Youth Day Pheasant

What a rewarding day!!  Danny has been trying to get me to do the youth day pheasant hunt with him for years and this year, I finally decided to do it.  It was a beautiful morning, sunny and slightly chilly.  I made the long drive down to Colliers Mills and got there early.  As the kids and other guides starting filtering in it ended up with more people that I was anticipating.  There was a nice crowd and I have to say, the state did a nice job (aside from being very disorganized in the beginning).  Danny and I were teamed up with six boys between 12 and 14 years old and one other assistant (without a dog).  We got our field assignment and went out.  The way we ran it was, we would stock two birds in the field and then hunt them up with one of the dogs and three kids.  Then we would stock two more and trade out dogs.  The looks on the face of these kids was priceless.  Especially the last little imp of a boy.  For the life of me I can't think of his name...but on the last bird that we had, he was able to get the shot off and the bird went down.  He could barely hold the gun but when that bird went down his smile was as wide and as bright as I would have ever seen.  Made the entire day worth it.  I will definitively be doing that again next year!