Perspective by James Repshire February 2002

I had a little episode on my 41st birthday that was a good reminder to me of how we need to constantly work on perspective, on trying to focus our thoughts and feelings on the good things that surround us at any given time rather than letting life's little nuances get in the way. It's no secret that attitude is the greatest determining factor in our approach toward life, our feelings about life. We just finished a study in Sunday school from a book entitled, "Some People Feel the Rain, Some People Just Get Wet." There really is a difference. I almost got wet that particular day, but something happened and I began to feel the rain.

I was pheasant hunting that Sunday. I had gone out to Western Kansas on Thursday to partake of the sport I've grown to love and appreciate over the past twenty years. It was to be my last hunting trip for the year, this being the last weekend of the season. It was very warm for January. Saturday saw a high of 76 degrees and when one is walking through weeds up to his elbows for miles on end, 76 is a little warmer than comfort allows.

While this particular weekend trip started out very promising--I stumbled on to a small bunch of pheasant roosters ten minutes into my twenty minute hunt Thursday evening and knocked one down but couldn't find it, and followed that up by bagging a rooster early Friday morning at the same spot--the rest of the trip wasn't nearly as fruitful, at least if you measure fruitfulness in number of birds bagged. Between early Friday morning and very late in the day Saturday, I only had one other opportunity at a shot on a rooster. It just so happened that at the time the opportunity arose, which is to say a pheasant rooster arose just a few yards to my starboard side, I happened to be astraddle of an electric barbed wire fence and I was using the butt of my shotgun to hold the wire down. The decision between whether to raise the gun to my shoulder and let the wire go as it may, or continue to hold the wire down with the weapon while I successfully completed the crossover maneuver wasn't all that difficult for me. I rather enjoy being a man. This hardly seemed like good reason to sacrifice that gift. The rooster flew quickly out of harms way as I mused at his good fortune. We both left that scene with everything we came onto the scene with.

My next shot of this hunting weekend didn't take place until very late in the day on Saturday. Sadie and I logged somewhere between 7 and 8 miles or so of walking that very warm day and as fate would have it, after those long difficult hours of walking I spotted a rooster on the edge of the road as I was driving toward one last spot for the day. There was a car behind me when I spotted Mr. Rooster so I pulled off the road onto the shoulder and waited for the vehicle to pass. After the car was by I turned around and went back to where I spotted the foul. I couldn't see him so I stepped out of the pickup and this time rather than logging miles afoot, I took about two steps and he surfaced. As he began his ascent I was a bit too ready and my aim was a bit too on. There wasn't a good deal of salvageable meat left on this one when I picked him up. He most assuredly didn't suffer.

Sunday was to be the last hunting day of the season for me. Like the rest of the weekend, the going seemed a bit tough for the better part of the day. About an hour or so into the morning's hunt Sadie flushed up a rooster for me at about the far end of shotgun range. He was flying directly sideways from my right to my left. For some, that would have been a routine shot and one more bird in the bag. For me, it was a difficult shot and I missed, three times. As the morning hours gave way to the afternoon, opportunities didn't seem to increase dramatically. There was a rooster that came up behind me midway through the afternoon and flew directly toward me but after having misfired on my first two shots Glenn saved me any further embarrassment by gunning that one down for me from across the draw. The rest of the mid-afternoon hunt was rather uneventful. Up to this point I had been hunting with my dad and my cousin, Glenn.

As we were watering the dogs and wetting our own whistles after another long, hot walk, two of our good friends from Colorado Springs made their appearance to join the hunt. After a good round of hardy hello's and some quality time spent in male bonding, we decided to make one last assault on the spot we had begun with that morning. The five of us set out and began the long trek across a rather large CRP field that has produced many birds and a good deal of better than average hunting for the past several years. A half mile into the hunt, nary a shot had been taken. As we approached the spot where dad had moved my pickup to in order to "block" for us, we did kick up a few hens.

If there's one thing I've learned through the years it is to never stop hunting an area until you have taken the very last step at the end of the draw or field. Not that a rooster comes up often at the very end, but it is amazing how often one flies out the end after the unprepared hunter has given up hope. This time was no exception. After I was convinced there couldn't be another bird between myself and the trail dividing this particular field, a rooster jumped up from behind a blade of grass and flew away as I fired a couple of frustration shots at him. I think somewhere between the time I showed up for this, the last weekend of this year's hunt, and Sunday evening, fatigue, frustration, and a little bit of poor shooting on my part had begun to take it's toll on me. And maybe there was some degree of melancholy setting in as I knew the end was near. I began to curse myself and wondered a little about the wisdom of making this one last trek, particularly after having had a very successful and fulfilling hunt in late December. I began to second guess whether or not I should have even made this trek.

As the sun was dropping low in the western sky I found myself walking across an area of this CRP that I had chased birds around all season long, from opening weekend until now. I had seen many pheasants within a small area on this piece of ground, but every time they were just a little quicker, just a little craftier, just a step ahead. I hadn't brought one down yet from this field all year. And with some feeling of dejection having taken a pretty good hold on me by now, I rather half-heartedly thought to myself, "I'm going to sneak up on one of these rascals yet. I've tried every angle of approach but this one." I was approaching the "spot" from the west, a direction I hadn't assaulted them from to date. And it worked. Not more than 100 yards into the westward approach, a rooster gave up the shelter of the camouflage that had kept him safely hidden from me and tried to make an escape toward the east. The long hard days of walking through the dry heat and wanting for a shot had my attention well focused by now and I was ready for this one. He didn't fly far and I didn't waste any lead on him. One shot and he dropped right in front of Sadie.

I suppose there has never been a father that didn't rub his son the wrong way from time to time. I know I certainly have that effect on my boys more often than I'd like to think. This was one of those times for me. As I bagged the bird and began to press onward with this newly found strategy, dad decided to drive down the road to check on me. I was a bit irritated about having to go into retreat when the attack mode was working rather successfully, and it didn't help when he decided to cross the ditch and drive through the weeds as he tends to do when he's behind the wheel of my pickup. He is fully aware that I tend to "baby" my pickup and I'm fully aware that he doesn't think that a pickup should be babied. So it seems from time to time that he just has to show me how a pickup deserves to be treated. This incident raised my irritation level a bit and I almost blew a cork when he started talking about crossing the ditch with it at the bottom of the draw where the trail crosses this field. I think I may have come across a little harsher than I should have when I explained to him that I would rather he would get back on the highway and drive around the field on the county road to pick up the hunters on the other side. Before he went to retrieve them, I threw the bird in the back of the truck and told him I would either be on the west side or the north side when he came back to pick me up.

As he drove away, I found myself in a bit of a tizzy. And for whatever reason, it didn't seem to get much better a few minutes later when I bagged my second bird in a matter of minutes. The last thirty minutes of my hunt for this year had yielded as many birds as the previous thirty hours, but I found myself experiencing a rather negative frame of mind. My surliness seemed to intensify as the sun ducked below the horizon and what had been a very warm day for January very rapidly began to turn into a chilly evening. I had long since abandoned my coat to the cab of my truck and despite the fact that it had been at least a half an hour since it went over the hill and around the corner to get the other hunters, it was nowhere in sight. Irritation began to give way to annoyance, which was rapidly succumbing to shear anger.

But that's when it happened. I'm not sure exactly what it was that enticed me to get my head out of whatever it was my head was in, but suddenly I did. And in an instant everything around me, in me, and about me took on a dramatic change. I was walking in an eastwardly direction on the gravel road by now. It was past sundown and the odds of seeing a pheasant that time of day are like--well, I've seen it once in all the years I've hunted--not good. So I was just in the mode of getting to Larry's pickup that was sitting at the other corner of the field a half mile away. That's when I noticed the full moon just a little above the eastern horizon. It was accentuated by the evening colors that accompany a western Kansas sundown. As I gazed on the majesty of the Lesser Light that loomed in front of me, I turned to see the beauty and splendor of the aftermath of the days work that the Greater Light was leaving behind. There is a certain shade of pink that can only be seen within the confines of one of those western Kansas sunsets. I'm convinced that it's a little different there than anywhere else in the world.

Yes, in about two steps and a heartbeat, I went from anger to complete humility. I realized that while I had been wasting the past few minutes wrestling with trivial feelings of misgiving, the world around me had become a work of art. A masterpiece that only one Artist could ever achieve. A free gift that I could either accept with humble appreciation or completely miss.

The next few steps of that final leg of the 2001/2002 pheasant season covered a short journey that I won't soon forget. I began to take stock of the very situation I was engulfed in. A bird in the bag, one more in the back of the pickup, my new and young hunting companion, Sadie, trodding along beside me and my trusty ole' 1960 model Browning Light Twelve resting on my shoulder after another very fruitful year of hunting. These two loyal compadres were symbolic of many good hunting times gone by, and many yet to come. It didn't seem chilly anymore. And the half mile between me and the pickup in front of me suddenly didn't seem long enough. Funny thing, just after I had this change of attitude the rest of the hunting party made their way into the picture. As they drove up the dusty road toward me, I savored the last few minutes of the day. While all those blessings rained down all around me, I thanked the Lord that He had helped me to feel the rain. Yeah, I almost just got wet.

See ya.
James
:>)