The Old Pheasant Hunter (A Shannon O'Day Story)

A Shannon O’Day Story


The Old Pheasant Hunter
(Late, 1950s)



At first Shannon didn’t care for pheasant hunting, shooting, and the common pheasant, he couldn’t tell a male pheasant from a female one—to be forthright, nor cared. There was a big difference, the bright colors of the male, and adornments such as wattles and long tails, plus they were larger than the female. He learned they typically ate seeds and insects, for the most part. And you never saw the males rearing the children. On the other hand, Gus, Shannon’s brother shot them not only for eating, but for sport, during the fall months, in his dried up cornfields, of Minnesota, about twenty-miles outside the city limits, of St. Paul.
In the November morn, you could hear the noises of flapping wings, and hounds chasing the pheasants, converging on them, somewhere in the cornfields. Sometimes Old Gus O’Day, he’d build a box for the pheasant to get trapped in, and check it out the next day—the pheasant would search for seeds, and upon finding them, the box would enclose the bird.
Shannon standing just behind his brother as he had been standing when his brother shot, the first pheasant, Shannon ever saw shot, with his shotgun, and with the first shot, like a snake the pheasant fell from the sky, and by the time he hit the ground, it had a cold heart. It seemed to Shannon, they never came into sight, they were just there as if his brother ordered them to be there, and there they were. Looking near like a ghost, condensed in his cornfields, not only moving on the ground, but flowing over head, faster than a deer, soaring high, like flying antlers, even in the dim morning light, looking more like sparrows than large rocking-chair unbalanced heavy bellied birds, with thin heads, and shaggy tails like rats, or wolves.
The female, brown as the dirt in the cornfields, wasn’t as appealing to the eye as the male, Shannon declared.
“Now,” Gus O’Day said, “…aim, then shoot quick, but first ease on the trigger, like you were taught in the Army…!” it was a Ring-nicked pheasant, perhaps flew down from South Dakota, got lost in the Minnesota cornfields. Mabel, Gus’ wife, often roasted the birds for Sunday dinners, with potatoes and vegetables, and some kind of pudding. She’d place it in a roasting pan, about 325 F, and perhaps even lower, so the juices inside the cut would not escape, or allow them to escape before it finished cooking.
Shannon did not recall the shot he made, he just shot the gun—he never even heard the shot, nor felt shock of the gun-butt. His brother was in his late sixties, and Shannon in his late fifties, then he was standing over the pheasant, where it lay in the wet cornfields, looking as dead as dead can be, a few automatic impulses still making the boy shake and jerk, with Gus, beside Shannon.
“He aint never goin’ to wake up, Shannon, he’s goin’ to be roasted tomorrow,” said Gus.
Gus put a knife across the throat of both birds, and stooped over when he cut through the necks, his hands soaked in hot blood and he wiped them off with a rag he carried tucked inside his belt, then he called his dog, then the two men and the dog and the Gus with the pheasants, walked back to the farmhouse.
“Did I do all right?” asked Shannon.
“You done all right,” said Gus.
It was one of the last times, Gus and Shannon would do something together forever. Gus, told his brother that, hat and coat tightly on, a snuff-box in his coat pocket, and Shannon with a brown glass pint of whiskey in his pocket, taking it out, gleaming and glittering and then drinking half it down, and handing the other half to Gus, who did the same.
“The folks,” Gus said, “We’ve been shooting pheasants around here for a century I swear!” his fingernails, getting bloody.
“I’m goin’ to miss pheasant hunting,” laughed Gus. Then he stopped laughing, looking at the blood on both sides of his hand, “except this part,” he commented.
That was true, Shannon thought. And after his brother died in 1957, of a heart attack, he’d not forget, the first time he stood in the cornfields, not drinking, but shooting his first pheasant, and sometimes, even went to the fields, as if they had drawn him, and watched the cluttered fields empty out with heavy bodied, long tailed pheasants.


No: 551/12-2-2009/••