Sometime in the next few days the ritual will begin.
The worn, comfortable and almost threadbare surplus pants and camo shirt are already clean. I will probably make a note to replace at least one of the laces on my snake boots this year. I will once again lament the state of my favorite hunting hat, a wide-brimmed camo hat that Miss Rhonda searched everywhere to find as a Christmas present over a decade ago.
I’ll pull out the misshapen old bolt-action rifle, along with the over-under .22 Magnum/20 gauge, and apologize for not spending more time with them since last winter. They’re both very forgiving, being old hands at this game called dove hunting. They’ll be disassembled and cleaned, then re-oiled, and any stray rust spots will be tackled with a copper penny wrapped in a cleaning patch.
I count the rounds. The only good thing about not having enough time or flexibility to hunt much is that I always seem to have plenty of 7 ½, 20 gauge rounds on opening day. There was a time when I would count every penny and change, looking for an extra lawn to mow or early leaves to rake so I could bike madly to the store and grab a box or two of field loads of 6 or 8 gauge. Unfortunately, now I just have to dig around under the seat of the truck unless I want to open one of the new boxes still gathering dust from a season or two.
Dove hunting season never gets the credit it deserves, and yet I know few people who haven’t cut their teeth on mourning dove hunting, and even fewer who don’t head out to a suitable cornfield when hunting season begins. My waterfowl hunting friends are all about the ducks, while my deer hunting friends spend hours shooting bows and arrows at backyard targets, zeroing in rifles, or deciding which dogs will lead the pack this year. The bear hunters will snort in disdain, waiting until November to get excited. My raccoon hunting friends have already trained the new pups, despite mosquitoes and snakes and the sheer misery of a southern swamp in summer.
I understand their passions and even share some of them.
I just love pigeon hunting.
I didn’t go dove hunting alone until nearly ten months after I got my first shotgun. I spent months learning to shoot, reload and clean this old imported single shotgun that I got as an early Christmas present for the princely sum of $49.95. It was nothing special, but to me it was special. The stock was made of some kind of hardwood, the barrel 28 inches long with a tight choke, and the sides decorated with elaborate ornamentation, a surprisingly beautiful detail, like elaborate bridles on a plow mule. It handled so well that it surprised the adults who taught me to shoot, how to be a sportsman and not kill myself or others.
We lived on the outskirts of town, and the nearest cornfield was an easy walk for a small boy and his dog, even when laden with a lunch bag, a canteen, and two or three boxes of cartridges. I had scouted out my spot weeks in advance, eagerly awaiting the corn harvest.
The owners of the property basically allowed anyone to hunt there as long as they behaved themselves, without officially asking for permission. It was a different time, to say the least. There were a few other hunters scattered around, far enough away that we didn’t have to worry about getting shots fired at each other. I unfolded my camp chair, ripped the top off a box of bullets like an experienced hand, and looked at my drugstore Timex about twenty times as the hands slowly ticked toward noon.
At 11:58 a.m. I threw a cartridge into the chamber and closed the mechanism.
At 12 noon, the start of legal shooting time, I was tense, watching for the hundreds of birds that would fly past my post under a gum tree. I would line up so I could pick my legal limit of 12 birds and return home a hero.
I think it was about an hour later when the first bird flew by at the speed of sound. Someone on the other side of the field fired a shot, but the bird made it past safely.
A few minutes later, another bird shot past, still out of my reach. One of the hunters at the end of the field might have dropped it.
Further down the railway line you could hear the distant shotgun blasts; it took me a few minutes to realise that you could track the possible flight path of approaching birds by listening to the shots. I was a little overwhelmed, trying to listen to the shots on the other side of the woods and behind the pond and at the edge of my field, while simultaneously scanning about a thousand acres of blue September sky for a tiny grey dot that might come within range. My dog Dudley had no such problems with tension and anxiety. He got bored and dug a hole in the cool earth under the gum tree. A minute or two later he was snoring.
I had been looking the wrong way when the bark of a shotgun at the other end of the field caused me to turn my head. I could see a grey dot spinning and heading towards me. There was another shot, but this one also missed.
Trying to control my breathing, I got into the ready position, trying to remember everything CA McLamb, Larry Gregory, Woody Eason, and my uncle had taught me. The shot would hit at a slight angle, and I knew I could get the shot off. My thumb was on the hammer, and when I could make out details, I put the gun to my shoulder and fired.
I missed it.
The bird was already beyond the tree line before I could put another round into the chamber. Seemingly out of nowhere, two more birds flew past to my right. I had a bad case of hunting fever and both escaped unharmed. I remember the padding and the cartridge case from my round fluttering to the ground behind them.
It wasn’t until late afternoon and the end of the second box of cartridges that things clicked. The sky was almost painfully blue over the golden cornfield as I began to better train them to “shoot where they aren’t,” as the saying goes. I didn’t hit the limit that day, but I did kill three. Dudley even forgave me for ruining his nap, gave in to his retrieving instinct, and brought back two of the three.
We walked home under a glorious September sunset, my open shotgun slung over my shoulder, carrying the smell of gunpowder. There would be days when I brought home more birds and days when I brought home fewer, but there would never be another day like this.
Dudley is gone, of course, he was buried almost 40 years ago next to another cornfield we hunted in. The stock on my first shotgun broke two and a half decades ago, and finding a replacement was a futile endeavor. The precious gold dust on the sides has faded with time. I can’t even imagine walking a mile or more on a dirt road without being in pain.
I hope to be able to stand in a field again next week, in a place that I know is suitable for stock birds. I won’t have a dog to bring the birds back to me.
But even if I don’t bring home dinner, I’ll be a kid again for a little while, taking part in the first of thousands of hunts beside a golden field under a brilliant blue sky with a Boy Scout canteen and a packed lunch. I’ll forget the sad times and revel in the memories of hunting in places where they don’t exist.
