16ga.com ~ View topic - An Indiana Story: "Mr. Browning Meets Mr. Rooster"

Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 787 Location: Indiana

Today is the next-to last day of pheasant hunting in Indiana for this season. I decided to take a half day off from the bank this afternoon to try out a Belgium Browning Light Twelve A-5 that I found at my local dealer's yesterday. This morning right before lunch, he and I negotiated a reasonable price, and I had the itch to try this modified choke, 28"vent ribbed beauty out on the resident pheasant population.

It has been raining up here for the better part of two days, and our bird covers are a mess. The ditches and low holes are full to running over. But after lunch, the sun popped out briefly, the wind picked up, and Ma Nature denied smilingly that she had been anything but kind...The next question was, where to go? Considering the weather, I felt I should pick the heaviest grass cover available that I could work without waders, so the dog and I saddled up and by 3 pm we were wandering through the weeds, north of a horseshoe shaped tract of thick swampgrass, willows and cattails.

As has happened several times this season, the dog picked up scent on the west edge of a three acre swamp. The cover features heavy, tall grass on the south end, a ditch in the middle, cattails and sawgrass on the north end, and cut-over willows to the east. A hen flushed wild in the middle of the cover. The dog scampered back and forth near a particularly thick clump of cattails and a rooster and a hen boiled out of there, the hen heading north and the rooster angling southeast, quartering away from me.

My first shot from the A-5 rocked the bird and as he dangled a leg, I fired again and he hit the cattails far out in the cover with a heavy splash. Pal heard rather than saw the bird fall and as I urged him forward, he vacuumed the nearby weeds but did not seem to have a perspective as to where exactly the cock fell. Fearing we might lose a crippled bird if I did not act, I waded deeper into the cattails, resigning myself to discomfort as the water rose above my boot tops. The dog followed, surging ahead of me, and after a slight delay, returned from the cattails with a very dead rooster in his jaws.

Glad for the retrieve, yet disgusted at my waterlogged Carhartts and boots, I trudged back to semi-dry land, sat on an irrigation wheel, literally wrung out my boot liners and socks, poured the water from my boots, put myself back together and resumed the search for my second bird. We hunted the horseshoe area of the cover and initially found little to excite us. However, on the way back to the north, entering a small copse of willows, the Golden began a certain march which I have come to learn means "I don't know for sure where we're going, Boss, but they's a rooster at the end, and we's on our way !"

The dog damn near wore me out as he quickened his pace, zigzagging frenziedly across a more or less open expanse of grass to a heavier tract of thick weeds, trying to reach the end of a very hot trail ! Realizing the increasing likelihood of a rooster being nearby, I set up to face him as he cut smaller and smaller circles in the tall weeds. With a defiant cackle, a cock pheasant rose from the chest-high grass, caught the wind and began to sail. As he reached the apex of flight, I touched off a single shot and the #5's hammered him; the wind and momentum of his flight deposited him in the weeds a good 20 yards from where he was initially hit.

Back at the pickup, I field dressed the birds, toweled off the Golden and myself and started home. Tomorrow, a friend and I have a follow-up date with the roosters of Benton County, about 120 miles southwest, where we have been drawn via lottery for an Indiana Game Bird Habitat Stamp hunt.
But---that's a story for tomorrow....

Member Joined: 08 Nov 2005 Posts: 3438 Location: Illinois

Sounds like that A-5 is in for a workout-----glad to know it not only looks good but functions too!!!The rain is supposed to hold off for us this weekend---good luck,keep the dog fed and let us know how it goes--and more importantly have a Merry Christmas and may you enjoy a whole bunch more Wink

Joined: 21 Dec 2006 Posts: 40 Location: Memphis, TN

Great story!

When will the book come out?

Thanks for posting these..

rayb

Wolfchief, Great stories. Only pheasants we get to see in this part of the Hoosier state are released birds at Glendale FWA.
Would love to be able to grab my lab and spend a few hours like you so eloquently described. Will have to settle for preserve birds but a least we do get some ducks.
Keep hunting and keep writing.

Jeff

Member Joined: 20 Mar 2005 Posts: 1522 Location: NH

Nice story but WHAT GA was that A-5 again? Wink

Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Posts: 989 Location: Las Vegas

Yea! And what exactly is there to talk about ice fishing?

Matt

Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 787 Location: Indiana

The ice fishing is more "where" than how; if it doesn't cool down up here pretty soon, we won't have to worry about it...