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In the Swing
The Upland Almanac
|Spring 2021
The Quartering Away Shot: A “Spearing”-Type Move
The crisp air is invigorating for both you and your pup as you ease along the final 20 yards of the tall grass prairie field before it ends at a two-track farm road. Your pup is birdy as hell, and you can easily hear her inhaling gulps of hot pheasant scent. One more step and the flushes begin! Two hens rocket out and peel back around you in an attempt to return to the CRP. One more step and a beautiful, mature cock bird launches at a rising, slight right to left, quartering away angle. The perfect shot, you instinctively surmise. You lift your favorite 12-bore to your face, swing through the bird and shoot your first barrel – nothing. Then you keep swinging and reach for the back trigger – Bang! – again nothing. The rooster cackles in laughter as he flies away, headed for a cattail slough a quarter mile away.
Gun empty, you chide yourself. “How in the hell did I miss that simple, quartering away shot? It was a layup as they say in so many other sports.”
This story is from the Spring 2021 edition of The Upland Almanac.
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