A Thanksgiving Blast

Sometime this summer I had the crazy idea that I should really give hunting a try. I figured I had a great instructor and guide since Jim has been hunting forever, and besides that's what you do in the Midwest. I had no idea what would be involved or how to go about it but I threw the idea out to Jim.

Jim thought it would be a lot of fun and he took care of organizing everything for us to go hunting on black Friday while the ladies did some shopping. Rob and I had to spend several hours over the fall taking an online hunter safety course but it was well worth it.

I really had no idea what to expect. I knew we were pheasant hunting and that it would be about an hour from Minneapolis. When we got there it was in a weird way a lot like going golfing or paint balling, there was a "club house" where we got everything organized for the hunt. The farm where we were hunting was divided up into 3 huge fields and we had our territory for the entire afternoon.

When you hear that the pheasants are released my first thought was "this is going to be a piece of cake, we don't even have to find these birds." How wrong I was. We rented a hunting dog for the day which was clutch. She was a yellow lab named Molly who was awesome. All she wanted to do was flush out birds. She even plucked a bird out of mid air for us.

The weather was absolutely perfect, and after firing and missing more than I care to admit I at least walked away knowing I bagged 3 birds on my own. Rob nailed about 5 and Jim played possum and only bagged 2. I was floored at how quickly the birds pop up and fly away.

Overall a great day and perhaps a new Thanksgiving tradition. Now we have a freezer full of pheasant, and boy is it tasty.