Some great stories here! Mike (Wingshooter), liked the non-hunting part of yours.

Looking back through 40+ years of hunting notes, it seems that one particular date stands out for especially good days: November 11. That was my mother's birthday. She turned 10 when the guns went silent in Europe. And it was also opening day of pheasant season when I was a kid, too young for my Dad to write an excuse from school and let me play hookie. (My older brother did get to benefit from those notes.)

But ever since I've been carrying a shotgun, Mother's birthday has seemed to bring me good luck. The one that really stands out was in 1995, several years after Mother had passed away. I was guiding hunters that year, but we had a heavy snow and my guys called to say their arrival would be delayed a day. So I rounded up my teenage son and my long-time hunting partner to hunt the place I had lined up.

A creek runs the length of the section, from north to south. We started at the south end, temperature somewhere around 20 and with a strong north wind. We were following Heidi, my 10 year old shorthair.

The first quarter hour or so produced nothing. My son suggested there must not be any birds around because we weren't seeing any tracks. About that time, Heidi went on point. "No tracks, Dad!" I told him to start kicking snow, right in front of Heidi's nose. Sure enough, a hen popped out. He looked at me, surprised. "Tucked in under the grass. Snow fell on top overnight. Like a pheasant igloo," I told him. From then on, we did not have to walk far between birds. And we wouldn't have found any without Heidi, because not only were there no tracks, but they were really hunkered down. Although Matt and Mike were not shooting well (I was mostly backing them up), we had 6 by the time we reached the north end of the farm. Heidi locked up, pointing into the fence, and Matt shot at something in the grass. "Did you shoot a rabbit?" I yelled. "No Dad, it was a pheasant. I saw its head!" But he aimed too low, almost cutting it in half. Followed by a stern lecture on shooting them in the air.

We got our last birds out of a patch of heavy grass in the bottom of a draw where the snow hadn't drifted as much. I borrowed a shell from Mike to load the left barrel of my old Hunter Fulton 16 (I was lucky he was also shooting a 16!) and made a particularly long shot on our 9th bird. A very basic scattergun, but one of the best "reach out and touch 'em" pheasant guns I've owned.

We dropped off the birds next to an old barn before making the mile long walk back to the truck. I'd lost count of the number of times Heidi pointed, but she stuck at least 25 birds that day.
When we cleaned them, all their crops were empty. They'd overnighted under the grass and snow. It was shortly after 10 when we finished, and they hadn't yet moved out to feed.

I still hunt the same farm, but there's not nearly as much CRP on it these days, and not nearly as many birds. But I'll never forget that particular November 11: cold morning after the season's first heavy snow with my son and long-time friend, shooting pheasants over the best dog I've ever owned.