"Oh-Fer"

When a batter fails to get a base hit in, say, four at-bats, he calls that going oh-for-four. A football team that is winless after its first three games holds the unenviable record of oh-and-three heading into the next contest. Any competitor who fails to achieve victory entirely in a given season acquires the pitiable nickname “Oh-fer.”

Yesterday, in a dove field comprised of planted soybeans, corn and sunflowers, I went oh-for-317.

Conditions were virtually perfect. Overcast skies, a light breeze, dry and comfortably cool. The birds were flying well before we were put out at our stands. We noticed flights of doves screaming above the cornstalks, and dipping and juking over the fence line as the pick-up ambled along toward the field. Nine men, some of us crouched on the sides of the pick-up’s bed, some of us hunched on our dove buckets clutching our gun barrels, cast confident glances at one another as fifty-some-odd birds tore through the air just above our heads.

“That’s a good omen,” one of the men offered. Another spit in complete agreement.

One by one, we hopped off the back of the truck and set up shop. Some guys built blinds in a recently harvested soybean field next to the fence. Others of us set up just inside a corn patch. I set my bucket on level ground between two rows of corn, loaded my shell bag and began to wait. I didn’t have to wait long.

Soon, more birds were overhead and the reports of my compatriots’ scatterguns began to echo all around me. I was soon presented with my first opportunity, a high flyer streaking west to east overhead at breakneck speed. Moments later I picked up a smoking hull, but no dove. No matter, I thought to myself. Just need to get the lead right.

I missed the next six birds as well. But they were all flying really high and I kept encouraging myself that as soon as I figured out how much lead to give them, I’d get my limit in short order. Keep swinging through the shot, I reminded myself.

A little while later, however, I’d still yet to connect on a bird, despite firing an appreciable number of rounds. The stack of empty shell boxes behind my bucket qualified as a veritable burn pile. I wasn’t sitting on a dove stand; it was an ammo dump. Empty shell casings formed an apologetic circle around the rich, dark soil at my feet.

Spent hulls far outnumbered the doves at which I’d hurled them, all of which were now either safely perched on a power line or nestled securely in the game pocket on one of my counterpart’s vests.

An hour or so into the shoot, the doves figured out I wasn’t any kind of threat and formed a decoy spread out in front of me at 40 yards. They were lighting and feeding in absolute safety right under my gun barrel! I studied the fine print on one of my shell boxes to discern whether I’d accidentally purchased blanks. Do they make No. 40 shot? How was I missing every bird?

Making matters worse, I allowed myself to engage in the unhealthy act of watching other shooters and their kids run out and retrieve the birds they’d downed. This is very debilitating to the psyche of the shotgunner. After focusing on a father and son exchanging high-fives after the boy ran back to the blind with a dove, I became awash with that old feeling of the other kids all turning in their tests at the same time while I was still stuck on the first long division problem.

I expected at any moment for the game warden to walk up to me and tell me I’d qualified for a hardship exemption, and was eligible to remove the plug from my shotgun. Goodness knows I could’ve used all the help I could get.

By the time the truck showed up to get me, I’d exhausted most of my shells and all of my pride. I hadn’t so much as frightened a single bird or cut a single feather. I’d gone hitless on a day that offered some of the best dove shooting opportunities I can recall.

If you ever invite me on a dove shoot, and I hope you will, put your closest friends and anyone to whom you owe a favor one or two stands down the line from me; I will keep the birds flying in their direction and feel quite safe in guaranteeing that no bird will crumple and fall between my stand and theirs. They don’t call me Oh-fer for nothin’.



(c) Roger Guilian 2009