AHHH. A man with a sharp wit. Someone ought to take it away from him before he cuts himself. - Peter de Silva

Friday morning I got up at 04:30. It had been awhile since the dreaded alarm had been set for these particular numbers. Turkey season did not start that early, so discounting any memory loss, be it either short term or long term, I guessed it had been a cold day in January since I had seen 04:30. It was still a miserable feeling rolling out of the rack at that time in the morning, getting that taste out of your mouth, looking at yourself in the mirror, limping to the truck and driving through the darkness.

It is without a doubt, the quiet drive through the country that starts the reflection process. Reflecting seems to be suited to bird hunting in September. Maybe it is the early morning darkness and the dew covered stubble fields, and the general sticky dampness of dawn on river bottoms, and corn, and high weeds that put you in this mood.

This sense of reflection seems to be compounded by the long, excruciating, waiting that comes with the sitting, and scanning the horizon for birds that are either not yet fully awake, or do not yet feel the urge to feed on that particular spot on the earth that you have chosen to place your decoys, and dog, and rear end.

Sitting in the hard, summer baked dirt that makes up the next county, waiting and watching really gives you an almost overwhelming opportunity to reflect on all of those things that you have not thought about for quite some time.

Turkey hunting is not like this. Turkey hunting is a situation of constant focus. Focus on noises in the woods, focus on straining to hear a response to your calls, focus on stealth, and snakes, and owls, and squirrels, and phantom gobblers. You don't really have much time to yourself when you are turkey hunting.

Fishing is no better. If you are not paying attention to your fishing then you are not really fishing. So about daylight Friday morning, it dawned on me while sitting on my butt in the dense sweetness September, just how much time you have to yourself. Time to cover those mental kind of things that have been back-logged since the last time you found yourself [on your butt] in a deer stand or a duck blind.

Birds appear to be the types of mammalia that take their time about everything they do in September. Geese especially seem to want you to think about all manner of things before they give you the pleasure of flying close enough to you for you to positively identify them. It is this little trait that makes them so frustrating for so many people to hunt or chase.

Even Doves, which can frequently come at you in droves, and test your ability as a speed loader, can frustrate you for long periods of heat drenched, sweat soaked time before they decide to fly over you and light in that dead tree that is just out of range.

I noticed that most all of the hunters whose company I enjoyed Friday and Monday were afflicted with this introspective phenomenon. We sat in the early morning of Friday, in the dampness of the next county, and quietly discussed a myriad of incongruent thoughts between sightings of geese, doves and deer. We reflected on new dogs, and friend's impending divorce proceedings, and parents, and wives, and kids, and how frustrating local geese could be this time of year.

As I sat there in the still, calm of the morning and listened to these reflections the last twenty or thirty years of opening days were filtered back to me in and endless succession of opening days, and dogs, and shoots remembered. These thoughts were as timeless as the return of the seasons, and the life cycle of things wild that spent their short lives next to the ribbon of water flowing next to us on it's long way to the Gulf of Mexico.

Later that day in a dove field I sat on a hay wagon and listened to a bunch of young boys talk excitedly about the upcoming shoot and heard them reflect on things that are dear to boys in the eight grade. They all agreed that Friday September the first was undoubtedly the longest day of school that they had ever endured. This made me chuckle. This too was a timeless feeling. Surely September the first had replaced the twenty fourth of December some time in the recent past for these hunters.

These young boys all talked about their overly hard and cruel teachers and how they had flunked the day's exam for their lack of concentration on the useless subjects of English and math. I immediately realized that they too had slipped into a trance of reflection and at best, their school day was filled with past shoots, and missed doves, and how far to lead a bird, and how this year they would finally limit out, and make themselves and their relatives proud, and maybe get a little closer to manhood.

Manhood does not really come from a dove shoot but is interesting to watch a bunch of young bucks go through the process with their friends, fathers and uncles, It is especially gratifying to reflect on how the next generation of hunters is going through the life process that is as timeless as the fall migration of waterfowl and doves.

I happened to pick a spot in this particular dove field that can best be described as the lonely corner. We have all been there. About once every forty minutes a dove would manage to make it through the gauntlet to sail by within fifty yards of my field howitzer and tease me and the dog with an impossible shot. It did not really matter, I was lost in reflection anyway.

There was ample time to reflect on this afternoon's heat, and clouds, and the smell, and sounds of an opening day, in a field full of frustrated dove shooting students, heat stressed labs, and old men that wonder why they return to it all year after year.

Not every day of hunting can be about limits and trophies, and not every hunt can be about reflections. Maybe it is unique to the month of September or maybe it is unique to Doves and Geese and the back-log of things to think about while you are waiting on the seasons to change one more time.



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