This is the pasture I hunt several times each year. Eliot handed out man cards on this trip. He got his Ranger stuck.

"Three bird dogs - Eliot Tucker's sleek brace of Celtic field red setters and Jim Willis' energetic Brittany - stood frozen around a patch of bluestem grass and broomweed, looking like statutes instead of the animated, coursing creatures they had been only moments before.

Henry and Russell Hamman inserted shotshells into chambers of their over/under shotguns, closed the guns' actions and made note of the dogs' positions, angle of the sun and direction of the brisk wind. In a coordinated motion the Houston father and son have practiced together so many times it needed no words to direct, they walked past the seemingly paralyzed dogs, one to each side of the brown clump they intently eyed."

wow