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You are here: Home / Story Fair / A Crowning Achievement

A Crowning Achievement

November 16, 2021 by admin

Written by: Richard Bjorum
International Falls, MN

Featured image provide by Art Fair entry “Woodcock Escape” courtesy of Doug Phillips

This occurred over thirty-five years ago, during a different world.  Here’s why.  I often would load my hunting gear: an SKB 12 ga. double with an English stock,  a box of shells, Carhartts, LL Bean boots, game vest, hunting shirt or jacket–as the weather dictated–into the cab of my truck in the morning.  After school I would get my stuff from the parking lot so I could quickly change in the boys bathroom just down the hall.

I was hunting grouse in a mixed woods on a familiar, much older logging skid trail, now just a path.  This patch of woods lay between a state highway and the swampy end of a shallow bay off of Rainy Lake near the Canadian border.  As days shortened hunting time, I often stopped to hunt on the way to our lake home.

Perhaps 20 minutes into my walk a woodcock noisily flushed right in front of me. Instinctively my double swung from the port arms carry into action.  I fired the IC barrel, folding the small bird about 30 feet ahead, above a 10-12 foot balsam almost right on the trail.  Ejecting and reloading, I walked forward to pick up the bird, that I assumed fell close behind that tree.  But it was nowhere to be found in the sparse grass, leaves and brush.  Hmmmmm….finally I set my shotgun down, leaning on a stump, and s-h-o-o-k the tree vigorously!

I felt a plop in the crown of the wool tweed Irish hunting hat I wore in those days.  Reaching up there it was, the “timberdoodle.” it had been caught in the basket of small branches near the top of the tree.

Filed Under: Story Fair Tagged With: 2021

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