The Great Pheasant Hunt

There were few deer, wild turkeys or pheasants in Kansas a century ago.  Chinese pheasants are [Duh!] not native, and were not introduced in Kansas until 1906. The populations of all three have now expanded. There were enough pheasants by the middle of the 20th Century to allow open season in many Kansas counties.

In 1948 Grandpa Miller, my dad and I went to North Western Kansas on an opening-day pheasant expedition. We paid to stay at a ranch house out there, and to hunt the ranch the next day. Everything looked fine when we got there. There was lots of cover for pheasants, and it looked like easy hiking. We spent the evening with the rancher and his wife and then turned in.

We were eager to go in the morning, but we heard the wind blowing hard. When we looked outside it was snowing. Sideways! Not quite a blizzard, but the prospects did not look good for hunting. We ate breakfast, bundled up and went out anyway. After an hour or so it was obvious the pheasants were going to stay hunkered down no matter how close we might step. We did not have a hunting dog, and even if we had, the scent would have blown away anyway.

We gave up and went back to the ranch house. Then my dad had an idea. He knew a college friend who lived about 100 miles south of where we were. He hadn’t seen his friend for several years, but dad was sure he’d let us hunt at his place. He hoped the weather would be better in that direction.

We found his friend’s place around noon. The weather was nice. His friend told us there was going to be a big pheasant hunt on his farm, and we were welcome to join in. Then he gave us a tour of their prairie home. Instead of a basement, the house itself was almost buried. The roof, chimney, and some small windows were all that was above ground. They built it that way to avoid the wind, heat, and blizzards that are common in Western Kansas.

Most farms in Western Kansas are huge. We were going to hunt half a section of farmland. We were going to hunt by forming a line of hunters and walking through a field. It took a while to get the line organized. I’m guessing that we were about 40 feet apart, so our one-mile line would have contained about 130 hunters. That’s a lot of shotguns.

We all started off together, and nothing happened for a while. The pheasants had wheat stubble for cover, and they run fast. They just scooted away from us. After a quarter mile or so they were either getting tired or more nervous, and they began to fly at random. That’s when the shooting started.

I don’t remember how many pheasants we shot, but I do remember a couple of them vividly. One pheasant jumped up right in front of me and I shot it. It came down and I was sure we’d find it when we walked up to where it landed. I was surprised when a pheasant jumped up when we got there. I didn’t think he would be able to fly. The pheasant flew right over me, and behind us.

I was sure it was the rooster I shot and expected to find dead. I whirled around, took aim and pulled the trigger just as everyone else called “hen.” (You’re only allowed to shoot roosters, not hens.) The hen came down, and then the other hunters pointed out the game warden driving along the road at the edge of the field. Oh, oh. My bad. There was a boy walking with us, and I told him to go pick up the hen and take it home. I figured the game warden wouldn’t be checking boys for pheasants.

A few minutes later another hen jumped up. Instead of flying away from us, it flew out toward the road, right down the line of hunters. Everyone called “hen” as she flew past them. The game warden shot her when she crossed the road. We could not believe our eyes. And I stopped worrying about the hen I shot by mistake. I imagine she tasted better than the roosters we took home.

We started our expedition on Election Day, 1948. We did not have a radio in the car, and I guess nobody turned one on that evening in the ranch house. Or maybe they didn’t have one. There was no electricity there.

Like most others at the time, we thought Dewey would win the election by a big margin. That’s what some newspapers assumed, infamously including The Chicago Daily Times. They reported Dewey had won and went to bed. There was a lot of amusement the next morning when it turned out that Truman won. We were as surprised as anybody when we finally learned the outcome.