The Pass It On - Outdoor Mentors program, in partnership with Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks hosted our Celebrities & Heroes pheasant hunt this last weekend at Glen Elder. We had several retired football and baseball players join us. We also had some guys from Ft Riley (our Heroes) from their Warrior Transition Unit (guys recovering from battle wounds…the 3 guys who came were all recovering from IED injuries in Iraq) and 3 Army National Guard members just recently back from Iraq.
We didn’t use blockers (too many young, inexperienced hunters), so we would push the birds towards the lake. As luck would have it, some of the birds fell in the lake. Not a problem for the groups with labs. The labs did what they were made to do. However, one group didn’t have a lab…only brittanies.
One of the birds fell about 15 yards out in the lake…too deep to wade in after. But one of the Heroes said, “Not a problem…I’ve gone after ducks in Wisconsin like this”…and in he went. It was about 32 degrees that morning. The water was well over his head, but he swam out and got the pheasant, and swam back to shore with the bird in his mouth. I guess that’s what Heroes do…the exceptional!