Pheasant Hunting With My Bud

It’s pheasant hunting season in Wisconsin and Iowa. For the next three months upland hunters will adorn their twenty percent orange attire and chase the colorful and gaudy ring neck pheasant to the end of the earth and back. It is now that I am reminiscent of my good times shooting and hunting with my buddy Milt McPike.

During our twenty- five year friendship we go teased about how much skeet and hunting stuff we had. The guys would say, “Did you two leave anything at Gander Mountain for the rest of us?” The first hunting trip we could fit the gear we owned, not including the dog, into the hatch of my ‘93 Blazer and still have room. I didn’t own a gun and when I did buy one, I kept it at Milt’s house. That was years ago. The last year we hunted together, Milt’s extended Suburban was busting at the seams from all of our hunting stuff.

In the past eighteen years we became very good friends with a few farmers in Malcolm, a small Iowa town east of Grinnell. They know us and our vehicles. One year we showed up Friday night wearing the same athletic outfit. It wasn’t planned; it just happened. That night at dinner, Ron said, “Are you guys, Me and Mini Me?” His brother Larry chimed in with, “Ronnie, maybe they didn’t come to hunt this year. They’re probably on their way to a modeling job.” The teasing was relentless, as our hunting gear multiplied over the years.

If was made for pheasant hunting or skeet shooting we had it or it was on the list of stuff to be had. One year at a skeet shoot in Waukesha, while waiting for the next event, a shooter from Illinois strolled up and commented, “I just came by to say hello and to see what new stuff you guys had.” Milt was often asked “So Milt how many guns you have now?” His answer was always the same, “I don’t know.” He knew how many he had, but he didn’t want to say how many. After a while, he had so many guns that he honestly couldn’t remember how many guns he had.

But our love for shooting accessories didn’t start with skeet shooting. It began years earlier. Milt was then the principal at East High School. When I took an assistant principal position at East, our friendship took off like a bang. In 1990 several teacher friends invited us on a pheasant hunting trip to Iowa. These guys had hunted pheasants before, but this was our first time at hunting any kind of upland bird.

Sitting in the Longhorn Café in Grinnell at breakfast I could tell from looking at the other hunters that we were different. We looked like two city slickers. Our hunting uniform consisted of blue jeans, Sears’ leather work boots, flannel shirt, baseball cap, down jacket and no gloves. We looked more ready for yard work than pheasant hunting. I turned to Milt and said, “Do you think we should have worn something different?” He looked around the café at the other hunters, shrugged his shoulders and without much thought said, “Too late now”, and continued eating his breakfast. Nobody said anything about our attire.

Our morning hunt started with overcast skies, and by midday it was wet, windy and cold. Our feet were soaked and we were cold to the bone. No one else complained about being wet and cold, and at the expense of sounding wimpy, we didn’t say anything either. We assumed that being wet and cold was an integral part of the pheasant hunting experience. Back to the hotel, as we put our wet boots and clothing on top of the radiator to dry, we learned the rest of the story. The other guys really weren’t wet and cold at all. They were wearing Gortex and thermal underwear. We didn’t know what Gortex was, let alone having it to wear.

In misery, we looked at each other and said we wouldn’t be at the mercy of Mother Nature ever again. That weekend of dew and rain soaked pants, and leaky boots made us appreciate having quality hunting clothes. After that trip, we discovered Cabela’s, Gander Mountain and became good friends with all the salesmen at Gerhard’s. Brush and briar pants replaced blue jeans; game vest and upland shooting jackets replaced putting shells in our pockets and carrying pheasants in our hands. Gortex lined leather boots replaced leather work boots; hunting hats, shooting glasses, gloves and thermal underwear, and wool socks with nylon sock liners also became part of our uniform.

We looked good in our upland clothes, but we were horrible wing shooters. Now well into our second year of pheasant hunting, we hadn’t brought a rooster home for the pot that was shot by one of us. Someone recommended that we go to a gun club and do some clay target shooting. We shot trap at Oregon for a while and eventually moved to Middleton. It was at Middleton, and later at Sauk Prairie, that our love affair with skeet began.

Since that Iowa trip, Milt and I have had many adventures hunting pheasants, ducks and geese during our twenty-five year friendship. We logged many hours tramping the public grounds at Mud Lake and Deansville on weekends searching for pheasants.

On one particular opening day we were hunting a friend’s farm in Marshall. Neither one of us were any good with directions. The field we were hunting was bordered on the east side by a drainage ditch and on the west side by impassable brush. Four of us were hunting the field from south to north. Milt was on the outside edge next to the drainage ditch. I said, “Milt don’t cross any ditches or fence lines, we will all meet up at the end this grass field” The job of a high school principal is serious work and requires serious qualifications. Unfortunately for the both of us, having a keen sense of direction in the field was not one of them.

We lined up and started our push toward the north end of the field. We hadn’t gone more then ten yards when two pheasants flushed ahead of us, banking to our left. Even though they were hens we were all rattled. Fifteen yards into resuming our methodical march, a rooster flushed between Milt and I. We both had walked by this smart rooster that chose to sit rather than fly. The noise and suddenness of a close sitting rooster’s flush, cackling, and beating its wings trying to gain altitude, was enough to wake a comatose hunter in the next county. The rooster flew right over Milt’s head. Regaining my composure, I yell “Milt, rooster coming at you.” By the time the rooster cleared Milt it was forty yards out. I made two “hope and a prayer” long shots. Milt now had a bead on the rooster but now it was out about fifty yards and picking up speed. Milt made two shots, more desperate than mine, as the rooster continued its eastward flight unscathed. By all accounts that rooster should have been on the ground. We all had a good laugh about Milt and my poor shooting.

Realigning ourselves, we continued our push toward the end. We were standing around talking after we got there and someone said, “Where is Milt? We waited for thirty minutes but no Milt. Then I remembered that I hadn’t heard him or the dog since we shot at that rooster over an hour ago. I wondered to myself if he had gone chasing after that rooster. After waiting fifteen minutes more we decided to go back to look for him. We walked back to where we started and he wasn’t there. We thought he may have gone back to the house to use the bathroom or get something, like more shells. When we got back to the house, he wasn’t there either. We had a bowl of chili for lunch and waited some more. Its been two hours now since he’s been missing. It had started to rain and now we were starting to worry that something had happen. We were getting ready to call out the Calvary when we heard a vehicle pull into the driveway. We heard a knock at the kitchen door. There stood Milt with his dog, Alex. A farmer, who lived four miles east of where we were hunting, had picked him up walking along a road near Marshall.

He had crossed the drainage ditch, two fence lines, and a gravel road. Not much was said except thanking the farmer for giving him a ride. Years later the story became one of my favorite. I often wonder how far he would have wandered if the farmer hadn’t picked him up. He had already walked from Berlin Road through Deansville and almost to Marshall, five miles away. The next town was Waterloo, eleven miles from where we were hunting. Since that day, whenever we hunted with a group, I didn’t let him out of my sight. That meant that he didn’t go into grass taller than him, timbers or standing corn. In Malcolm he was our official “blocker.”

Pheasant hunting was never more fun than with Milt. I still hunt and it’s still a good time, but it can never be any better than when you share it someone else. Sharing it with your best buddy make(s) it even better.

My skeet shooting and pheasant hunting buddy is in heaven now. He made his way to there on March 29, 2008.

Good hunting, my buddy!