Nostalgia

Some of you may know, others may not, that I worked as a hunting guide in South Dakota last winter. I was only there for roughly two months. At the time, it felt like years because it was another one of those times in my life that I slept an hour or two a night, if I slept. It wasn't like Cherokee Park Ranch- we didn't dance till the wee hours of the morning. We sat around and bull****ted (bullshat?) with the hunters all night. Between ten thirty and 11pm we would leave under the pretense that we were running into town to play pool or whatnot. Three of us would load up into the truck and drive out to the Sugar Shack, which is the place we would have our stock birds delivered to. The Sugar Shack is also an adult novelties store in Chamberlain/Oacoma, but we had our own. It was a creepy old barn hidden deep in a patch of plum trees, and in the middle of the night after a few drinks, it's like a scene out of a horror movie. Anyway, we would load up the birds in the truck and drive sixty miles an hour through the cornfields, literally throwing birds out the back of the truck. I remember a few weeks during the season that we would have to do double 'apples,' as we dubbed them. That was our code word for throwing birds. We would have to go throw birds in the evening after we socialized a bit, go socialize a little more, then get up at four thirty and be out to the Sugar Shack again by five and throw till six thirty or seven when it got light. You can bet your whatever that working sixteen to eighteen hour days made me grow up a little bit. It also made me horribly sick a few times, but it was a tough time.
Anyway, my boss, Brad is one big dude. I've met a few big guys in my life. Brad is the biggest. Imagine an American Bison. Now turn that bison into a person. That is Brad. His head has got to weigh half as much as I do. And he isn't fat at all. In the off-season, he trains bird dogs, and he trains some of the best dogs I've ever seen.
One of the other guides was Paul. I liked Paul, probably because we had the most in common. Paul grew up in Brookings, SD on a farm and rode bulls professionally for a few years until he met his girlfriend, Lisa and has spent the last few years working hard to support her and her three kids. They got engaged last spring and are getting married sometime in August.
Chad was undoubtedly my least favorite guide on the staff. He was an *** kissing, dishonest, egotistical, lazy jackass. He was nice to me for the first few days until he figured out that I did what I was told regarding work, regardless of who told me. Soon I found myself covering his apple-throwing shift, doing double duty when I wasn't even supposed to be working. I was chasing wounded pheasants through eight foot tall weeds eight hours a day, and he had the balls to tell me to cover his shifts. I think you probly get the point. I didn't like him.
I really liked Matt. Matt was a four or five year guide, and had guided me when I hunted there a few years ago. He is the father of two children, but worked hard enough to support both of them and his wife, and they lived two hours away. Nothing is close to anything in South Dakota, and he had to sacrifice family time so that they could get along okay.

One day (among the conglomeration of days I was there) the weather was crap. The wind was howling twenty miles an hour, and the birds were flushing hard. Normally they only flushed (flew up off the ground) around twenty five feet off the ground. Today, they were pushing forty feet up before they began hightailing it with the wind away from us. One fellow had his camera out and was snapping pictures. Pheasants are beautiful birds. I don't blame him for not being focused. I saw the accident before it happened, but not nearly soon enough to give any kind of warning. This guy was snapping away with his back turned. I saw this bird way up in the stratosphere crumple like they do when they get shot. It fell. As a hunting guide/sometimes bird dog, I followed its trajectory to the ground-right on top of this hunter. There was no way this could actually happen. But as I smirked, the dead bird nailed him squarely in the back, and just as the bird had crumpled, so did he. What does it feel like to get hit in the back with a dead bird? Have someone throw a two and a half pound rock wrapped in a scraggly blanket into your back from the top of a two story house and that's about it.

A cool little fact about pheasants- I was out running our live trapline one day, screaming along on the nice new Honda ATV. Pheasants are smart in the fact that, as long as you aren't on foot, they aren't too concerned. There were three roosters (males) running down the road in front of me. Two of them dart off into the corn, leaving just the one. Now, it takes an insane slobbering panting dog to get them to flush. Chase them on your own two feet, and they will run all day and never give you a shot. This bird didn't have the sense to get out of my way. Instead it kept speeding up. Originally, it was running about eight miles an hour. Pretty fast, eh? I watched as the speedometer kept rising- twelve, fifteen, nineteen. Right before it jumped into the sorghum, I clocked that bird running- no wings involved- at twenty three miles an hour. For a little twelve inch tall bird with five inch long legs, that's pretty damn fast!

Sorry about the horrible disorganization here- not my most focused blog night ever.