Jill's Journal: I’m one-for-one this hunting season

The poor thing never knew what hit him – or her. Nor did I realize that I had even hit the “poor thing.”

That’s right, this woman who has a way with words was near speechless when I spied the feathered bundle hanging from the grill of my car.

Let me take you back to the “scene of the crime.”

It was late afternoon on a Sunday, when I was driving back to Brandon from a family gathering in Minnesota. With tunes blaring from the radio, blue skies above me and hints of harvest all around me, I was going a bit faster down the tar road than I probably should have been. But there I was, not another car in sight for miles, so I risked it. Now this tar road is one like many of us have zoomed along on before. It simply was a road nestled between two ditches with acres and acres of cropland on both sides.

I was mid-sentence in my “solo” singing performance when all of a sudden, I heard a “thump” and saw something fly across the windshield. Of course, I gave a quick thought to stopping to investigate what the “thump” was all about, but brushed it off as the car kept rolling along.

Two hours later I pulled the Buick into the garage and began unloading my contributions to the family potluck. Imagine my surprise when I spied a relatively sizable bundle of feathers dangling from the grill of my car.

While I didn’t go into full-panic mode, I didn’t go anywhere near it. Even though it surely was dead as dead can be, I wanted nothing to do with it.

My first instinct was to ask my neighbor to help me with removing it.

That idea failed. He wasn’t at home.

So, my second idea was to leave it hanging there for the night and ask Travis, the marketing director at the Journal, to do the “heavy lifting.” I even brought him a pair of rubber gloves to do the job. As he maneuvered the pheasant out of my grill, it was in that moment that I realized exactly what had flown across my windshield: The pheasant’s head.

That’s right, my Buick and I had be-headed the bird without firing a single shot.

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Speaking of “shots,” the Ed Polzine Wild Game Feed Fund has just a handful of raffle tickets remaining for our “30 Guns in 30 Minutes” raffle. The event is Thursday, Oct. 9 at the Brandon VFW at 7 p.m. But we’re serving up a pulled pork supper – no pheasants, no feathers, I promise – from 5-7 p.m., for a free will offering.