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Bird Hunting
Date: 01-22-2007
By: Tom J
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"Bird" Hunting
It became a tradition in our family for Dad and I to drive down from Hammond to Rockport, a small southwestern Indiana town on the banks of the Ohio River, the day before Thanksgiving to go quail hunting with my cousin, George Allen Johnson, who was a teacher and a coach at South Spencer High School. We would leave after Dad got off work and arrive at George Allen's house around midnight.
Thanksgiving morning would find us up before dawn, dressed in our hunting clothes, our shotguns in their carrying cases and placed in the back of the truck, and the bird dogs loaded in their cages. We would head to the "Modern," a restaurant where we ate our breakfast and where George Allen would tell us all about his plans for our day of hunting.
George Allen was Dad's brother's son, but my grandmother raised him, and he was more like a kid brother to Dad than a nephew. Sadly, I lost Dad in 1994 to prostate cancer, and George Allen passed away suddenly from a heart attack in 1998, just after celebrating his 68th birthday. I miss both of them very much.
Now if there was ever a man who loved quail hunting, it was George Allen, but in saying what I just said, I am violating a sacred unwritten and unspoken rule pertaining to the hunting of Colinus virginianus, the Bobwhite Quail.
I learned by listening to Dad, George Allen, and other hunters during the breakfast conversations at the Modern Restaurant and during the drives to and from our hunting areas each day that you simply do not under any circumstances refer to the objects of our pursuit as "quail;" they are always to be referred to as "birds."
This inviolable rule is universally accepted among "bird hunters." George Allen would say, " I know there is a big covey of birds here," or, "I know we should be able to find some birds over there." It was understood that he was not referring to wrens, sparrows, robins, blue jays, or woodpeckers. (Speaking of woodpeckers, George always called Dad either "Pecker," or sometimes "Peck" for short, and, if memory serves me, Dad got that nickname during his youth, when a hapless woodpecker found himself in the line of fire as Dad was shooting at some "birds.")
I didn't question this rule about never calling quail "quail;" I faithfully referred to the sport as "bird hunting" and to our quarry as "birds." I do have to wonder, though, why deer hunters are allowed to call deer "deer." They don't say, "We hope to find some mammals today." They don't call their sport "mammal hunting," do they? I guess they must have different rules.
We would hit the field after our big breakfast at the Modern, and we would hunt until early afternoon, at which time we would head back to George Allen's house for a huge Thanksgiving feast.
We would also hunt the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving, then drive back to Hammond on Sunday.
I could not hit a quail (sorry, I mean a bird) to save my life. I don't know how a guy is supposed to prepare himself for that explosion when they take flight. Even with a good, solid point on the part of the bird dog and the warning that it provides that birds are under foot, I would always jump out of my skin when I heard that instantaneous flutter of wings, and I would thrust the barrel of my shotgun in the right general direction and blast away. Who had time to "aim," anyway?
I have a perfect record as far as confirmed kills. I thought I had brought a bird down once, but it was never found. When I tried to get the dog to hunt for it, he gave me an incredulous sneer, as if he were saying, "You killed a bird? Yeah, right!" and walked away from me.
I'm not sure that it would have added to my enjoyment if I had killed any birds. I was outdoors with my Dad and my cousin doing "guy stuff," and that was good enough for me. Those were some of the best days of my life.
A 1967 Graduate of Hammond High who cherishes his memories of growing up in the Hammond of the 1950's and 1960's. Bring back those days!
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