Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/742011
picky. Case in point was the Coralville Reservoir, just north of town, where the Corps of Engineers dammed the Iowa River for flood control back in 1948. Much of the nearly 6,000-acre lake was a refuge, but sack up your decoys and walk the Burlington Northern tracks till you passed the last "No Hunting" sign and there was a sandy-bottom cove on the edge of a cornfield, and a blind I made weaving corn stalks and wild marijuana. It grew everywhere in that country in those days, volunteer plants from widespread hemp cultivation when the Navy was desperate for rope during WWII. The hippies called it "ditch weed," and it was generally judged a damn poor smoke. But hope springs eternal. The hippies choked and gagged, but it smelled mighty fine meanwhile. But I digress. The duck limit was based on a point system, a 100-point maximum. The most precious mallard hen fetched 90, but canvasbacks and greenheads were worth 20 each; the easy-decoying and fine- eating ringbills only ten. You got some wiggle room—ten points slack if the math didn't work quite right. Folks joked you needed a slide rule in your blind bag. I flat tore 'em up. Ringbill breasts wrapped in local bacon, thrown on a hickory or white oak fire. The duck was ready when the bacon smoked. I got up the gumption to leave somehow—other adventures to have, more country to love. But I will never forget those days along the Iowa bottoms. The pheasants. The ducks. The corn-fed, red-headed farm girls. Heaven is where you find it. n F our guns aboard that microbus: a .38 snubbie for the glove box, a .22 bolt-action Remington for the cottontails, a 20-gauge Beretta side- by-side for quail—but there were no quail—and "Old Faithful," my 1957 vintage Winchester twelve-bore pump. But I didn't have a dog or a clue, and I chased those Chinese cacklers up hill and down to scant result. I was taking my ease upon an oak blowdown in a brushy pasture, bemoaning my ill fortune, when a pickup came rattling down the road. Out of sight behind a patch of corn, but I could hear it all—the slamming of doors, the drop of the tailgate, the rattle of a dog chain, and the clickety-clack of hunters—two, maybe three men—stuffing shells. Then along comes a cock pheasant, head and tail close to the ground, slipping, slipping like a cagey old whitetail buck, bobbing and zig-zagging from thistle clump to brush pile to cow pie to anything that gave even the slightest cover. He came, and he came fast. He did not see me till I rose and mounted my gun. He exploded in a cackling rise, and I dumped him at 20 yards with high-brass Remington copper-washed No. 5s. So this is the way you hunt pheasant? Drive them like rabbits? Like deer? But how can a man drive birds to himself? Geography. Walk the corn downhill, dummy. There was generally an overgrown ditch at the bottom. You'd see flashes of color when the cock birds ran before you. And when they could no longer run, they would hunker on the ditch bank brush, exploding at the last instant. Heat the gun up quick. A broke- down sheep fence worked, too, and so did a tangle of uncut hay. Pheasant lasagna? Spaghetti? Pheasant a la King? Cooked long and slow on a wood range, cream of mushroom soup, sautéed red onions? Jump up and bat your gums, slobber all down your shirt. Many a man came to Iowa in search of Higher Education, got it in one form or the other, and never left. And ducks? High-brass Remington copper-washed 5s all over again. And who would have thought about ducks in Iowa? But East Iowa is right on the Central Flyway, and there just isn't enough water for the ducks to be S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S • 57