On Lindy (Part 2): Patience and Persistence for Her & Me

I am super flattered by everyone reading my blog.  Thank you all so much!  I joke about how I have always wanted to write a book but the fact of the matter is that for two years in High School, instead of attending my neighborhood Pittsburgh Public School I actually went to one of the magnet schools for Creative and Preforming Arts.  My "specialty" was Literary Arts so it has always been pretty easy for me to express myself using the written word.

Texting with me can be a total nightmare.  When I was a municipal manager, however, I did exceptionally well at writing compelling grant proposals.  That actually got funded.  Ha!

I digress.
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So I adopted Lindy on July 9, 2016.  I started her at the farm pretty quickly after that.  Sorry for any confusion surrounding the dates.  The actual e-collar training/hunting training lasted until late August 2016.  It was a series of go to the farm, train, work on what I/we learned on my own, go back refine the technique or progress in training.

Simultaneously as Lindy's e-collar training turned hunting training was wrapping up at Pheasant Valley Farm, the start of pheasant season was beginning.  I was still pretty convinced that I wasn't ready to take on carrying a gun and shooting a bird--it just felt so out of my wheelhouse. 

I had done a pretty good job documenting her progress via Facebook--and she was stealing hearts of my family & friends.  I remember one morning writing a long email to the gentleman that had done my home visit.

You see, during my lapse of patience in adopting, I had emailed this man a few times to see if he could help push along my application.  I was a little embarrassed to reach out given that circumstance, but I wrote a very-typical-to-Whitney 5,000 word email updating him on Lindy and "letting him know" about this "great place" local to us called Pheasant Valley Farm.  I quickly got a response--"I know it, I guide there".  I still hadn't realized how special Jon and Becky would become to me out here.  We became Facebook friends and connected on so many other great levels.  Serendipity!

Okay, so here we are.  Pheasant season.  I needed my "pheasant shooting licence".  Hunting license.  I took an online test.  Easy peasy.  Only, I paid $100 and it was not the correct test.  So, I showed up at a women's hunting event totally unaware that I didn't have the correct education and my license wasn't valid.  Took the correct education course.  Now I was a licensed hunter.

I had no gun.  I didn't know what ammo I needed.  At this point however, I knew that I needed shotgun shells and not bullets thanks to the proper hunters education course.  I bought a bird vest & pants from Cabelas.  I elected to use my work boots to save money.  I got an orange hoody from Ollie's.

I still had no gun.

I was petrified to go into a gun store alone to buy a gun.  Maybe I could call my dad to help me buy a gun?  It's a 4 hour drive.  That's absurd.  The next day was my last training day at the farm.  I waited until the last minute to buy the gun I was that scared to go buy it alone.

I'm not sure why, but I was so scared to buy a gun alone.  I kept pushing it off and pushing it off... I had gone into a few stores alone to look at guns, but the salesmen there would try to sway me to guns that cost over $2,000.  I don't think a beginner, that literally knows nothing, needs to invest $2,000 into a gun.  It's not that I don't see value in a "better gun" or a "nice gun", but I honestly just needed something to learn on.  I think that, coupled with my fear, just made me very resistant to buying a gun.

I kept calling around to a few places.  "Too close to pheasant season, we have no guns".  I finally located one and drove out to get it.  Seemed fine (how the heck did I know?).  I only knew two things: I wanted a semi automatic and I needed a 20g.  So I got a Winchester 1400.  I asked the guy to give me the right shells.  I took a picture of the top of the box so I knew what I needed to buy next time.

And for my entire first year of hunting season, anytime I needed to buy shells, I looked at the picture on my phone.  And boy did I need shells.

Our first year out we found 25 birds!  Yes, I kept track.  I also missed 25 birds!  I shot just under three boxes of shells.  Folks that can read this & automatically know what went wrong are laughing.

For anyone that doesn't know: In a semi-automatic (or pump action?) shotgun, the chamber holds three shells.  You only get three shots.  So that means I pretty much took three shots at each bird.  And still missed. 

Like, I was beyond awful at this.  I grew to resent that gun--it was heavy.  The action was so tight.  I loaded the shotshell in backwards one time and it was IMPOSSIBLE to try to get out.  I missed all of the birds--it had to be the gun.

Also:  trust me when I tell you that the first time you accidentally load the shell incorrectly & it jams, it is also the last time.  I check every time now. 

Despite my growing frustration on the very heavy learning curve I was experiencing, the total enjoyment of spending time with my dog outside and helping her grow in such a way that was natural to her far, far outweighed the superficial frustrations of missing everything.

We wrapped up the season identifying some items we still needed to work on.  She needed significant work on "whoa" and I needed it with accuracy.

Between her bumping a lot birds and my terrible shot, it was clear that the first season was just preparation for a longer term hunting plan.  

I still don't consider myself a "hunter".  I mean, if I were an actual hunter, than missing 25 birds would probably have totally deflated the fun of the task.  In my mind getting ONE BIRD at some point in time was a logical goal--I knew Lindy could retrieve to me, and all I wanted was to bring the entire process full circle--she finds & points, I shoot (and actually hit it), she retrieves.  Otherwise, we were just chasing birds all day.  So we wrapped up the season & I took the valuable pieces with me and left any frustration behind.

I tend to think similarly with all items of frustration in life--it's easier to leave that behind and move on.  I identified my items of frustration and developed a plan to work through those.  

I took my heavy ass gun and practiced every Sunday at a trap shooting place near me.  Pretty much every time I was there, I shot through 50 shells.  The first two times were awful--I was missing everything and when I would actually break one, I couldn't figure out why.  Until eventually everything clicked.  And eventually the 50 shells grew to 100.  And I was going from shooting 2-3 of 25 to 19 of 25 .... and then 30 of 50 to 45 of 50 ... and then to 85 of 100.  I knew which angle I was good at and which one I wasn't. I worked at the ones I wasn't.

I think I went through 6 cases the summer of 2017.  The majority I shot with my heavy ass gun.

Perhaps it wasn't the gun afterall.  Go figure.

So I worked through my shooting accuracy.  I felt confident that this year I could shoot A BIRD at SOME POINT in the season.  It was going to happen this year!  Lindy and I had worked on whoa--she's still a young, prey driven bird dog so this may be a work in progress for the next two or so years, but she's getting there.   

I was thinking about all of the time spent working on my accuracy, working on whoa, and in attempting to remove the last point of frustration from last year, I started to consider upgrading my gun.

But that meant I had to go back to a gun store.

Which also meant I was back to dragging my feet on buying a gun.

So now, that same gun store than wanted me to buy the $2,000 beginner gun--they now wanted me to buy the $4,000 "upgrade".  Why are white men so aggressive/think women will just buy something out of ignorance?  This particular store was local to me--I had bought six cases of shells from them!  I wanted to support the business by buying the gun but I had enough of their sales tactics.  Sales 101: people will know if you are attempting to oversell them & they will grow to resent that once they realize what is happening.  

Ugh.  I still hate the thought of buying another gun.  Like, this is worse than car shopping.  The next time I buy a gun, I am buying it online.  I don't even know if I can buy it online but I am going to try.  

The silver lining is that the store I finally chose to buy my gun at was awesome.  The guys talked to me about my incredibly novice status in bird hunting, some of what went wrong for my the first year--how I attempted to overcome it and what I was looking to gain from the upgrade.  I EVEN LEARNED I COULD "TRADE-IN" MY OLD GUN.  Why didn't this first store tell me any of this? So the gun I had been considering, they agreed, would be a good fit for me.

I think they could tell how scared I was of everything--I even asked them if they could assemble it for me--but luckily it came assembled.  

So here I was again, 2-3 days out from pheasant season, messing around with guns.  I'm sure there's some subconscious mumbo-jumbo about avoidance in there, but really?  What woman wants to deal with this by herself let alone being manipulated during the process?  Or person for that matter?

So I am going to wrap up this entry for  now.  Cliffhanger.  

The next blog post I will write about will be On Lindy (Part 3/Final): Patience & Persistence for cleaning up feathers from all over your kitchen.  I ended up shooting my first bird.  And lots of other really fun details from 2017-now.  

Thank you for reading this!