Winter Pheasants.jpg – Final Colors. Colorful pheasants make a move from cover against the white backdrop at the start of winter and the end of the upland season. All the sights, sounds and shots were easy to remember for the author as he cleaned his shotgun for the off-season storage period. Simonson Photo.
By Nick Simonson
After a chilly final afternoon of pheasant hunting, my bare fingers made contact with the barrel of my 20 gauge as I stashed it into the case and under the back seat of my pickup truck for the drive home. Zero degrees, I always feel is a doable temperature for a hike through the uplands if there’s no wind, and especially so if I’m hitting the heavy cover, burning calories and even working up a bit of a wintertime sweat under a few layers of clothes. The cold emanating from the blue barrel of the gun held the day’s chilly temperatures as I zipped it shut inside the green case.
Even at home, once inside and preparing to clean and stow the scattergun one last time at the end of the season, it still held on to the chill of the day as I pulled it out of its covering. Letting it warm some as I caught up with my family after the solo hunt and warming myself up some chicken soup, I walked back through the memories of the season and the hunts that once again produced memorable flushes, exciting points, and all sorts of adventures in the uplands. All along the way, my little over-under did the yeoman’s work of taking a few sharptailed grouse, partridge and rooster pheasants in favorite spots and new ones.
From the damp start on a foggy opening morning for sharpies, to the hunts around the holidays for pheasants in the crunchy snow formed by the unseasonably warm and rainy snap and then the super plunge back into the deep freeze recently, it was an eventful autumn filled with good populations of birds. The challenges remained, however, as huntable habitat on the landscape remains at a premium, but with many of my adventures being late morning sneak-outs at midweek, or (being tagless during deer season) in those grassy areas the rifle hunters weren’t patrolling, I was able on most days to find a suitable spot without much competition.
With the barrels at room temperature after the late lunch, I set to work cleaning out what physically remained of the season on my gun. The dark sooty accumulations of gunpowder residue quickly came out of each muzzle with a few pulls of a Bore Snake, and a spray of Rem Oil with a couple swipes of a cloth patch left a clean sheen that would keep things ship shape until next September when the cycle started once again. Gently with an old, designated toothbrush, I cleaned the debris and dust off from around the breach, and then wiped the gun down with another aerosolized shot of oil and a well-worn cleaning rag until the blue shone nicely and the pockmarks of previous hunts seemed to disappear. Save for the lone scratch on the left side of the stock which had been there since almost the day I bought the 20 gauge, no new marks left memorable signs on the wood of the gun. That lone one inch chasm reminded me of when I dinged it as I unloaded it and prepared to cross, setting it against a post one section down, and feeling the gut-turning scratch of a barb on the wire against the wood.
All our guns have character, as do all of the seasons we experience in the uplands. Whether it’s a hand-me-down 870 received after passing hunter’s ed, or that perfect-fitting firearm we find in the years that come after, each one requires care and tending to from the warm start of our seasons in September, to the cold of those last few days in December or January (or later, if a southern state with an extended pheasant season calls to you) before it finds its space in the safe until next autumn. As you clean away the dust and residue of the fall that was, keep in mind all of the excitement the most recent season brought behind the barrel, and before the lock is turned, remember those other experiences that shaped your firearms, the way you use them, and the greater whole that is the hunting experience…in our outdoors.