Swing And A Miss...

I skipped the State Cross Championships because my upper back was giving me some problems. Carrying the bike would have been too painful. Instead, I hunted the fields of the east metro. Jerry Engen, his grandson Zack and I went after pheasants with Jerry's buddy Mike who has two dogs. The dogs pointed whenever they found a pheasant in the swamp grass. The first two they jumped were hens so we had to hold our fire. They found a third one which stayed in the grass until we were right on it. It was a rooster and it blasted out of the grass right underneath us. I swung the shotgun around and pulled the trigger. Miss! I pulled the trigger again on the second barrel but by then it was too far away... Another rooster blasted out of the grass a hundred yards away. Scared by the sound of the shotgun, it was too far to shoot. That was it for the swamp. Jerry's buddy Mike had to leave but his son Dave dropped by. We were without the dogs but we kept hunting anyway. We drove through a wooded island surrounded by gleaned corn fields. There were those plants with the sticky burrs everywhere. We were all getting burrs on our clothing. I was walking through the dense brush picking off burrs when I flushed another rooster. By the time I got my finger on the trigger and shot, the bird had some trees between us. Zack took a shot too but missed. While we didn't get any pheasants, it was a greeat day to be out walking the fields, swamps and woodlines.