Pheasant Hunting With Tackleberry
When I was young in Pennsylvania, many of my friends in school hunted. My dad liked to go deer hunting, and since my mother deprived him of a son, he got me out there with him. I had to take the hunter safety course and all that jazz, and every fall I looked forward to venison steaks and kielbasa. I agree with hunting if you eat what you hunt and you’re not just doing it for the joy of killing something or a trophy. Years ago, there were tons of Ringneck Pheasant running around our area, and couldn’t throw a cat without hitting one. They were a common sight in the fall, usually leaping out of the high grass on the roadside and flapping right in front of your car, startling the heck out of you and nearly making you swerve off the road. My cousins and I did hunt pheasant around the area, since back then, farmers didn’t totally clean off their corn fields like they do now, and they were very plentiful. Into the story enters Dean. This kid lived three doors down from us. He was hopelessly addicted to hunting and any and all sorts of guns, as most boys were back then. He was a raving idiot, and most of the time acted like his cheese had long since slid off his cracker. When he started yelling at one of his friends, the whole block could hear his big mouth, calling them a horse’s ass. The next thing you’d hear was his mother yelling at him to watch his mouth. He bugged us for years to go hunting with us, and after we finally ran out of every excuse we could think of short of telling him that pheasants carried leprosy, we grudgingly let him come along. His personality always reminded me of Tackleberry from the Police Academy movies, but with a really bad Amish boy haircut and a pair of front teeth that looked like they belonged on a Clydesdale. He came down to my house early that Saturday morning, and we headed down to my uncle’s farm. Each of us had bagged our limit in no time, except for Dean. We’re not sure, but we think he was genetically incapable of keeping his voice down. He’d scare the bird off, then curse out loud and drive the rest into the neighboring county. As the morning went on, Dean was getting completely furious that he hadn’t gotten a bird. Finally, I suggested that we split up into pairs, since Dean’s mouth was driving me insane. My cousin Brandon and I split off into the woods before they could agree, leaving my poor cousin Stuart stuck with the big mouth. Brandon and I wandered around for a while, sneaked a cigarette he’d taken from his dad’s pack, and walked around the woods, enjoying the peace. Brandon gets the brainy idea that we should help Dean get a pheasant. I ask how, since Dean didn’t seem to be so adept at the hunter gatherer part of his nature. Brandon looks around and takes one of his pheasants from his vest. He walks out to the edge of the farm road, and uses some rocks and a stick to prop up the dead bird so it looks like it’s just sitting there in the grass. Across the road, we can hear Stuart telling Dean to just shut up already. We dart over to them, and Brandon musters up a grand performance, acting all excited, telling Dean there’s a pheasant up at the farm road, and it would be an easy shot. He advises Dean to be quiet and follow him. Stuart and I hunkered down to get a good view of the action. Brandon motions to Dean to crouch down, and suddenly Dean spies the bird. He gets down into a commando position, like he’s about to pull the pin out of a grenade with his teeth and fling it. Brandon looks over at us and rolls his eyes at the overly dramatic show. Any second we expected him to pull out some camo paint and smear up his face with it. Dean takes forever aiming- and finally, he gets off a shot. The bird jumps, but is still sitting there. Brandon says he thinks Dean missed and tells him to shoot again. Dean lets go, blasting this poor dead bird. The head was about blasted clean off and I think he even gave that bird a couple new buttholes in the process. Dean excitedly runs over to his quarry to examine it. It was just a barely feathered ball with two yellow legs by the time Dean got done playing Die Hard with it. He carried that thing all the way home and proudly thrust it in his dad’s face when we got back. His father asked us if Dean shot it after it went through a wood chipper, but we all kept silent. Mr. Hamm, Dean’s dad, told me years later that Dean had insisted on cleaning it and made his mom make it for him for dinner that night. He said it was really funny to watch Dean sitting there, proudly enjoying his mangled lump of pheasant, and hearing him crunching down on the occasional piece of bird shot he missed while cleaning it. Dean never did ask us to go hunting after that.
