One thing about becoming the designated blocker after more than 60 years of hyper-active pheasant hunting: it gives you plenty of time to reminisce in your own mind.
Pheasant hunters too often neglect to station one hunter at the end of the ditch or long strip of cover while the rest, with dogs, are hunting toward the blocker, to stop the pheasants from running out the end, or shoot the roosters that flush and fly along the strip.
When hunting a ditch alone, I’d often place a turned-on portable radio at the far end, then go back and hunt the ditch and dog toward birds frozen by the CBC.
But for most of years I’d walk miles with my dogs, hunting the cover toward blockers … when we remembered.
But now that the broadloom in my home has become rough ground for me, hoofing it pheasant hunting is out.
Shortly after Dr. Jake Reimer, my Brittany, Beau, and I arrived near Patricia after our long drive from Red Deer, I let them out in a huge tract of bulrush and bull berry and was surprised and delighted that Beau stayed with and hunted for Jake, instead of, as usual, quickly coming looking for me.
Jake is the long-time designated hitter-gunner for our pheasant forays and Beau may be starting to understand that I do not walk the good stuff much anymore.
Over the traditional opening day lunch at the Patricia Hotel our party briefly discussed a good ditch for me to block, among many more important things, like how’s the fishing?
It was bright and hot after lunch when I drove to the west end of one of the best, which means worst, ditches I have ever met — a wide, mile-long moat, lined both sides with a wild and thorny bull berry jungle — while the four others and two dogs went to the far end to start to hunt both sides toward me.
For some reason I reflected on seasons or part seasons missed, besides the three lost (’59, ’60, ’61) while I was studying law at Dalhousie in Halifax.
In 1970 “they” cancelled the whole season because of a flawed report that Alberta pheasants contained high mercury levels.
In 1992, half the season was suddenly and stupidly closed because somebody told area MLA, Tom Musgrove, that he couldn’t find many pheasants.
What got me going was that I almost missed this opening day because, like thousands of Albertans, I couldn’t buy a licence: the IBM licensing system had been “down” for a week and the government still hadn’t seen fit to mention it and save thousands of people useless trips to licence vendors, and officials are still pointedly not saying what caused the momentous screw-up.
Such musings are interrupted by the neighbouring rancher stopping his rig and bale wagon and putting me on full alert by telling me that, early in the morning, there had been “four roosters perched on the fence brace ‘just over there.’”
From far away among the drivers and dogs there’s one shot: Mike Shaffner’s female Brittany, Mijo, pointed a young rooster which Jake missed, something he hasn’t done in a long time.
It is a blocking classic as Neil Waugh and his fox red female Labrador, Penny, near the end of the ditch just to my right.
Suddenly, from the jungle, there arose such a clatter … of pheasants that had been frozen there by my and the rancher’s vehicle’s noise and particularly our voices.
Four clear the top of the jungle and give me my favorite shot, rising, left to right, except there was no shot; they were all hens.
After the time it would have taken to reload, the tail-end Charlies, usually roosters, clattered up and gave me the same easy shot … except, again, no shot; they were three more Charlenes, not Charlies.
All the clichés are uttered: great to see the hens; you’ve got to have hens to have roosters; it doesn’t matter to the dogs what sex they are … then we were off for another ditch for Beau to hunt, maybe, and for me to block, perhaps, from my new high-seat walker.
This time, no birds at all, and Beau quickly left the drivers and dogs and ran straight down the ditch, looking for me, his old boss and buddy.
So, Jake, Beau and I, are off on the long drive home, trying to arrive before full dark.
At the junction of the Trans-Canada and Hwy 550 we get waved in by a Wildlife Officer check stop, the first we have encountered in too many years.
I thought it was a strange location for it, and the officer might have asked if it was OK before he started rooting around in my cooler, but it was nice to have someone check the licence I luckily managed to get at the last minute, when some of the computers surfaced again..
Bob Scammell is an award-winning columnist who lives in Red Deer. He can be reached at bscam@telusplanet.net.