6th Prize
Hunting Journal with Weatherby Logo (100 awarded)
Matt Gangola, California
“Wow! Win a dream hunt...any species, any companion, anywhere? This is just too good to be true. The possibilities are endless. Why, I could win a hunt for one of the Big Five in Africa with Craig Boddington, perhaps a giant whitetail hunt in Canada with Jim Shockey, possibly a waterfowl hunt in Argentina with Tom Knapp, or maybe a driven pheasant hunt in England with Chris Batha. Gee whiz, I want it all, like a kid in a candy store. My head wants to explode! But as awesome as the thought of winning one of these dream hunts is to me, I'd pass on all of them and tell you what I would REALLY call a dream hunt.
It would be a simple hunt...a 20 gauge shotgun, a box of one ounce #6 shot, and upland attire. There is only one person who I would always ask to accompany me and who would always enthusiastically accept. That would be my wife, Debbie. There is only one place on earth where everyone who has ever hunted pheasants there has said that they would always want to return. That would be the pheasant capitol of the world, South Dakota.
Let me regress in time and tell the story of how my wife became a hunter, and how I took pride in watching her develop her skills and awaken her enthusiasm. Before we got married in 1990, I cautiously asked her out on a date to go quail hunting with me in the foothills east of Los Angeles. Now I had enough information about her background to take this chance. She was raised on a farm in western Kansas, and her brothers hunted pheasants every year. Being the tom-boy in her family, she had a curiosity about this hunting thing, but never asked. She then sort of repressed these predatory urges and went on to become a nurse and live life as a ‘traditional’ female.
She moves to California, meets me (a lifelong hunter of upland game), and gets invited to go quail hunting. We arrive at one of my favorite quail locations, and as we are approaching a guzzler that attracts quail in the mid-morning, I see a coyote take off up a hill. I told her to hold her position as I wanted to walk up the hill to see if I could get a shot on the quail slaying yote, and I'd be right back.
While I was gone, several quail began to scurry all around her. She didn't know what to do since she was not hunting herself and felt useless as the birds slowly disappeared. When I did return, she told me that if she had had a shotgun, she'd have shot a handful of birds without me. BINGO! The light that went on in my mind was never brighter. Within a month, she had her hunter's safety card and California hunting license, and has been my closest hunting partner ever since.
We watch about every bird hunting program on cable networks, and every time we watch a pheasant hunt from South Dakota, we are amazed at the numbers of pheasants that inhabit this land. These televised pheasant hunts from South Dakota always get a, ‘I wish I was there right now,’ response from my wife. I can almost see the drool from the corner of her mouth as 100 or more colorful, cackling ringed-necked roosters bust from cover as all the hunters on TV spit ounce after ounce of lead in the directions of these winged rockets. So there you have it! I couldn't possibly ask for a better dream hunt than a pheasant hunt in South Dakota with my wife, Debbie.”