Of Woods and Waters: A Kentucky Outdoors Reader

Into the Woods (An Excerpt)

RON ELLIS Into the Woods (An Excerpt) From Cogarfs Woods (2001) "DID YOU SEE H I M ?" Dad said. The bird had exploded at our feet from the base of one of those cedars. "That's a pheasant for you. All jumpy and nervous." There was great excitement in his voice, a kind of passion I had not heard before, not even for the squirrels. The bird, this pheasant, did not have a white collar around its neck and there were no bright colors on its head. It did not look like any pheasant I had ever seen on the covers oí Field & Stream or Sports Afield. "You sure that was a pheasant?" I asked. "Not a ringneck pheasant," Dad said, "but a grouse. People up here call them pheasants." "They're fast, whatever they are." "I've never been able to hit one of those old brown birds. They're up and gone before I can get my gun on them. Lots of guys around Persimmon Gap have, though. My dad killed a few over the years, mostly when he stumbled onto one when quail hunting down near the river in some of those old brushy draws. I always wanted to shoot one for myself so that I could look at it real close when it was still warm and lifelike." "I'm not sure I could hit one. But I'd like to try," I said. "There's plenty of them in this country. We'll hunt them together here someday." In time, I would learn to love to hunt those old brown birds. 2 55 Years later this would be the place I came to with Dad, when I had decided to become a serious grouse hunter, to make good on that promise. It was the day before Christmas Eve. We had hunted hard all day without much luck. Lady, my sweet little persimmon and white Brittany with the smiling eyes, had found a bird or two, but we had not been in position to shoot. By late afternoon, we reached the saddle in the ridge above the cedar thicket that sheltered the old road. "I think I'll stay up here and poke around for a while," Dad said. "You and Lady go on down the road there and see if you can find a bird or two. Just down the hill is where you saw your first pheasant. Remember?" "Couldn't forget that bird," I said. "It was the first time I heard you call them pheasants." "I still like calling them pheasants. Guess I always will," he said. -"You come back up here and get me on your way out and we'll make our way back up to the car and stop and see Sherm and Stony before dark." He moved on down the ridge and sat on a big rock. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather hunt?" I said. "I'm sure. And be careful. You know these woods about as well as I do by now. Still, you have to be careful. I'll be fine here. I have some remembering to do." I left him sitting up there on that rock, the corduroy collar of his faded canvas hunting coat turned up against the wind. He was smoking a cigar and looking off toward the river, the hills across it barely visible in the dusky evening air, the barrel of his Ithaca pump gun resting back against his left shoulder. He looked content sitting there, smoking and alone with his thoughts. I wondered how many times he had done just that, at that exact spot. I spent the next two hours looking for birds. On a flat below where Dad sat on that rock, the ground is composed of soft gray clay, mixed with chips of gray-green slate that litter its surface . The cedars grow well in that poor ground, and just be256 OF WOODS & WATERS yond, toward the river, there is an overgrown pasture, a place where we had seen birds in years past. Lady searched the edges and came up with a scent that worried her. She drifted with it and worked and worked until she decided to point. I whispered to her as I moved to flank her, fully expecting a grouse to blow up in front of me before I could get set for a shot. The spongy ground sucked at my...