I am home, had a great time. Kind of a feel-good hunt. What on earth am I talking about.

I went pheasant hunting this past weekend with my roommate from Afghanistan, Everett Radcliffe. Everett at 69 is a year younger than me. We spent 8 months in 2013 together in a CHU in Spin Boldak. All Everett did while we over there was dream about getting a hunting dog and going pheasant and quail hunting when he got home. He did not know a thing about bird hunting. He looked at every website he could find offering bird hunting. He subscribed to Orvis hunting magazine and read it on line. He visited the Filson hunting gear website a million times. Any website he could find about bird hunting, bird dogs or bird hunting gear, he visited. He asked me tons of questions about things I had no idea about. He had a dream, something to while away the hours of boredom over there

I hadn’t heard from him since I got back from Afghanistan. About 6 months ago he sent me an email. He said he was going to go to Kansas pheasant hunting and asked if I wanted to go along. I was a bit surprised to hear from him and a bit more surprised he really was going to do this. I know how much he talked about this in Afghanistan. I said, “sure, I’ll go”.

He drove 1100 miles out from his home in Bronwood, GA last Wednesday and we drove the additional 250 miles on up to Greensburg, KS Thursday. We came back Sunday. I am sore and tired, and plumb wore out, all indicators of having a good time.

He bought a Griffon puppy a year ago and had it trained and this was the dogs first real wild hunt. Everett had hunted a couple Georgia reserves with the dog, but the dog had never hunted tall grass like we found in Kansas and was intimidated. Still the dog tried hard. The grass wore him-the dog out pretty quick. Okay it wore us out also.

I started the hunt with a Greener GP Martini Shotgun. It was made in 1951 and is proofed 12G, 2 ľ”, Full choke, Nitro proof 1 Ľ oz. As I quickly learned it was made for roll crimped shells not modern star crimp. While the gun would extract the shell from the chamber, when fired, the star crimp section extend and the shells length were too long to eject. I had to pluck each fired shell out of the chamber by hand. I used the gun until took one bird and assisted with another. An assist, in case you don’t know is when two or more people shot the same bird usually all it once-usually followed by yelling, “your bird” because it is so mangled you would not want it. After that I put the Martini away and got out my Remington pump 870.

With the Greener Martini.

Day 1

Day2

Day3

Everett was on cloud nine the whole three days. Me, I had a good time also.

It has to have been almost 17 or 18 years since I last hunted birds and then it was Hungarian partridges in Montana, once or twice. The last real bird hunting I did was dove and quail in Arizona back in the 70’s. I am not a shotgun shot and it sure showed this week end. I shot a box of shells and I actually got 5 birds and made assists on 4 more. Still enjoyed myself. Weather was nice, even a touch warm. We saw lots of birds obviously planted-we saw 5 hens and hundreds of roosters, but who cares. They were in the wild and not fenced or caged. We each brought home 16 bird-breast.

All the way back down to Edmond from Greensburg, Everett talked nonstop about the hunt and what a great time we had. Made me feel good to help this guy see his dream come true. He was so pumped. It felt good. He wants to make this an annual trip-I am game!

We hunted with Upland Inn Hunts in Greensburg, Kansas. Upland Inn Hunts. The lodges are new modern buildings in the town of Greensburg. In 2007 the town of Greensburg was hit by an EF5 tornado and 95% destroyed. There is not an old building to be seen in the town. This is another story in its own and an interesting read. Greensburg Tornado.

Open up the link to the lodge website for description of the facility. Each room is double bunk at least and more in the larger rooms. These are double bed size bottom bunk and single upper bed that so popular in lodges these days. Some of the larger room have bathrooms in the room, but most room do not. There numerous single bath’s up and down the hallways. I never had to wait.

Food was plentiful and fresh. A cook prepared breakfast and lunch, mainly casseroles. The guides cooked in the evenings. Lots of Snacks sitting around, soft drinks provided. You provide your own liquor. Next year I will bring my breakfast cereal and fresh fruit.

Hunting was on Conservation Reserve Program land. This is land set aside by farmers for habitat and wildlife conservation. We hunted various size plots of 80 and 160 acres. The procedure was for the hunters to get on line and walk across the field on line. Dogs provided by the company as well as hunters dogs worked ahead of us. The Guides would monitor us. We always started on the down wind side of the field and walked across, into the wind. The Guides would pick us up on the far side and bring us back to the downwind side of the field to make another pass on the field. We usually started hunting about 9 A.M. and we always limited out by noon. We hunted in groups of 5 to 7 hunters. This the norm. There was a group of 17 young men on a Bachelor party weekend, and they decide to all hunt together. They were done just after us, with each hunter getting their 4-bird daily limit. They started off hunting a field across the road from us and quickly move on to other fields.

The company has 15,000 acres under lease and tries to not hunt a field more than once or twice a year. Even then they will hunt the field once in early season and then if they had to come back to the field it was in late season. We were told the three fields we hunted had not been hunted this year.

There was one major “foo-paw” in this trip. I mean big time husband faux pas. While setting up the trip, Everett and I agreed he would arrive at my house on January 24, spend the night. Then January 25th, we would drive on up to Kansas. January 25th was my wife Jane’s 70th birthday-oops. Dumbass husband move.

These only helped, not healed. She has been hinting she wants to go on a cruise. Humm, wonder where I am going?

Douglas