Sometimes “Too Much Fun” Is Really Too Much
Or — How to Ruin Your Shoulder in only 150 Shots
Last month in the Insider, I discussed the first part of my recent trip to the Czech Republic as the guest of Sellier & Bellot (S&B) ammunition. This month, I’m going to finish the travelogue and, as an added bonus, explain how you can make ravioli out of your shoulder with only eight boxes of shotgun shells.
As a quick re-hash, S&B brought Your Humble Correspondent to middle Europe to tour their thoroughly modern factory, do a bit of sightseeing and partake in hunting, Czech-style.
Touring Times
I didn’t discuss the sightseeing much, but in a country where a building from the 1600s is considered relatively new, the scenery is worth a book in itself. Aside from the hip-deep history, the country is very pleasant socially, exceptionally vibrant economically and in my estimation, physically resembles the nicer parts of Michigan. The only thing I didn’t care for was the food.
It wasn’t that the food was bad. It’s just that every meal started with the same speech: “As visitors to our country, we’d like to share with you a traditional Czech meal.” After days of Schnitzel, Goulash and rye bread, I was dying for a cheeseburger. One night we voted to visit an Italian restaurant as we had all reached a critical level of goulash ingestion.
As discussed in the previous column, the driven fallow deer and red stag hunt didn’t go so good for me. The weather was awful, I had a shooter-induced malfunction and when I tried to finally shoot a deer, I killed an oak tree. Fortunately, I got good shot placement — right in the trunk — and it didn’t require any follow-up.
Our final adventure was a driven hunt for pheasant. This was like the stag hunt, with released birds replacing the deer. It started with the obligatory pre-hunt ceremony then we loaded up our van and headed into the field.
Once there, we walked along what I supposed was a fire road and stationed shooters about 30-40 yards between positions. As a veteran upland game hunter, I thought the surroundings looked far more like a grouse covert than the stubble fields I normally patronized. It was a forest, plain and simple. However, I got ready because you do as you’re told on a guided hunt. If they had told me to dance the Hokey-Pokey, I would have immediately put my left foot “in.”
We carried over-under 20-gauge shotguns of a few different makes and stood waiting, adjusting our trap-style shell belts keeping a couple of spare boxes of ammo at the ready.
Ready, Set, Freak-out!
At an unheard signal, the beaters began their drive. Trumpets sounded, dogs barked, foreign songs were sung and all manner of keening rose through the countryside, occasionally punctuated by gunshots I assumed were dog-training blank pistols.
At first nothing happened, at least until the company-front of birds reached our end of the forest block. An initial flutter of wings announced the first flush, then a couple more, until the sky became alive. Birds came in singles, doubles, triples and occasionally more, then things got really busy.
It wasn’t just pheasants. All manner of winged quarry flapped, fluttered and flopped over the shooters — ringneck and golden pheasant, Hungarian partridge, other small quail-like birds and even several guinea hens. Birds began to fall pell-mell as shooters maniacally filled the clear blue sky with S&B lead.
Smoking shells began piling up around my feet as dead and wounded birds started crashing into the landscape like shot-up fighter planes in WWII. Occasionally you’d have to dodge an incoming ringneck bent on taking out a shooter in one final act of defiance. Several folks got hit.
Some birds were wounded but as soon as they hit the ground, the handlers assigned to the gun line released their dogs to snatch up the birds and bring them back. I almost called this a “motley” collection of dogs, but such a characterization isn’t accurate. There was literally everything from a diminutive Jack Russell terrier to a beautiful Irish Setter. It had all the makings of a colossal “dog fall” but the canines were all perfectly trained and behaved as they executed their duties with zeal. Especially the Jack Russell terrier.
Trained Assassin
Several of us had wondered beforehand if the little guy would actually pick up and retrieve a dead pheasant as the birds were at least ¾ of the size of the dog. We soon found he was capable of retrieving but his life was devoted to being a bird assassin.
The tiny white dog ran full speed among the shooting line the moment the first pheasant was hit, ignoring all the dead birds until he found a wounded one. At this point, he became a whirling dervish, shaking the bird so violently I thought he’d suffer brain damage (or maybe he already did). He’d growl lustily, spin, jump, shake and nearly tear the bird apart in his bloodlust. Even when a wounded rooster tried to spike with his spurs, it just inspired the dog to an even greater homicidal rage — if such a thing was possible.
Once he was satisfied the bird was well and truly deceased, he would stop, shake his fur grandly then run away to find another victim. “Let the other common dogs do the retrieving,” seemed to be his attitude.
It was a scene of literal chaos once the shooting started in earnest. Shooters alternated between frantically shooting and reloading, the beaters were raising a racket, the dogs were running and retrieving, birds were crashing into everything and still they came.
Sometimes two shooters would pick the same bird and fire at the same instance, essentially vaporizing the bird. Pin feathers rained down like snowflakes. Eventually, I shot more birds in one morning of shooting than I had seen in 10 years of hunting.
The final tally was our group of 10 shooters killed over 1,200 birds. The hunting club was pleased, explaining most groups killed around 600 to 700 during a hunt. I’m sure the fact we were gun writers and ammunition company executives might have had a bit to do with this.
In case you were wondering, the birds don’t go to waste. After the hunt, they are distributed to the dog handlers and beaters. Many of them keep the game to eat but they can also sell to local markets. Judging by the double-fistfuls being carried to cars, the staff seemed pleased with the day. The dogs, of course, are always happy …
Aftermath
There is no way to keep track of how many birds you shot or shells expended. I’d guesstimate my tally was roughly on par with everyone else, so I’d say I killed around 120 birds and shot 150 to 200 rounds. It was a highly satisfying day — at least until I showered in the Prague Hilton Hotel later that night while getting ready to fly home.
Looking in the mirror, my entire right arm and shoulder had turned a combination of bloody red and scary purple. I was horrified and thought for a brief instant I was dying from an extreme subdural hematoma, with a side order of general trauma.
Shutting off the shower, I lunged for my phone to research how long I had to live . Fortunately, I learned it would probably be OK, though I must admit “Probably” isn’t very comforting when you’re 4,600 miles from home. It was a long night.
I knew I had mounted the gun poorly several times in the confusion of the mass bird attack, but apparently, I had managed to tear a small blood vessel in my bicep doing so. A daily baby aspirin completed the program.
A week later my entire upper arm looked like a bad Florida thunderstorm as it matured into a sickly green, yellow and purple bruise extending from shoulder to below my elbow. It wasn’t really sore, at least until I tried to fire my rifle a week later on a deer hunting trip.
They’ll tell you “There are no tears in deer hunting camp,” but I beg to differ.
