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FROM THE GALLERY...
By
Carol Pyne
Fathers do
not teach their daughters to hunt. I’m not saying that there
isn’t an occasional exception but it is a central characteristic
of our culture that we do not teach our daughters to hunt.
Mother teaches Susie to bake and Dad teaches Johnny to hunt and
shoot.
That being
said, I think any of us who have ever been married can agree
that husbands can not teach their wives to hunt. In much
the same way that a husband can not teach their wives to drive,
ski, bowl, golf, change the oil on the car…you get my drift.
Generally speaking, husbands don’t have the patience to teach
their wives to do anything.
So where
does a woman who has the desire, aptitude and field-trained dog
learn how to do this thing? It’s not like a driving course
where we can pay $10 for an hour-long lesson. Plus, this is a
two-pronged operation; first, there’s the gun. The actual
hunting is a whole other can of worms (or should I say “flock of
geese”?)
I recently
had the good luck to be invited pheasant hunting by a vendor
that I do business with. Admittedly, it didn’t hurt that I have
a field-trained dog, although I told him up front that Skylar
had never been on pheasants before. I also was very up front in
telling him that I was an absolute novice at this sport. I
figured that it was better to be honest; that way I couldn’t
embarrass myself too badly. In any event, he was
intrigued enough to include me in a threesome that he was taking
to a private hunting preserve for an afternoon of pheasant and
chukar hunting.
My first
order of business was to get some practice with my shotgun. I
have a Remington 870, 12 gauge, with a bird barrel. It’s a pump
action shotgun and it took some time to get used to loading and
unloading. Always remembering gun safety, I didn’t want to hurt
anyone—least of all myself or my dog. |
We had a
gorgeous afternoon for hunting and to my great delight, Skylar
proved to be a real pro. Once she realized that the birds were
out there, she knew just what to do. She rooted around until
she flushed one, then waited for the gun shot and marked the
fall of the bird perfectly, delivering it to my hand with all
the enthusiasm of a kid at an easter egg hunt.
I was
nervous and intent on working Skylar. In fact, I didn’t even
load my shotgun at first, a fact my companions commented upon
rather quickly. “Its much safer for you this way”, I told them
with a grin. I soon felt more comfortable and quietly loaded my
gun with just one shot. My chance came when Skye flushed a
pheasant just a few feet from where I stood. I swung my arm up
and pulled the trigger—nothing! I forgot to take the safety
off! Click—it was off—pull the trigger again—BANG—Oh my god, I
winged it! Thank goodness my companions were good shots. They
backed me up and shot the bird in short order. That’s the
closest I came to actually hitting anything for the rest of the
afternoon but I guess that was enough. Just like the first time
the judge in the conformation ring points to your dog and says
“you’re number one”, it’s a feeling that you won’t forget and
can’t get enough of.
So now I’m
hoping that my friend will invite me back for more hunting, or
that I can find someone willing to take on a novice and show
her the ropes. I feverishly page through my copy of Field
and Stream to find articles about hunting. For my birthday,
my husband gave me a pair of two-way radios, duck decoys, a new
duck call and a camouflage jacket. We were in a fancy
restaurant when he gave them to me and the waitress, who saw the
gifts, looked at me strangely and said “And this is OK with
you?” I grinned and said “Oh yeah, these are great!”
What a shame that fathers don’t teach their daughters to hunt. |
