11-12-24 REELLIFE digital - Flipbook - Page 32
miscturkey legacy
mike
This is not a fishing story,
but it’s still pretty cool (if
you’re into pheasants).
I got to spend three
wonderful days of pheasant
hunting with my son
Matthew in the beautiful
Montana outdoors, outside
of Great Falls. We hunted
on both public land and
private farmland. The long
weekend (Sat, Sun, Mon)
had a mix of so-so weather
to glorious weather, long
and short hikes, a twohour ordeal of Matt’s car
being stuck in the mud,
and hunting ranging from
seeing no pheasant to
Matt’s Brittany, Murphy
flushing a dozen in one
location. Besides getting to
spend a lot of time with my
son (the best part by far)
this trip also featured my
first ever pheasant!
Our weekend started
off with a trap shooting
season on Friday to warm
up. I shot well and felt
confident for the hunts to
come. I’m learning that trap
shooting is NOT the same
as shooting at a live, flushed
bird. But even so, it was a
good start to the weekend.
Saturday morning dawned
damp and cold. I was very
grateful for my GH Unders
base layer. They kept me
warm in the morning and
cool later in the day hiking.
We hunted private land
with one of Matt’s friends.
Our guide for the morning
was twelve-year-old Kale.
I have to say, in Montana
kids sure seem to be
mature for their age, with
a level of responsibility and
confidence you don’t often
see in kids on the West
Coast.
Kale was a great guide for
us. We covered various
locations on their farm/
ranch and I got to see
Murphy in action. He’s
still quite young, seven
months, and is learning
each trip. Even so, it was
cool to watch him working
prime holding spots and
then seeing him get “birdy”
and flush out pheasant.
We had several hens and
roosters flush but were
unable to hit any. None the
less, it was a good start
to the weekend, giving us
confidence we’d bag some
birds this trip. After hunting
in the morning with Kale
we headed over to the
Freezeout Lake hunting
area and worked a large
field. Murphy flushed out
one rooster which was a
bit of a long shot, and we
weren’t able to bring him
down.
