THURSDAY'S BIRD: HUNTING WILD PHEASANTS IN A VANISHING UPLAND

Spring says that he began hunting pheasants in the early ‘90s, roughly fifteen years after the bulk of the wild ringnecks disappeared. When he finally got around to setting foot in the fields behind his first bird dog at age twenty-seven, most of the die-hard pheasant hunters around had given up altogether. The ringnecks he does find are wild and raucous and smart. (If asked ten years ago if a bird could really be "smart," he would have laughed you off his back porch, but now he knows differently.) As a result, Maggie and Ted, his dogs, have become a proficient hunting team, having learned the hard way how to ferret out these wily, wild birds with a high level of precision. In Spring’s opinion, those smart birds have made his dogs smart as well.

So why, if these pheasants are so hard to come by and even harder to kill, does Spring deliberately take the last weeks in October and the first weeks in November year after year, expending precious vacation time and yet knowing he will end each week frustrated and tired without any guarantee of a single bird making its way to his freezer? Why does he look forward to it for months, envisioning and obsessing, hoping and believing that this year will be better than the last, even when he knows it probably will be worse?

If you have ever seen and heard the flush of a wild ringneck, you know why. If you've ever seen an exhausted dog drop a giant rooster at your feet, you’ll understand. If you have been there and seen those things, there is probably no question in your mind why Spring returns year after year in quest of the ringneck. Spring's prose and his talent for evocative descriptive phrases actually pulls you along with him and his dogs on those glorious fall days in pursuit of the regal pheasant.

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