End of a good day, the dog is tired out.
When I first had to go from vegetarian to Paleo I made the decision that I was going to have to take responsibility for eating animals and do some of the killing of them myself. This started with fish last spring, when I began killing stocker trout for dinner. It was not an easy decision to make but I felt it was the right one. Re-reading The Paleo Manifesto this winter I got to the section on hunting and decided that now was the time to take the gathering of my own food a step further and get back into hunting for meat.
I grew up hunting, as did almost everyone in the Midwest in the 60s and 70s. Legend has it my dad bought me a Browning 20-guage semi-automatic the day I was born and that was the gun that I used as a teenager. I was given a .22 rifle at probably 8 years old and a .410 shotgun at around 10-11 and finally graduated to the 20-gauge in my teens. We hunted rabbits, pheasants and squirrels mostly though my dad did some deer hunting too and occasionally went duck hunting. When I was in junior high my friend and I would just get dropped off guns in hand in the woods and spend the day out looking for rabbits, squirrels or birds to shoot. It is a wonder we survived but we were both taught a ton of safety around firearms and knew what we were doing even if we were only 14 years old.
After reading the Paleo Manifesto and John Durant’s adventure in deer hunting for the first time I read The Beginners Guide to Hunting Deer for Food by Jackson Lander. This made me want to learn to deer hunt this coming year because a deer would mean 40-50 lbs. of meat in the freezer. This also led me to Hank Shaw and Hunt, Gather, Cook and his great website Hunter, Angler, Gardener, Cook. Hank’s book is fantastic, it tells you how to forage, how to fish and how to do some basic hunting then gives you recipes for what you go get. His suggestion on upland bird hunting to go out with a guide an a game farm inspired me and I decided that was the best way to get back into the game.
Thus I found Red’s Hunting & Shooting Program over in Ellensburg. They offer shotgun instruction, a Sporting Clays course and guided trips for preserve pheasants and chukars or wild trips for chukar and quail. I decided this looked perfect so I set up a 2-day trip with instruction and clays on Wednesday and hunting on Thursday, spending the night at their Canyon Lodge on-site. I decided to just buy a gun instead of renting one so after research and advice from a friend settled on a Benelli Montefeltro 20 gauge. I debated the Benelli Ultralight to save a pound on weight but knew I’d pay for it in recoil plus the extra $500 so I stuck with the Montefeltro which was still one of the lightest semi-auto out there.
We met Camrin, the hunting program guide & instructor, after lunch and he took us out to the course. The basic instruction was just what I needed to figure out how the heck to use the Monte. It was very similar to my old Browning and I had managed to assemble it but there were a few little things I’d forgotten. I also found out that I need to get my gun fitted, it is off a bit and could use a some extension on the stock to fit me right. We first shot at a grease/paint board so that he could show us the spread of our guns. My 20 was definitely tighter than the 12 Chris had. That was the first time I’d fired a gun in 35 years and I must admit I had a bit of trepidation about pulling the trigger. Luckily the Inertia Drive on the Benelli worked as advertised and I hardly noticed any recoil.
On the clays course
We then began at the easiest basic skeet station on the course and tried hitting some clays. I couldn’t hit anything – too low, too high, too behind, etc… Pretty much every mistake one could make. Camrin would stand right in back and analyze each shot and finally figured out what I was doing wrong. He had me adjust my right hand on the stock and trigger and suddenly I broke a clay! Chris got it much faster than me but he’s been shooting a lot more in the Guard though not at flying targets. We spent the next hour hitting three stations at the course. The Kamikaze Rabbit was impossible and I think on the Chukar station I hit maybe one in about 15 shots, that was hard. The Settlin’ Mallards station was the easiest, we were both hitting clays on that one.
When we finished up we decide that we needed more practice so learned how to work the remote, went back and purchased another 50 clays and a box of ammo and headed back on the course. We focused on the three stations – the Pheasant station, the Mallards and the Quail. By the time we were done Chris went 3 for 3 on one of the Mallard stations and we each got clays at each station. We were as ready as we were going to be. We headed back to the lodge and I got in about 1.5 hours of fishing on the river. I managed one decent rainbow on a #16 PT dropper behind a big Skwala dry. No fish rising but hey, I got a wild trout finally this year.
On Thursday we met up with Camrin at 9 a.m. and met Katie, his German Shorthair pointer. We drove downriver from the lodge and up into the Mount Baldy Pheasant Reserve where we were to hunt. We geared and loaded up as Cameron explained how things would work with Katie. Basically the dog would find a bird and stop to point. One of us would then walk up behind her and Camrin would call her back so we were at the bird’s bush and the dog was in back of us. The other would get into position for a backup shot if needed. Whoever was at the bird would stomp and the bird would flush.
Katie bringing back a bird
After wondering through the scrub a bit Katie stopped moving and was on point. I was amazed as I walked up and ended up standing about 18″ from a pheasant hiding under a sage bush. I stomped, the bird hit the air and both Chris and I fired – the bird went down and Katie was on it in a second and carrying it back. Our first successful pheasant. This was pretty much how the morning went, moving up the creek bed finding birds and mostly hitting them. We had a few that flew up into the hills so we would then start up the hills and gullies trying to locate them and get a second chance. Katie ended up staying in front on one bird and caught the bird as it took off. She dropped it on order and then the bird started walking. We flushed it, it took off and I hit it but didn’t drop it totally so it flew into the hill. Going up for it Katie found it dead, my shot had obviously done the trick. After a few hours we ended up with 7 pheasants in the bag and had only missed a few birds that we had shots at.
Cleaning a bird
Back at the truck Camrin started cleaning the birds and showed us how it is done. Instead of plucking and gutting to get a whole bird he just cut breasts and hindquarters which is really all the meat on the birds anyway and much cleaner than I remember the whole bird cleaning being. After a few demos we gave it a shot and cleaned a bird each so we’d know what to do.
Pheasant Piccata
Back home a few hours later I got on Hunter, Angler, Gardener, Cook and looked for recipes. I settled on the Pheasant Piccata but made it Paleo by getting rid of the white flour and using coconut flour, it was excellent. Tonight I’m doing the Pheasant Thighs with Root Vegetables recipe and then probably freezing the remaining couple of birds worth of breasts and thighs for later.
I’ve now completed one more of my Paleo lifestyle goals for this year – hunt my own meat. It was a bit weird at first but I must say, my training as a youth came back quickly and it seemed totally natural. I hadn’t shot a pheasant since college but my dad had obviously taught me well because after the first shot in the field I noticed I was just automatically flipping the safety back on as soon as I pulled the trigger, I hadn’t even realized I was doing it. Interestingly we planned the hunt on what was my dad’s birthday, it hadn’t even dawned on me until today but it seemed appropriate. Now I plan on getting my gun fitted properly and then practice more at a local range this summer. We will be back in the fall when the program starts up again and I’ll probably get out locally for rabbit and squirrel. I see that a dog is essential for birds here, a lot different than Iowa so my only way to go bird hunting is with friends or Red’s unless I get and train a dog. Now to get moving on the deer hunting goal for fall.