Worse Than I Thought

I met up with an old hunting buddy today.  We used to work together and the subject always turned to pheasant hunting.  He has had several good Labs and for the last few years has been sporting a decent Setter.  Since he lives right smack in the middle of the areas that are stocked by the PGC at Raystown and because he works second shift, which means that he hunts every morning for at least a few hours just about every day the season is open, he never had much trouble finding and harvesting birds.
 
As we all know, the PGC pheasant stocking numbers were down last year due to issues with spring flooding at their farms.  This reduction had an affect on my group's hunting -- this was the first time in the last 15 years (I know becuase that is how long I have had English Pointers) that everyone in my hunting groups, be that just me on a particular day, or up to the permissible five, that everyone didn't harvest (kill, whatever) a limit of birds per person per trip.  In fact, there were only three days that everyone limited out.  There were also a few days that some in the party didn't get any birds.  We darn near harvested as many grouse as pheasants.
 
But as bad as I thought that it was, it must have been worse than I thought.  My buddy killed two, count them, two, pheasants all season -- regular and late.  His son killed four all total.  A friend of his son that hunted with them about 75% of the time never fired a shot.
 
That is just sad.
 
If there are no more issues this spring, supposedly the number will be double what the original stocking was to be last year.  Let's hope so.