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.