Shooting hours for pheasants started precisely at 11 o'clock.

By 11:01 we were done reading grouse wings, and folks were mingling outside in their orange with their shotguns and dogs.

All except me. And the newest member of our group, who also apparently doesn't hunt birds. Who looked a little uncomfortable, being recently (like, within the past week) transplanted from Milwaukee or Michigan, or one of those 'M' places in the Mid-East. She took off for home, wisely taking a lowland route, rather than the highway over the mountains that found her plowing through two-foot drifts the day before.

And there was one other without a shotgun. Instead, he was floofing pheasants.

Meaning, he was attempting to hit them with a bow and arrow. Using a blunt tipped arrow, designed not to kill.

I stayed in the parking area, and watched the different parties fan out.

Some whose dogs settled down and worked the fields seriously, and some whose dogs did not.

But mainly I watched the floofer, just to see how he did.

He was the first to find pheasants.

And the first to miss.

But I soon saw the main drawback to his choice of hunting weapon...

Always having to walk way out to retrieve the arrow.

Me?

The head of our crew wanted all the wing data summarized and emailed to him by the next day. I could either drive home and then start adding columns of numbers...

or...

I could sit there in my chilly truck, sipping hot coffee to the sounds of blackbirds and light breezes rustling through dry Autumn leaves.

Punctuated by an occasional shotgun blast. Or two.

Yeah. I stayed.