LOST AND FOUND

When I got to the place I’d marked, the pheasant wasn’t there. Neither was Jack.

- Gregory Fritz

“It can’t get any worse than this,” I said to Jon before it did.

By the afternoon of our first day of pheasant hunting in South Dakota, we’d seen scores of wild pheasants erupt from the shelterbelts, but most had been flushed out of range by our frenzied, wild running pointing dogs. Overwhelmed by pheasant scent and running birds, Jack, my year-old wirehaired pointing griffon and Jon’s diminutive French Brittany, Lilly, tore through the cover like demons who’d never had five minutes of training. Once the birds were flying, it was all over; a 20 mph wind-assisted their escape to the massive sanctuary slough that dominated the middle of the farm. We were embarrassed and nearly skunked. Adding insult to injury, the group-owned hunting van that Jon and I had driven to South Dakota from Iowa had died in the field that morning.

College roommates long ago, Jon and I had made it an annual tradition to pursue pheasants with friends near his boyhood home in southwest Iowa. But pheasants there were on the decline, and the allure of South Dakota was strong. So when Tim, a fellow physician, suggested I combine some teaching at his medical school in Sioux Falls with some late season pheasant hunting, we jumped at the opportunity. Matt, the fourth hunter in the party, was a friend of Tim’s who’d arranged for us to hunt on his family’s farm, 800 spectacularly beautiful acres, high and wild and managed for pheasants, outside of Winner, South Dakota. It was also through Matt’s connections that our sad-looking van had left the field on a flatbed tow truck heading for the Ford dealership in town.

With very few birds in the bag when we paused for a breather, Jon broached the question that was on all of our minds.

“Why not go into the slough?”