Years ago a local here who used to be an FAA guru at the Pierre SD airport found out I had a business trip coming up, and put me in touch with some of his buddies there for a combined pheasant and sharptail hunt a couple of days before my meetings. I asked them what type of gun I should bring and they said "bring your favorite duck gun; we'll be hunting over dogs of 'dubious field performance' and you'll need lots of choke for the long shots. I did what they told me and packed my 12 ga. 30" barrel GHE choked F&F. We hunted south of Pierre, alternating prarie between the whistle stop towns of Murdo, Presho, Vivian and Draper.
The dogs consisted of my first-ever exposure to a pointing Lab, a brawler of a big raw-boned male Brittany spaniel, and a hound-type dog of indeterminant origin. The Lab actually pointed, the Brit actually found and retrieved birds, and the hound dog chased around and actually located some cripples we would have never found. Each of the 3 of us got a rooster pheasant, and the over-the-top highlight for me was scoring a left then right double out of three sharptails that came up abreast about 35 yards ahead of the dogs, who were working them. At the rise I killed the bird on the left, swung through the center bird, and killed the bird on the right almost in the same motion. Both fell out dead and I suspect the third one was in Canada before I reloaded.
|