Pheasant Hunting

Mom’s sister and her family from Iowa came up every October for the event. It was a favorite, and there was a huge number of pheasants in South Dakota. It was our annual family reunion, and a chance for Kay, Jimmy and I to reacquaint ourselves with our cousins.

Hunting season began at noon on Saturday. The relatives usually arrived Thursday or Friday, and didn’t leave until Tuesday or Wednesday of the next week.

My Gramma and Grandpa, Mom’s parents, always attended. There was Mom’s big sister Rita, and her husband Ray. Their two daughters were Donna and Beverly. Both girls were a little older than Kay. Ray especially loved the hunting. Rita didn’t hunt. Neither did Mom or Gramma, so they had wonderful opportunities to spend time together and catch up, while watching the children.

Ray Wood and his results in 1982 at the Heinzerling place.

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Mom’s little brother, Wes, and his wife, Delores, were there too. Delores did hunt. Some of the bigger kids, like Jimmy, Kay, Donna and Bev, went along to walk the trees and fields to help scare up birds.

It was strange to me that a woman, Delores, hunted. I thought it was only a man’s opportunity. I surmised that Rita and Mom didn’t like it that Delores hunted. I don’t think either sister liked Delores all that much anyway, but I wasn’t sure.

It was the 1950s. Women’s roles were tightly circumscribed. Women with shotguns in the pheasant hunting fields was a very rare phenomenon. All I knew was, Gramma, Rita and Mom had to do all the work of taking care of children, cooking and cleaning. I thought Delores should be with them.

The hunters always started by hunting the shelter belt next to the road, just north of the house. A shelter belt usually consisted of several rows of trees, up to a mile long, including a few rows of shrubbery. Plum bushes and lilacs were very common shelter belt plantings. Shelter belts helped stop snow in the winter and slow down the wind in the summer. They served as excellent wildlife refuges. Shelter belts came into common conservation usage on the Plains after the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

There were two or three hunters stationed at the far end of the shelter belt. The other hunters and walkers started north toward them from near the house. The walkers spread out across the width of the trees, and kept a fairly straight line as they moved forward.

The children without guns were stationed to the inside of the of the trees. One could not safely shoot in the middle of the trees as BBs from a shotgun blast could deflect in any direction and someone might be injured. The walkers chased the pheasants forward until they came to the blockers at the end. When the pheasants took flight, the hunters began shooting.

The blockers on the end got the most shots, followed by the hunters who walked on the outside of the trees. Hunters took turns blocking and getting a break from walking. There was no competition among the hunters because the bounty was shared by everyone.

Safety was a very strong emphasis. Walkers had to always lag just a bit behind the people with guns, and the guns had to fire mostly forward, never directly to the side or behind. Keeping people safe was more important than killing lots of pheasants. No one could shoot at low-flying birds. They had to get up in the air.

Pheasants were so plentiful that the group got their limit, and more, on that first pass. But the hunting did not end there. The limit applied to how many birds the hunters had in their possession. So they brought piles of pheasants the quarter mile back to the house. The birds were left to Mom, Rita, and Gramma to skin, dress, and have ready for supper when the hunting party returned at dusk.

I remember delicious, moist, pheasant skillfully prepared and served in a white sauce, with mashed potatoes and other wonderful foods. Pheasant was not a simple dish to prepare. It could taste gamey and dry. The dish Mom, Gramma and Rita prepared was so tasty!

While pheasants was the centerpiece of the meal that night, many more were preserved. Pheasants were canned for winter use. Pheasants went back to Iowa with Rita and Ray. Pheasants went to Woonsocket withWes and Delores too.

When I think back to the hunting, I can feel the warm, October sunshine beating down. I can hear the voices of Ray and Wes and Dad. I can smell the dryness of the grass and corn.

I can feel myself walking through a cornfield. The corn had been picked, and the bent over stalks sometimes crossed the space between the rows, meaning they had to be stepped over or jumped. There were weeds in the way too, and they had to be passed. It was a lot of work. The little ones like me played out and were dropped off at home within an hour or so.

The wind rustled the corn, dry leaves against dry stalks. It was a scraping sound that was a constant accompaniment. There were two colors: Blue and yellow. The sky was blue. The corn, weeds, grasses - all were various shades of yellow.

We children were to be quiet as we walked. If the pheasants got scared, they would fly out too far away to be shot. Being children, we were quiet, until our voices gradually rose from whispers to calls back and forth. Then the shushing would come, and the cycle of noise repeated itself.

Sometimes we saw pheasants scurry across a row far ahead. That was very exciting! Soon would come the sudden flurry of noise and cackling as a pheasant rose in the air. First would come shouts of “Hen! Hen! Hen!" Or “Rooster!", followed by gunshots.

At the end of the field the killed roosters were gathered up. We little kids were fascinated at seeing them up close. They were beautiful! Their feathers were shiny, glinting in the sun, irridescently flashing reds, greens and gold. We touched them -  they were so soft! It seemed a pity that such gorgeous creatures had to be shot. But it also seemed normal. This is what we always did. It was farm life for us in the 1950s.

I liked road hunting. We got to ride in a car, though children sat in the middle. The hunters got the windows and sat with their guns sticking out. Road hunting cars coming toward us looked porcupine prickly with gun barrels protruding.

The car cruised slowly along the gravel township roads. When a rooster pheasant jumped up, the driver slammed on the brakes and the hunters jumped out, guns blazing. It was so exciting!

The “dressing" of the pheasants was fascinating. Dressing was the word used to mean “butchering." We butchered big animals. Fowl were dressed. Unlike chickens, pheasants were skinned. I don’t remember where a cut was made to begin the skinning, but then the skin was tightly gripped and pulled off, feathers intact.  It was jaw-dropping for us to watch a bird go from colorful plumage to naked muscle and bone in one, swift  move.

In the 1940s and 50s, and even later, pheasant feathers were used for many decorative purposes. Gramma made plaques using pheasant feathers. They were about 6 - 8 inch square pieces of thin plywood. She used a wood burner to create the shapes of flamenco dancers swirling and twirling. The small, colorful neck feathers became their splashy dresses. Another image was more sedate. Again it was a woman, in dress conventional to the times. She carried a parasol made of feathers to match her dress.

In the first half of the 20th century, pheasant feathers decorated clothing. There was a dress in the South Dakota Historical Archive Center in Pierre, that highlighted pheasant embellisments. A pheasant skin, complete with feathers, was affixed to the backside of a white dress. The skin looked like a flattened out pheasant. It was very unusual.

I remember hordes of people. Children running everywhere. Lots of food. Biting into BBs in the pheasant. Pies and cakes. Watermelon. Playing until I dropped. It was a wonderful, carefree, warm and fanciful time.