Syracuse.com - Tales from the Woods: Pheasant released with bad headache

[HuntingNY-News]

"Although Rhodesian ridgebacks are bred to hunt lions in Africa, they will gladly hunt birds when lions are scarce."

Steve Zappala, of Liverpool, sent me the following story:

"A few years back, I decided to take my two Rhodesian ridgebacks, Carmen and Ry, on a pheasant hunt to Three Rivers Wildlife Management Area in the town of Lysander.

"Although ridgebacks are bred to hunt lions in Africa, they will gladly hunt birds when lions are scarce.

"On this particular day, we’d been hunting for a while when the dogs lit up and found a pheasant. The trouble was, instead of flushing the rooster, they caught it. Not exactly your classic bird-hunting method, I nonetheless took the bird from them, thumped it over the head, and stuffed it into my vest.

"Sometime later, they did flush another rooster, which fell dead when I shot, thereby filling our two-bird limit. I even got the dogs to sit still long enough to manage a picture of them with the two pheasants.

When I got home, I put the dogs in the house and opened up the door on the cap of my truck. To my amazement, there was a rooster walking around in the truck. Unsure of what to do next, I took some video and thought about the situation.

This rooster had been caught by the dogs, gotten thumped upside the head and taken an unexpected “road trip” to Liverpool.

So I dropped the tailgate and said, “You earned it.”

The last time I saw him, he and his headache were running west down our street, probably looking for an aspirin.

Have a hunting tale you’d like to share?

Send it to [email protected]. Photos would help.

View the full article on The Syracuse Outdoors Blog