Observation and evaluation, that’s what it comes down to with me, whether hunting, exploring or just sizing up a man or situation.

Take for example rating a local ballplayer. Yeah, the numbers can help, but not so much as actually observing the guy on the field, the way he carries himself, his mechanics, the way he interacts with others. Confidence screams at me from a batters box, the mound or in the field, and so does a lack of it, insecurity and low self-esteem. But this is not about ballplayers; it’s about pheasants, even farm-raised birds lucky enough to survive a few days or weeks after release. Give them cover and refuge, and they can make it, even in a popular spot scoured daily by skilled gun dogs and expert wing-shots. I have observed this for many years, particularly in three dense, thorny coverts I frequent. One of them, I visited Monday morning for a quick hunt with Lily and Chubby.

It was after 10 and I was out for a short hunt, more to provide a robust romp for the dogs than anything else, maybe even stir up a little action. I decided to hunt a back field across a rickety wooden farm bridge crossing a deep stream t’other side of a covert that gets stocked and hunted heavily. I liked my chances better there than in the more popular field, which likely had a lot of Saturday traffic, not to mention the possibility that at least one hunter had been through before my arrival. Not greedy, I would be happy with a flush or two and call it a day, but I did know from experience that there’s always a chance for a productive hunt in this spot, especially as the season progresses.

Upon arrival, although there was, surprisingly, no one hunting the most popular covert, I stuck to my plan and took the double-rutted farm road through a few deep puddles and over the plank bridge to a rise in a clover field where I always park. As I snuggled into my familiar spot, leaving room for the owner to get by if necessary, something caught my eye along the wood line ahead. Sure enough, 100 yards out, at the end of a thick, wet, weedy ditch, a cock pheasant flew out of a small alder patch and across an open field, touching down in a small, tangled tree line overlooking the swollen stream 150 yards upstream from the bridge. Imagine that, I thought, already promising without even stepping out of the truck.

Having planned to hunt in the opposite direction from where the bird landed, I got out of the truck, dropped my tailgate, pulled out my hard-plastic gun case, opened it and my side-by-side’s breach, removed two metal snap-caps and inserted two shells before releasing the dogs from their porta-kennels and following barely discernable tire tracks through a break in the hedgerow some 30 feet away. Before I even got through the break, Lily lit up on a hot scent and I was thinking it was probably that rooster that had flown, but I know better than to ignore Lily when she tells me there’s a bird nearby. She ran the west side of the hedgerow 30 yards, stopped dead, bulled through it and ran along the east side before reaching the cart path. Chubby, 6 months old, was also excited and I was watching him as well, but was more focused on Lily, his 8-year-old mom and a finished, proficient gun dog. I walked maybe 20 yards onto a rise I have often used as a shooting platform and stood there facing Lily, who crossed the break in the hedgerow toward my truck to re-evaluate the other side. When she popped through to my side again, she turned it up a notch, burrowed under a thick tangle and — Bingo! — out popped a hen pheasant, struggling through the thick brush before bursting free and flying toward the alders from which the cock bird had flushed five minutes earlier.

I mounted my gun for a passing shot less than 40 yards out, just about perfect, but took two shots and didn’t disturb a feather. Not a shot I often miss, I was glad no one was there to witness it and rattle my cage. There was no excuse, a clean miss of at a sucker shot. Not the first time. Won’t be the last. We all do it now and then, I guess. At least honest folks do. Show me a wing-shooter who never misses and I’ll show you a liar, like the baseball hitter who never misses a cookie. Forget it. Doesn’t happen. But it still bugs you when you miss a shot like that, or foul back a teed-up meatball. Looking on the bright side, I knew I had two birds to hunt on the way out.

I walked south through a swale with knee-high cover, gentle side hill to my left, wet ditch filled with high, dense, brown grass to my right, both dogs searching furiously for fresh scent. I always pay more attention to Lily. She’s foolproof. If she gets hot and a bird doesn’t fly, it ain’t there. I believe that. Either that or it’s crawled under something impenetrable. Even then I’ve seen her circle a clump of rosebush or bull briar several times, poking her head into small openings to eventually scare up a bird that shouldn’t fly. She’s that determined, and intimidating to the object of her pursuit.

We arrived at an old, familiar, fallen fence line, crossed it sloshing through ankle-deep water and entered into deeper, tangled cover that can put a careless man on his face in a hurry. I don’t know the scientific name for the sharp, shiny-brown grass concealing the treacherous hummocks, but I call it witch or swamp grass, and it’s unforgiving to foot-draggers. I walked my familiar route through the swamp that dead-ends at the stream and doubled back along the bed without a flush or false alarm. No problem. We still had the back side of that first field to hunt, and it led straight toward the hen and rooster left behind.

I climbed the gentle rise to the crest, angled back toward the wood line and watched the dogs as we hunted toward a woodpile maybe 100 yards north of us, not far from where that lucky hen had landed. When we got there, I found deep standing water that made it impossible to get where I wanted to go, so I hunted the hedgerow back to the truck and looped around to the other side, following the edge back to where I thought the hen had landed. Lily and Chubby hunted hard but flushed nothing and never indicated to me that the hen was there. Maybe it had glided low across the water and into the woods, out of sight. Oh well, off to that rooster that started the whole ordeal.

I angled across the clover field with the dogs, kept them from ranging too far, and aimed for the clump of small oak trees the rooster had flown to. I didn’t see the bird land but figured it would be along the bank somewhere. When we arrived at the clump of trees, thick bushes supporting bittersweet tangles beneath them, I hand-signaled Lily to “get in” and within 30 seconds I heard the tell-tale cackle of a cock bird, its flight hampered by bittersweet vines. When it popped into sight, screened by dense, bushy cover, I shot, then squeezed the back trigger when I caught an obstructed glimpse through a small oak tree. A going-away shot of maybe 25 yards, I knew I was on it and thought I had seen it falter but wasn’t sure my BBs had gotten through.

I looped downstream toward an opening along the raised river bank and could see a ringed disturbance making its way downstream. Oh, good, I thought, a water retrieve. I walked back upstream toward where the bird had flushed, saw Lily searching furiously through the thick stuff above the stream and walked down toward her. There, dead in the water, was the cock bird, Lily headed its way. She entered the water downstream and downwind of it, started swimming across, caught wind, turned, saw the bird, swam to it, grabbed it softly and delivered it to me. Chubby, interested, went to his mom and mouthed the bird’s limp neck and head before I took it from Lily’s mouth, held it by the legs and walked back to the truck with it dangling by my side.

Chubby was enticed. At the truck, I kenneled Lily, wiggled the dead bird in front of Chubby’s face and threw it underhand 15 feet into the clover field. He ran aggressively to and buried his nose into it, grabbed it by the wing, dragged it maybe six inches and ran back to me, happy but not sure exactly what to do next. I put no pressure on him, just gave him praise and pet him under his chin and along his breastbone before encouraging him to “kennel up,” which he did willingly. Retrieving lessons could wait. I figured I’d cut the bird’s wings off, save them and throw them for Chubby in the yard, much less intimidating than picking up a whole bird. But first I wanted to field-dress the bird, so I stopped and did so by the brook, cleaned off my knife and hands and threw the bird back into the truck’s bed.

Time to depart, I fired up the truck and immediately noticed a flash to my left, up along the paved road. I turned and spotted a cock pheasant flying toward me 100 yards across a field. It touched down in a clump of pines overlooking a couple of grazing beef cattle. I liked what I saw. The birds are building up and getting acclimated to the covert, which offers impenetrable alder refuge from hunters. Tomorrow would be another day, likely another good one.