The Rooster, the River, and My Lack of a Plan

Opening week in South Dakota is one of my favorite times of year. The dogs are fresh, the birds are wild, and every walk carries the possibility of turning into a story.

This one turned into a story.

It was a few days into the 2025 South Dakota pheasant opener. I was hunting a piece of cover that dropped down toward the James River, planning to work north along the bank afterward. I had Tika with me. She was two years old that fall and still learning her trade. I started in with the kind of optimism every pheasant hunter carries before the first bird makes him look foolish, and I hunted down toward the river without seeing a single bird.

That is always how these stories begin.

As I got closer to the river, I found a strip of standing corn along the bank. The main field had been harvested, but this piece near the river had been too wet to get into, so the corn was still standing. Tika worked through it while I stayed on the edge, thinking I would be ready if the birds came out.

Of course, the pheasants had a different plan.

They ran to the end of the corn, flushed wild, and left without offering anything close to a good shot. Pheasants have their own way of reminding you that they are not impressed by your plans.

A little farther on, the corn gave way to tall weeds, and Tika locked up on point. This was more like it.

I moved in, flushed the rooster, and fired. The bird dropped, but it did not look like a clean kill. Tika ran in and pointed it dead.

That sounds impressive, and in a way, it was. But "pointing dead" is not the same thing as retrieving. Tika had found the bird. She just had not quite figured out that the next step was to bring it to me.

So I walked over, looked down, and thought the bird was dead. It was not.

It was playing dead.

The rooster came back to life in my hand, spurred me, and I let go. It hit the ground and took off running. I told Tika, "Get it, get it, get it," and this time she made sure the bird stopped causing trouble. She grabbed it and shook it.

It is not something I want to encourage, but it is the kind of thing a young dog does before she knows better, and it is an easy thing to smooth out later in training. With a live, kicking rooster in her mouth, the last thing she needed from me was to think she had done anything wrong. She had found the bird, caught the bird, and I had my rooster.

One bird in the bag. A little messy, but successful.

Then the story got better. Or worse. Depending on whether you were me.

I kept working north along the river. Tika went on point again. I moved in, flushed the rooster, and fired. The bird was hit but only winged. It sailed out over the James River and dropped into the water about halfway across.

The James River at that spot is no small creek. It was wide, probably sixty yards across, and running high. I have never waded into the middle of it, and opening week was not the time to find out how deep it was.

At first, I thought the bird was gone, that it would swim to the far bank, and I would watch it get away.

But pheasants apparently enjoy making poor decisions too. Instead of swimming away, the rooster turned and swam back toward my side of the river. Now I could see it. The bird was alive, close, and right below us. Unfortunately, "below us" is the important part of the story.

We were standing on a cut bank at a bend in the river. The current had carved the bank almost straight down. In normal water, it would have been a drop of fifteen or twenty feet. With the river running high, it was maybe six feet down to the surface. Six feet is still a long way when your dog is at the top, the rooster is at the bottom, and you suddenly realize you have no plan at all.

Tika looked at the water. I looked at Tika.

I told her she had to get that bird. Her answer was clear: I am not going down there. And honestly, she had a point.

But the bird was right there, wounded, swimming along the bank, in no mood to wait while I worked out a better strategy. This is the part of the story where I would like to claim there was a thoughtful plan behind what happened next.

There was not.

The water was directly below, deep enough for her to swim, but the bank was too steep for any normal entry. I lifted Tika and sent her down into the river.

Was that my finest moment of dog handling? Probably not. Was there a plan? Absolutely not.

But once Tika hit the water, she understood the assignment. She swam straight to the rooster, took it by the neck, and turned back toward the bank.

That is when the real problem became obvious. The dog was in the river. The bird was in her mouth. The bank was still six feet straight up. And I was standing above them, realizing I had gotten the dog to the bird without spending even two seconds thinking about how I was going to get the dog, the bird, or myself out of this situation.

There was one smart thing I did. I set my gun down. That may have been the only smart thing I did for the next few minutes.

I looked over the edge and decided I could reach the bird. I got down flat on the bank, my legs and feet braced on the top of the bank, grabbed whatever weeds and dirt I could hold onto with my right hand, and stretched my left arm out as far as it would go. Tika was below me in the current, holding the rooster, and there was just enough room between the bird's head and her jaw for me to close my hand around its neck.

I got hold of the bird.

And the second I pulled it free of her mouth, I felt my feet start to slide.

That is a very specific kind of fear. There is no time to weigh your options. There is just the sudden, cold understanding that your body is moving in the wrong direction, and gravity has already made up its mind.

I knew right away that if I went into that river, getting back out would not be simple. The bank was steep, the water was deep and moving, and I was wearing full hunting gear: boots, coat, shells, and all. For one long second, I could picture exactly how it would go: me in the current, hunting for a stretch of bank low enough to climb out, Tika watching from the water and wondering why I had decided to join her.

As I felt myself going, I flung the rooster up onto the bank.

That throw nearly finished me. The motion pulled my feet the rest of the way off the edge, and for a second, the only thing keeping me out of the James River was one hand locked onto a fistful of weeds and dirt.

I hung there, all but completely over the bank, thinking, clear as anything: I am going in.

But the weeds held.

I lifted my right leg up and hooked my boot toe on the lip of the cut bank. I got my left hand back up onto solid ground. Then I clawed my way up onto the bank, breathing hard, fully aware of how close that had just come to going a very different way.

I stood there a second, catching my breath. Then I looked down.

Tika was still in the river.

Of course she was.

She looked up at me with the expression dogs give you when they have done exactly what you asked and now expect you to handle the rest.

Dad, I got the bird. Now what?

She could not climb the bank on her own. She was treading water right against the edge, waiting for me to finish the job.

So I did it again, a little smarter this time. I found better handholds, braced myself more carefully, reached down, took hold of her collar, and pulled her up onto the bank.

Tika was safe. I was dry.

The gun was still where I had left it. The rooster was right where I had thrown it.

Except it wasn't.

The rooster was gone. Because, once again, the bird had not been dead. I had been so focused on not falling into the river that I had thrown a live rooster onto the bank, and while I was busy pulling Tika out, it had gotten up and run off. By that point, the whole thing was almost too ridiculous to be frustrating.

Almost.

I told Tika, "Get the bird."

And she did. She tracked, and tracked, and tracked, and eventually ran that rooster down again. This time, I finally had the bird for good.

So by the end of that stretch along the river, Tika had found one rooster that played dead, then found a second rooster in the water, then found that same rooster again after it escaped on dry land.

None of it was graceful. None of it was polished. It was certainly nothing you would put in a training video. But it was hunting.

That day left me with a few reminders.

• Pheasants are tougher than they look.

• A young dog can save a hunt even while she is still learning.

• A rooster that looks dead may not be dead.

• And before you send your dog over a riverbank after a bird, it is worth spending at least one second asking yourself, "How exactly are we all getting back up?"

Tika was not perfect that day. Neither was I.

But she had heart, she had bird drive, and when things got messy, she kept working until the bird was found. That is one of the things I love most about a good Brittany.

They hunt birds.

They try to please you.

And sometimes they help turn a very bad plan into a story you will be telling for years.