A hunter’s luck, albeit delayed Quest for partridge fulfilled

Some guys have all the luck.

Take the weekend after Thanksgiving, for example. Saturday, the last day of regular deer season, saw me lying in bed until 7:30 a.m. because it was raining when my alarm went off at 5:30. At 7:30, however, I rolled out of bed, clawed the sawdust from my eyes, and pulled on my hunting gear.

My in-laws, Jerry and Becky Lentner, were visiting from Connecticut, you understand, so I had to weigh the urgency of Shotgun Saturday against my duties as a host and son-in-law. I decided that on Saturday a good son-in-law didn’t have to show up until brunch, and off I went.

I arrived at my favorite stretch of woods 40 minutes later, and thrashed a squiggly trail through pine, beech and hemlock stands that a beagle wouldn’t be able to follow. I found about two dozen whitetail “rest areas,” a swamp, a nameless rusted-out piece of farm equipment, and one unnecessarily steep hill.

As I was trudging blindly through hemlocky underbrush, hoping to find the deer and go home in time to still be a good host, I heard it. Whupwhup-whupwhupwhup.

I looked in the direction the sound came from, but saw nothing. Quick as a flash I unloaded the slug from my single-shot 20 gauge and replaced it with birdshot. I had changed, instantly, into a partridge hunter.

As I stalked intently in the direction I had heard the bird fly, I had to stop to hoist myself over a fallen tree trunk. As I was looking at my feet, I heard it again: Whupwhup … but when I looked, all I saw was a hemlock shrub, one twig of which was still bobbing. I think that it was saying, “You are a buffoon.”

Not to be intimidated by a cheeky twig, I girded up my self-esteem and continued following the escaped bird through a rain-filled depression in the forest. As I balanced impressively on a hummock, peering into the trees for a glimpse of my prey, I heard it – the other it.

I turned my upper body and looked to see a whitetail bobbing away, soon disappearing from where the deer had snapped a branch and gotten my attention. I swapped loads again and tried to “circle ’round,” but I’m almost as bad at geometry, in these conditions, as I am at hunting. Brunchtime was calling, so I decided to give this deer a break and head home.

Well, some guys have all the luck. The very next day, as my wife and I rode in the back of Jerry’s sedan, I looked up the road and saw something. I couldn’t identify it at first, but as we got closer, I realized it was a partridge.

I kept waiting for the bird to fly, but it never did. It disappeared beneath the bumper, and we all heard it – Thumpthump.

I couldn’t believe it. My father-in-law had taken that bird without breaking a sweat, wearing a tie and pressed slacks. And when I ran back to inspect it, I saw that the meat was, miraculously, still in fine shape. I field-dressed the bird for my city-dwelling father-in-law, and we threw it in the trunk until we could get home, after a brief dinner at Dysart’s.

Funny thing is, Jerry forgot to take the bird with him when he and Becky went back to Connecticut. I guess I’m not so unlucky after all.