dozen pheasants run from the wheat stubble into the grass. These birds were totally wild and had their Ph.D.'s from bird hunters.  And so we started the chase up the erosion patch with several Russian olives and native prairie grasses. I took the outside and kept the lab within 20 yards while the shorthair moved ahead. I could see birds running ahead about 200 yard and the cocks wildly flushed  ahead. While the  shorthair worked ahead I let the lab loose and she immediately flushed a cock a perfect right to left.  I was awed by the powerful wing beats and a tail that flopped and waved at me as the pheasant caught the breeze. I was caught with my head up bird watching, again. The gorgeous bull cock flew to its freedom. And then the lab spun around scented another trail. As I turned around she flushed another cock.  This time the hammer went down and Lab had feathers in her mouth and gingerly brought dinner to hand

The 1876 W&C Scott and Son Premiere Grade Dolphin head hammergun