BLAST AND CAST ON THE DELTA

Do you work it out one by one, or played in combination?  You throw out your gold teeth. Do you see how they roll?

The month of March brought me to my 60^th birthday, which, by the way, is a birthday which mostly sucks, but the majority of us are still counting on getting there. It is “middle age” but we all kind of know it’s not the middle.  It’s well into the back nine. I decided to celebrate by combining two of my favorite activities, upland game hunting and bass fishing, in northern California.

I figured a combo trip like this deserved some research, so I contacted Northern California Cross-Outfitters, which advertised that they brokered outdoor adventures and specialized in the Delta.  My appointed representative was Jason MacSanchez, who advised me that he was of combined Mexican/Scot heritage and really knew his way around the Delta. 

I told him what I was interested in and suggested that I would like to do the hunting part of the trip with the crew at Bird Landing, because I really liked their facility and the staff there.  He said he had not heard of them, which should have caused me more alarm than it did at the time.  I just told him to concentrate on getting me a fishing guide who knew what was going on in the Delta, which is a vast resource that hosts a multitude of remarkable natural resources.  He indicated that he would incorporate my hunting trip into whatever fishing, lodging and dining experience he could arrange with the locals with whom he was in contact.

Jason said he would hook me up and requested I send him a deposit.  He asked for a combination of Travelers checks and a money order, which seemed like an odd pairing.  I had not seen a Travelers check in decades.  I ended up going to a UPS/post office/saving and loan facility where I procured the species of payment requested.  While I waited in the lobby for my number to be called, I watched a talk show featuring the former Bruce Jenner, who was probably one of the most famous athletes I can remember seeing.  He won the gold medal at the Olympics in the decathlon, which features a combination of different track and field events.  The woman sitting next to me was watching in tears, whispering between sobs, “She is so courageous.”  I couldn’t hear what was being said, and pretty soon my number was called. I completed my multiple transactions at a single station at the counter.

Jason, upon receipt of my payment, sent me a link to a virtual tour of his business, known as Cross Outfitters - and included a Skype connection.  I had never actually Skyped before, and had a hard time at first, as it is a combination of video and audio broadcast through my cell phone.  I kept getting it backwards.

“Hey Ed.  Mind if I call you Ed?”  The phone was making a noise, but I could not get any picture.

“Nice to meet you Jason.  It is perfectly okay to call me Ed, as that is what everybody calls me, mostly because it is my name.”

“Well, Brah, here’s the deal.  I am a cross-fit trainer and a Vegan, so I know that I am going to able to push you toward having a great time.”

I fumbled with the phone and then caught a glimpse of my guide for this journey.  He looked to be about thirty five, with one of those I-was-going-bald-anyway shaved head looks and a very tight shirt that read:

“Cross-Outfitters – Our Warm Up Is Like Your Workout.”  He did look pretty fit.

“Gosh Jason, It’s probably better that you aren’t going hunting, in light of the whole Vegan thing.”

“No worries Brah.  I think outside the box. We will catch up with you in Lodi where I have set you up with a great guide and a cool bed and breakfast place in the heart of the Lodi wine country.  See you on Saturday night.  I gotta catch a big Bike-for-the-Lord rally in Tracy anyway on Saturday.  It is a big networking opportunity and I can combine my love of fitness, faith and finance.”

I rented a cool gunmetal gray Ford Squirrel, which is a hybrid Sport Utility vehicle designed for those who enjoy good mileage, off road driving and the sporty feel of a car that looks like the cap of a Confederate enlisted man.

I drove out to the Bird Landing facility, where I met up with my old friend Jim Lawman, who gave up a promising career as a sheriff of a corrupt border town to become the primary facility acquisition and design planner for Google.  We met up with our guide Alexis, who is a biochemistry student at Davis, an expert dog handler and the number one woman sporting clay champion in America. Alex was accompanied by her dad, who was a former IRS agent turned shooting instructor/hunting guide.  

  I found it slightly irritating to be in the company of people who seem to be so good at so many things in comparison to me, but I tried to make the best of it.

As always, we were well taken care of by the pretty and talented girls at Bird Landing – Kimberly and Taylor, shown here with Alex.

We got out to the field at about 1 pm for what they call an “Afternoon Stroll,” which involves 8 birds and a very large field that had been hunted earlier in the day.  Alex sent out her English pointer “Cali” who is the same type of dog that starred  in the TV program “Hunting with Hank,” a show with which I am sure all of my readers are familiar.  Cali would get out and hold point a good distance away.  If she smelled the bird her tail would wag.  Once she actually saw the bird, her tail would stiffen up completely.  If the bird started running, she would follow on a sort of half-point.  It was a great form of communication with the hunters.

We enjoyed an excellent and relaxing walk in good weather, with great conversation.  I managed to get a great impact shot of Jim knocking down a pheasant.  I took it with my I-phone, which is a wonderful combination of phone, camera, compass and computer.

Later, we managed to sneak up on a group of birds that were all sitting together on this log.  Jim instinctively yelled “Freeze! Police!”, but we shot them anyway, even though they totally followed Jim’s instructions.                                                                                                                                                  

I must interrupt this narrative to bitch about a fundamental party foul that was committed by a man who came into our field with his very young son as we were actively shooting birds.  I pulled away from a shot at the last second when he and the boy appeared directly in the path of a fleeing pheasant that I was deep into the process of shooting.

“Excuse me, but I think I lost my cell phone somewhere in this field, so my son and I are just going to stomp around randomly during your hunt until I find it.”

I am not making this up.  It really happened.  They continued to walk around in our field for nearly an hour until they found it by calling it on a phone they borrowed from someone else.  I wanted to abuse this guy, who was giving his kid the worst lesson a father could possibly contrive in a hunting atmosphere, but I was a guest of the club and did not want to scare his kid, who had no idea what kind of danger his bullshit-for-brains dad was placing him in.  Anyone who has ever hunted pheasant knows that you do not wander into a private field that is being actively hunted.  This guy does not deserve to own a gun, or even a phone.  Although it pains me to say it, he did eventually find his phone and finally left us without getting his kid shot, or learning anything worth knowing.

After the hunt, we traded our pheasants for pheasant sausage and whole smoked birds and then went to the lodge café to scarf down big burgers.  After picking up our meat, we went over to Shirley’s Tavern (featured in a previous article), where we spent some time with Shirley, who was out of every kind of beer except Budweiser, so that is what we drank. 

After I left Bird Landing, I dropped off the sausage and smoked pheasant with starving students at the Berkeley Acropolis, which is one of my favorite places for celebrating a good clean kill.

As I left the Berkeley campus, Jason’s face came on like clockwork on the screen of my I phone. 

“Hey Brah.  I got you hooked up at the Flaming W Ranch in the heart of Lodi wine country.”  I will meet you there tonight.  It’s kind of a combination dairy-pig farm and winery and the people there are Hela-cool.”

“Did you really just say Hela-cool?”  I asked.

“Yeah Brah, Oh, I forgot you are from southern Cali.  Everyone says that up here.”

This guy was starting to bum me out. He gave me the directions to the place in Lodi and I drove out there to meet him.

When I got to the ranch, it was dark and I really did not know where I was.  I was driving down this country road, following the GPS instructions dictated by my female voiced robo instructor, when I saw what looked like a torch being slowly waved a few farmhouses ahead.  I slowed down and a woman, holding a real live torch, hailed me.

“You must be Ed”, she said.  “Jason told us to be on the lookout for you.  He just called and told us that he isn’t going to make it here tonight, but that he will visit after you are done fishing tomorrow.”  He is doing some kind of night time, bike racing/ walk-on-your-hands race to benefit the Lodi transgender community.”

“I guess that kind of event is something that probably sneaks up on you.” I offered up, as she opened up a gate that led to a gravel road onto a very impressive piece of property.

“My name is Electra” she said.  “Welcome to the Flaming W Ranch.”  Her enthusiasm was contagious and I could not help but take an immediate liking to her.  I was secretly glad that Jason had found a way to not be around.

“Are you Greek, or named after Sophocles' tragic Greek character who was the eldest  and vengeance obsessed daughter of Agamemnon?”  I asked, hoping to score points with this literary reference.

“ No, not at all, but a lot of folks ask that very question.  My dad was a Buick dealer and knocked up my mom in his favorite company car.”

She brought me inside to meet the rest of the crew, who were pouring Basil Hayden bourbon while waiting on a whole pig BBQ that slowly revolved over an open fire pit.  The wonderful aroma wafted into the spacious house as the other three occupants greeted me.  I knew right away it was right place for me.  It turned out that Electra was a wine broker and chef academy instructor who had been a local calf roping champion and prom queen at Tokay high school back in the day.  She also had a wicked sense of humor.  I would later find out just how wicked it was.   For now, it was just incredibly amusing.

I met my guide, John Henry, who works both as an architect and fishing guide.  His wife, Samantha, is a zoologist/museum curator who also creates the daily menu for the wide variety of animals maintained at the Living Desert exposition near Palm Springs.  Samantha introduced me to her brother Ulysses, who is married to Electra.  Everyone gathered around the spitted pig, drinking bourbon, while Ulysses, who is a firearms instructor and heavy equipment broker, explained to me the fine points of managing a dairy-pig operation.  It was quite fascinating and something I never realized was a viable enterprise.  He explained that the large pig we struggled to get off the spit and cut up with meat axes was what they call a “dry sow,” which no longer served the farm in its primary capacity as a milk producer, but was delicious because of what it had been fed all its life.  Additionally, any leftovers could just go back to the pigs, because they are omnivorous.

Ulysses and Electra set me up in a beautiful guest room after a feast in a dining room that was right out of Camelot.

 “We are fishing at 6 am, so you’d better be ready.”  That is exactly what I wanted to hear as my head hit the pillow.

We were up at 4:30 am and hooking up the boats Ulysses stored in a 3,000 square foot garage.  I joined John Henry as we dragged across the levy roads toward Vieria Landing, which is one of hundreds of beautiful spots to launch in the network of tide influenced fresh water locations in the western Delta.

We were targeting striped and largemouth bass, both of which were just starting to go on the bite in this early part of the season.  I had read that the bass would most likely bite on the outgoing tide, which produces the greatest movement of water as the retreating tide gives way to the river systems that spread their energy throughout the Delta on the way to San Francisco Bay.

We kept in contact via cell phone, which we also used as our GPS navigation devices.  John Henry expertly used the electric trolling motor to get us into promising areas when he was not using his refrigerator-sized outboard to push us up and down the Delta at 50 plus miles per hour.

We came upon several Derelicts of the Delta, as this body of water is notorious for abandoned vessels, due to the lack of regulation regarding anchoring up huge boats for which the owner has run out of options. 

 There were several vessels like this one – a sort of combination sport fisher/sailboat, which is neither a good sailboat nor a great sport fisher – more of a giant wallower with cavernous holds.  They are apparently a species of boat built in the greater Stockton area.  The examples we saw were well past their prime and were tagged by some agency. This one was over 60 feet long and at least 15 feet deep from keel to weather deck

I managed to get on the board with a couple of largemouth I got on a double bladed spinner bait.

John Henry cashed in on a striper on a crank bait and  then this large mouth bass on a Senko, which he threw relentlessly.

Ulysses got striper of the day on a shallow-diving crank bait and many more in front of the fabulous waterfront homes at Isleton. 

 Everyone caught fish and nobody got lost, which is something that can easily happen on the Delta without electronics, or a keen sense of one’s surroundings.

                              Samantha's smallest fish of the day, but it was the first of many

After we got the boats hauled out and were headed back to Lodi, Ulysses called Electra to see about dinner plans, as Electra had planned an Italian feast with home-made pasta from the eggs from their chicken coop, some actual stone ground flour and the milk from their pigs.  She is a master chef and had planned flight of wines to go with the various courses.  Jason would be joining us to bask in the after-glow of the outing he took credit for arranging.

As our wheels crunched up the long gravel driveway leading to the back of the spread, I caught a glimpse of Jason.  He was dressed in a kimono like robe that covered a fishnet tank top.  He was doing Tai-chi style movements on an elevated platform near the heavy equipment with the sunset strategically framing him for our view as we approached.  Just before we pulled up, he leapt off the platform and onto the bucket of a backhoe, where he did a few bar dips before propelling himself at us.

“Hey Brah, how many fish did you kill?”

“Just this one” responded Ulysses, cutting in front of me to intercept Jason with a display of the striper.  He said “Hey Jason, do you want to clean it?”  I could sense a bit of tension between Ulysses and our cross-trained agent of fortune.

“No way Brah. That is for flesh eaters.  I am sticking with the Italian stuff.  Hey, I taught Electra that recipe for homemade pasta and want to make sure she doesn’t screw it up.”  Jason seemed like he was intoxicated.  Electra winked at me and said “Jason you are the man.”

Jason had his hair balled up into a tiny man-bun on the top of his head.  It looked like a hairball from a cat.  “You can just call me Sensei, Electra.  Let’s break out your wine.”

We went inside.  Electra had laid out an incredible spread of olives, pepperachinis, cheeses, veggies and smoked meats.

  Jason began picking at it right away, as Ulysses and Samantha poured the wine.  Electra was over at the big stove and had just transferred her home-made linguine pasta from the pasta machine to the kettle. 

 A saucepan of mushroom sauce simmered next to it.  Jason began hovering nearby as she stirred it, clearly irritating her.

“Jason, go feed off the anti-pasta platter and stay out of the kitchen until I am done.  Maybe you could set the table.”

“Hey Babe,” he said, “Maybe there is something you don’t know about the Zen of Cross-Fit.  We do everything at once, because we can.”

“Well, I am the chef in this kitchen and let me assure you that there is a natural order, an appropriate progression to a good meal and the flow of the evening.  You are  upsetting that balance!”

“Cross fit knows no boundaries” he declared.  “We set our own pace.   You may seek order, but we re-order!”

Jason stuck his hand directly into the hot pasta just as she was straining it over the sink.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” Samantha asked.  Jason turned to her and stared intently.  “The secret is not minding.” was his response as he pulled out a fistful.

Where was G. Gordon Liddy when you needed him? I thought to myself.  This guy was pretty goddamned strange.

He walked over to the platter and began heaping olives, mushrooms and pepperachinis onto the steaming pasta he dropped on a plate.  “This is how it is meant to be eaten, if you've done the work-out to deserve it.”

Electra yelled at him “Don’t do that.  It will ruin everything, you fawning pig-man!”  Jason just looked at her and shoved a forkful into his maw.  Suddenly, his mouth began foaming and his nostrils flared red.

“You cannot allow the anti-pasta to come into direct contact with pasta in the same bite!” she cried, but it was too late.  Jason’s head seemed to detonate as his eyes bulged and he vainly tried to eject the supercharged cargo that was reacting in his mouth.  His head began smoking, but it was more like the smoke you get with dry-ice.  It stayed close to the ground where he now lay, twitching slightly.

She stood over him and slowly said “you know nothing of the forces that govern the culinary universe.”

She looked back at us and tossed back the rest of her wine. “I told him.  You all heard me.”  Ulysses put his arm around her and said “I never liked that little prick.  Let the pigs have him.  Nobody is going to miss Jason.”

And so it was, as the flow of the evening was only briefly interrupted by this cosmic collision of electrons.  We all swore each other to secrecy and finished the rest of the meal in relative peace, as did the porcine denizens of this unique dairy ranch.

I will not tell a soul, except of course within the privileged bounds of this publication, but who would believe me anyway, even if I decided to narc out such gracious hosts?

I got up the next morning and had some really great French toast before getting on the road back down to southern California, or, as Jason would have said  “Southern Cali”.

I hope to get a chance to stay at the flaming W again and make a further exploration of the wonders of the Delta, but I may just take things one step at a time. This whole combination thing makes my head spin sometimes. Now that I am old, it is good to savor individual experiences and avoid combining the forces of pasta with those of anti-pasta, because

These are the Days.

Free Lobster Report

 
Call me Gilligan.


This report is inspired by the remaining free-stuff loving heroes who selflessly occupied the Malhuer Wildlife Sanctuary, monkeyed with Native American artifacts in a televised blur of incoherency and demanded that they be given first dibs on the use of public land held in trust for the benefit of all.  When they ran out of food after threatening to kill anyone who blocked access to their food bowls, they just all wanted to go home and be free.


On Friday, January 29, my calendar cleared and I was free.  Free to do whatever I wanted because this is a free country.  My friend, Secret Skipper, had offered to take me lobster fishing at an undisclosed island off the western coast of the United States.  The forecast had been for big weather, but it seemed we had a window of opportunity, as the nasty stuff was still a day away.


      I asked my bride Wendy if I could take my two little guys, Tommy and Davey, who are about to turn 11.  The answer was no.  They  were not emancipated enough to go, but I could go, so long as everything was free.


      I got away from the office right after I ate a free lunch provided by one of our company's vendors. 


     My assigned task was to get salmon carcasses and Kentucky Fried Chicken on the way to the marina, as we were somewhat pressed for time.  One was for eating and the other was for lobsters.


     I first went to the San Pedro Fish market and got a bag of salmon heads.  After the fishmonger weighed it and wrote up an invoice, he asked me if I would like it cooked right there.  I said yes.  While he was distracted by putting the salmon heads into the steamer, I grabbed another bag full of fish parts, along with a T-shirt I took and put on from the stack of  employee uniforms.  I quickly cruised out to the parking lot without getting noticed.

    Wendy loves when I get her souvenirs from industrial fishing places and this one is a dandy.


     I patched out of the parking lot in my supercharged hybrid car before anyone in charge realized I had liberated their merchandise.
 
      I headed off to KFC and ordered a bucket of original recipe.  There was nobody in front of me in the drive-through, so when they handed me the bucket I kept rolling and just grabbed it like the touchdown hand off that the Sea Hawks never made to Marshawn Lynch in last year's Superbowl game.  I hauled ass past the last window and turned for the Cabrillo Marina to join Skipper with our plunder.   The young attendant was swearing at me as I looked back into the mirror, but I knew it was only because she hated my freedom. 


"It's free-range now, Baby!" I yelled as I peeled away onto Gaffey Street..


      We hit the gas dock to put on a couple hundred gallons and started stuffing salmon parts into the seal-proof bait tubes Skipper has designed and built.  He then broke out his secret weapon - duck heads from the Chinese market.  We zip-tied these delicacies to the bottom of the nets.  


     While we were at the gas dock, the attendant, who is an experienced lobsterman himself, admired our  first rate gear and asked Skipper about how he came to acquire the automatic line pulling robot, nick-named "Bagman," that is the mechanical heart and soul of Skipper's system of success.


"Where did you get that puller?"  He inquired.


"I got it from a guy who is an amateur engineer.  He made it for me."


"How much would he charge to make one?" 


"He made it for me for free."


 "That machine looks incredibly cool and I would gladly pay for it."


Skipper replied, "Like I said, these robots are free.  You can't get one."




     Skipper and I headed out for the island in a building swell that gave way to greasy calm conditions once we got to the lee of this enchanted isle before sunset.


     We encountered another boat "Early Times" crewed by a pair of lobster hoopers with whom we exchanged pleasantries and information about where we would be putting our respective sets, so as to minimize confusion once we started pulling in the dark.  Because Secret Skipper has re-rigged some of his sets to get down as deep as 300 feet, we would be substantially outside of them.


     We set out three in about 65 feet; four in the 175 zone; and two out around 260.  We started pulling the first three inside rigs before 7 pm and got several shorts, one legal, and a huge, dangerous looking spider crab.  The next group of four produced many bugs, but they were just barely short.


     We rolled out to the two outside rigs, which were utterly loaded with big ones and many that just missed the mark.  Bagman made it easy work, even though it was a long pull and a big pile of rope.


     Meanwhile, the Early Times was hitting the shallow water for a decent go at some legals and a huge dose of harassment from large seals, which seemed to prefer the shallower zones.


     The second set was much the same, as the inside produced small bugs.  We hit a few good ones in the middle, getting us close to limits before we even got the last two deep ones.  We reset all of our gear, knowing that this big crawl could stop at any moment.
The two deep ones once again proved to be in the magic zone as we harvested several really nice specimens.  This bounty forced us to exchange these bigger creatures for some pretty good legals we started throwing back into the sea.


     We went back to retrieve our gear to head back home for the easiest and most efficient lobster fishing I have ever experienced.  As we pulled in the hoops, which had not sat for long, we continued to bring in and throw back nice, no-need-to-measure sized bugs. At that point we were plugged and just trying to break everything down for an early exit with a load of bugs that were all over 2 pounds. 


     We left the island with all of the gear dismantled and stowed for the ride home by 9 pm.  We had a great view of the stars and planets as we cruised home at over 30 knots with an incoming weather front on our port shoulder.


     The Coast Guard broke in on Channel 16 to broadcast a gale warning astern of us, with 16 foot waves and heavy winds bearing down on San Nicholas Island.  We had avoided all the big coastal weather and the earlier forecasts probably kept the island un-crowded for us.
     I did go see "Finest Hours" in 3-D the next morning, so I totally feel like I virtually experienced what the Coast Guard was talking about without having to be frightened or uncomfortable.

     Back at the dock, I dumped all of the lobsters onto the deck.  At Skipper's direction, I threw the huge spider crab into the water near the dock, so it could dominate this domain and scare the crap out of all of the creatures that lived in that corner of the marina.  I started playing with the lobster, forgetting that I had taken my gloves off.  While Skipper was trying to clean up the boat, I was pushing them around like toy cars while making race car sounds with my lips.  I was making them collide and fight with each other.


"Bbbbbbddddddrrrrrrroooooooooom!

     "Hey, those lobster you're playing with are completely cutting up your hands and its getting blood all over this deck I am trying to wash."


     I noticed the cuts and the red stains I was leaving everywhere.  I put some gloves on and divided the lobster into the two ice chests.  We cleaned up the rest of the boat and gear while Skipper kept mopping up the bloody hand marks I kept leaving just behind him as he worked backwards.  He was becoming exasperated because of our peculiar arrangement whereby I do not have to pay for gas if I spill a certain amount of my own blood on his boat during one of our outings.


"Okay, you win.   Just get off so I can wipe it down without you doing that anymore and we can leave."  Skipper asked for gas money anyway, but I said no, because the entire adventure had been to so perfect, it had to be free.


I syphoned a gallon of gas from an old F 150 in the lot and was home by in bed before 1 am.


  This weekend we are feasting with our pals and eating enough to make me dream in color. 

 Last night, I dreamed I was in a crowded urban barber shop.  We were all talking about the Laker organization putting up another bronze statue of the Laker most responsible for revolutionizing the game as the originator of the soaring grace that characterizes the exciting, modern-style NBA game - it was Elgin Baylor....  Suddenly, StoneFOX debate mistress Megyn Kelly sat down in the chair next to me and shouted out, in a harsh New Jersey accent -  "Make me look like the Fonz!" 


 I was startled back into  reality by a gentle touch and a soft voice  whispering "Wake up, Honey.  Don't be scared."  It was Wendy Jo and she was leaning over the bed, holding a tray full of lobster omelets and Bloody Marys.  She was wearing a lobster bib style nightie from Victoria's Secret.  The logo sequined to the front of the bib read: "You've been served."


Glad that haircut nightmare  was just a dream, right? If I could dream up a perfect evening of lobster fishing, I just did.


Well, Dream On, because:

These are the Days

Honky-tonk Hunt

   This year's pheasant hunting efforts took us to Bird Landing, which is a town perhaps most famous as the site of the 1982 Clint Eastwood film "Honky-tonk Man," which I never bothered to see, because it came out during that phase when he was making all of those monkey movies and monkeys are no friends of mine.

      The town, which consists of a fire station, an abandoned set house and Shirley's Tavern, is about an hour and fifteen minutes from anywhere, unless you count Rio Vista or Fairfield.

    I knew I was going on a mostly business road trip up the central valley and into the Sacramento area, so I decided that I would get back into pheasant hunting for the first time since my beloved pointer, Victor, went off to the happy hunting ground and took with him my enthusiasm for upland game hunting.  I called my pals up north to force them to spend time with me, as it had been decades since I had hunted the Sacramento area, where I went for many years on opening day in the Sutter Basin in the 80s and 90s, when we were all a bit slimmer in the hip.

 I managed to get in three very unique hunts there in December and I must say, before this report descends into the abyss of false adventure, that this is the coolest public access hunting club I have had the pleasure of abusing.

     The facility is set near Grizzly Island on the California Delta.  It has a great sporting clay range; ample parking; a cool snack bar where they make great burgers that would rival the deliciousness that you can get on a sport boat; first class bird processing; and a pro shop that has a wonderful selection of guns, ammo, and all of the hunting accessories that could put you in an ad for Cabelas or LL Bean.

     The hunting lodge is actually a converted elementary school, with the name of the school still visible on the exterior of the building.

      This was certainly an appropriate bit of signage, as the expedition proved to be a learning experience for all of us.

   Note the school auditorium chairs out front (some Nor Cal readers have advised that these seats are actually stadium seats auctioned from the demolition of Candlestick Park and you all must know how important it is that my reports contain no inaccuracies)

      Being an out-of-towner, I had called the place innumerable times to make all of the arrangements, with Kimberly, who patiently fielded all of my questions and took my reservations.  I opted for the "Businessman's Special" which included up to 20 pheasants, lunch and all birds cleaned and bagged.  I also reserved a dog and handler.

     On Day one, I met my lifelong friends and roommates from UCSB's infamous Dildo Hall, Mick and Vince, along with Mick's brother in law Mike at the facility on a day that promised a very welcome rainstorm, which meant that we had to get our slaughter completed before a storm that was expected to hit at noon.

    When I arrived, I was actually quite startled to meet Kimberly, who is a beautiful girl who would make any dad proud of her obvious knowledge of hunting craft and firearms.  She was assisted by another very good looking young woman named Taylor who was equally polite, enthusiastic and handled firearms with the casual expertise of Steve McQueen in "The Getaway".

     We all got checked in by 7:30 am and went out to our assigned field to rendezvous with dog handler Willy and his enthusiastic German shorthair pointer, Lassen.  

     Willy's dog handling approach is to let his dogs range far out into a very large field, well ahead and mostly out of range of the hunters, so that keeping up with the dog to avoid long flushed  birds requires track shoes and stamina that we really did not possess.  Even when the birds lit up 70 yards out, we still dumped rounds at them and screamed "And don't come back!" as they flew downwind.

Willy points in the direction he last saw his pointer.




      Even when the dog calmed down and set up a classic Field and Stream point for me on the end of our line, I managed to miss a picture perfect flush in front of all of my friends.  Willy and my pals sensed that we might be in for a difficult hunt with my skill set and the time limit created by the approaching storm. Eventually, we were able to come up with a plan that secured our success.

     Because of the impending rain in an otherwise dismal few years of serious drought, burning in the fields is permitted when rain has either started or is so imminent that the likelihood of fire spreading into adjacent properties is virtually impossible.  Helpful members of the Bird Landing staff carried kerosene cans to the upwind borders of our assigned field while we were instructed to take up positions along a ditch that would serve as a firebreak.

     When the wind that preceded the rain freshened up to about 15 miles an hour, the crew sprinkled the kerosene along a barbed wire fence on the west side of the field and then deployed a World War II vintage flamethrower to make sure that the flames advanced evenly.  It proved to be a supremely effective technique. as the flames approached and the nervous birds scooted out in front of us, only to be momentarily frozen by the pointing dog before rocketing into the sky as we fired away like the beleaguered garrison of Rourke's drift holding off charging Zulus.  The birds began dropping for us as the dogs skirted the front edge of the bush fire to retrieve our shot game.

     We managed to gun down 13 birds before the rain started coming down in earnest and forced us back to the lodge to eat like fascist pigs while the staff cleaned and bagged our hapless quarry.  We were off the property by 1 pm and said our goodbyes after this wonderful Gaucho reunion, vowing that we would not let another 25 years go by before trying this again, as it was unlikely that we would live long enough to renew such acquaintances on this kind of cadence.

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     A few days later, after a night of drinking herbal tea and discussing business with my law partners Jerry, Bob, and Rob, we headed out to Bird Landing again, where I was able to now act like I had been there before and was almost a local.  We had good weather with which to work and were assigned a field with much more challenging terrain, necessitated, in part, by the fact that the field I had hunted days earlier had been burned to stubble.  Once again, we were guided by Willy, his trusty and swift pointer Lassen, and another larger and more classic looking German shorthair named Oso.  

  

   The field we hunted was quite extensive and featured canyons and draws that required some degree of scrambling up and down ravines and ditches.  Jerry picked up a fine rental gun in the form of a Browning pigeon grade over and under 12 gauge, with which he did a great deal of damage.  Rob used my Weatherby Orion over and under, while Bob was equipped with his own Orion.  I once again used my 1927 Hubertus sweet 16, which makes me look like a really cool hunting guy until I actually start shooting it at moving targets.

     On this occasion, we faced the challenge posed by primates which invaded our field from an adjacent sheep ranch. Although it is a little known fact of life on the Delta, the use of monkeys (mostly baboons) by local sheep men is more common that you might think.  These monkeys are quite at home among the sheep and generally keep them inside their assigned range.  The smarter monkeys have actually been trained to shear the sheep with electric shears, for which they are rewarded with banana flavored pellets.  Some of the monkeys, like their human owners, actually try to breed with the sheep and show a preference for them over their own kind (monkey see, monkey do).  This generally results in these monkeys being put down by the ranchers, who only become aware of their hairy shepherds' romantic entanglements when the ewes give birth to fetal monsters, like in "Eraserhead".  The monkeys are not stupid and know that this type of conduct is not only taboo, but has serious consequences.  Even so, some of them cannot resist the wooly call of these bleating sirens of the Suisun Basin.

The male monkeys occasionally become bored with their mundane sheep keeping duties and surly at the thought of carnal deprivation, which leads them to do mischief in the pheasant fields by chasing birds out.  This poses a challenge to the hunters, who cannot see these primates creeping through the grass to vandalize the hunting experience of the humans they loath.  The monkeys cannot smell the birds or freeze them up the way a good pointer will do, so they instead simply creep through the ditches and try to startle roosters they randomly encounter.

     Because baboons are substantial monkeys, almost apes, really, the shot size we were using on upland game is generally not lethal to them.  Nevertheless, we shot several, which caused them to slink away to lick their wounds and surrender the field back to us humans, as we are  well to the right of them on the ubiquitous evolutionary chart we all got to look at in elementary school.

     It turned out that this field was loaded with roosters, so once we peppered the monkeys to drive them back to the sheep fields, we were able to score eighteen out of twenty before heading off to eat the delicious burgers that awaited us while our birds were processed.

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     The last day I took advantage of a little known experimental program sponsored by the department of Fish and Wildlife (formerly Fish and Game), which is testing out the concept of pursuing  pheasant with handgun rounds at closer range than what is commonly encountered with standard 12 gauge shotguns.  They are trying to cope with loss of habitat and available hunting space by compartmentalizing the experience.  The cartridges use #8 shot, with a maximum effective range of about 25 yards.  The shells are similar to the snake shot commonly manufactured for pistols, but because of California regulations designed to protect condors, which are found in every county in the state, copper pellets are mandated.

      Because the repeated use of shot, especially copper plated shot, can damage the rifling of standard gun barrels, it is highly advisable to use smoothbore barrels.  The use of barrels which have no rifling twist also prevents the shot from spiraling out of the barrel and breaking up the tight pattern that is necessary to bring down a large game bird with such small shot.

     I had been selected for this event because officials with Fish and Wildlife have been reading my columns and wanted the publicity that my massive readership would bring to their program.  I knew in advance that I was going to be selected for this program that is otherwise subject to a lottery style drawing.  Because of this, I had the opportunity to order a smoothbore replacement barrel for my Les Baer custom .45 government model 1911.  I ordered mine from the Brownell's catalogue for $125.  It arrived within five business days and took a couple of minutes to install.

     Because of the fact that this is an experimental program, the normal rules of pheasant hunting do not apply.  Instead of being released into a 100 acre field, the birds are planted in an abandoned farmhouse.  The “hunt” takes place room to room, with only one hunter and a Fish and Wildlife observer to follow you around.  Before you go in, Fish and Wildlife requires you to purchase a special “smoothbore handgun card” which is a seventeen foot long document on two large wooden spindles, much like the Torah.  Each of the birds actually killed in this enterprise are given names.  Those names must be inscribed on this bird scroll and sent in to the DFW within 72 hours of completing the hunt.

     My assigned Fish and Wildlife observer was a small, bearded man with wire rimmed spectacles and a modest goatee that made him look like Leon Trotsky.  It turned out that he had a great sense of humor about the whole hunting program, which he predicted was a experiment that would not last long.  Trotsky, as he allowed me to call him (he told me that his friends already had given him that nickname), explained that I would have five minutes to kick in the front door and  shoot as many birds as I could out of the 24 birds he had stashed in various rooms.  The windows had been removed to give the birds a sporting chance to get away.  I wore earphones, as the discharge of a .45 inside of a building without using ear protection is just asking for injury.

   I got into the house, armed with four magazines, each of which held 8 rounds.  I shoved the first one in and racked the slide as Trotsky knocked on the door and declared himself to be the Avon Lady.  I put my boot into a front door that must have been made out of balsa wood, judging by the way it disintegrated when I kicked and almost fell down as it gave way so easily.  The action was fast and furious as the birds cackled and flashed about in the splintered sunlight that dappled the interior of this apparently unsalvageable edifice.  I did not distinguish between birds in flight and those on the floor as I fired at motion until my slide locked out and it was time to slam another magazine into the housing of my pistol.  I left the spent magazines and shot birds on the floor as I charged up the stairs to complete my mission.  I was done in 3 ½ minutes.  I used up three magazines and ended up with 17 birds, with the remainder escaping from the open windows.

     The downed birds were gathered by a Fish and Wildlife intern who used a snow shovel and a wheel barrow.  The longest part of the whole event was waiting around and smoking Camels with Trotsky as the intern struggled to name each bird and write down the names of the fallen on the DFW Torah.  I took the document to the UPS store in Fairfield to make sure it went to the state right away and I did not get hit with the fine that the Department otherwise sends out within five business days of the hunt unless they receive the scroll.  I sent it certified, so there would be no doubt.

     The whole experimental handgun thing did not impart a feeling of great sportsmanship.  I have to admit it was some fast action and was pretty fun, even though I felt kind of bad about the proximity of the kill and what seemed like an excessive amount of roosters for one person.  At least DFW is trying to serve the hunting public with innovative programs and do something that I do not think many will get to experience, unless this program becomes more popular than I think it will turn out to be.

  These birds were destined to be donated to the Holiday Poultry Feed for the old folks at the Suisun City Home For The Bewildered, so this adventure was for a good cause.

     Although it was a strange way to renew my neglected passion for upland game hunting, I certainly got to fire my share of shots, hang out with some of  my best old asshole buddies and rekindle my love for the outdoor life. 

 Here's hoping that everyone has an opportunity to enjoy a Savage Christmas, because it is that time of year; meat is murder; and....

 These are the Days.