Fencerows: “Shooting Birds”
By John Luthens
A curious brown creeper interrupts a day of steelhead fishing.
A pileated woodpecker in Devil’s Lake State Park. (Photo courtesy of Denice Luthens)
Bohemian waxwing, shot while grocery shopping.
I shot my first bird in March. A late-season ice storm squalled across Lake Michigan and rattled the trees into glistening splendor. Trying to ward of the effects of cabin fever, I was moping around the fringes of town to lighten my spirits. It was a twist of luck that I spied the robin perched in a maze of white above an icy creek bed. I dropped it at 20 yards and spent the rest of the day studying the red-breasted beauty in my basement.
The brown creeper that I blasted during a day of steelhead fishing in April was different. I earned that little bird through a long and fruitless day plunging into pools and stumbling along rocky riffles. I was drowning my sorrows on a fallen oak when the bird came pecking along the bark. It had the audacity to perch a moment on the end of my fly rod before hopping over me and back onto the log.
I believed, at the time, the creeper was mocking me for my lack of fishing skills. I was wound like a snarled reel in the heat of passion, blinded by the base instinct that drives a lake-run fish to storm up the runs every year. It was a point-blank shot and the bird never knew what hit him. I was beginning to get a real taste for this.
Bird fever snared the whole family when spring break rolled around. We spent a day at Devil’s Lake State Park outside of Baraboo, hiking and rock climbing and rollicking in one of the most scenic areas in Wisconsin. It was Mother Nature’s fault that our family fun digressed into a shooting gallery.
We ambushed a pileated woodpecker in a glade below a rocky trail, happily occupied, pecking chunks out of a fallen tree until the log looked like it had been split by lightning. I stealthily slid down the rocks and popped off three consecutive bursts, spraying the brush and the log and plunking my final shot off of a boulder. My wife, who favors high-powered optics on her weapon, stood high above and nailed the woodpecker right through the brush and straight to the log with a single shot. I’d like to say I taught her everything she knows, but it ‘aint the truth.
Last week my obsession hit a new low in a gully below the grocery store. Usually I tag along to fill up on free samples while my wife buys actual product. The sign on the door states no concealed weapons, which doesn’t bother me, as I prefer to brandish mine in plain sight in a shoulder holster. I froze at the entrance when I heard the birdsong below. My wife plowed ahead with the shopping cart while I crept off the brink of the concrete jungle. There are certain head-shaking hungers that all the free samples in the world can’t satisfy.
The gully was thick and snarled and I wormed on my belly to get through the thorns. I also crawled through a winter’s worth of garbage that had blown into the ravine from the parking lot above. Dumpster diving for birds can’t be taught. It is only learned through down-and-dirty experience.
I saw a flicker in a tree and quickly broke two fundamental rules of Hunter’s Safety at once. Not only did I not know what was behind my target on the other side of the gully – I didn’t even know what I was shooting at. It had a bright, yellow tail, and I thought it might be exotic game until I dragged the thing home. It took me two bird books and a dozen internet searches to discover it was a bohemian waxwing. Turns out they are really quite common. Good thing my wife finished the shopping. The waxwing wasn’t all that big, and photographs of birds don’t taste right no matter how you season them.
John Luthens is a freelance writer from Grafton, Wisconsin. His first novel, Taconite Creek, is available on Amazon or at www.cablepublishing.com or by contacting the author at Luthens@hotmail.com