Pass that old Winchester down

My 13-year-old grandson Isaac shot his first pheasant last week. He was using the shotgun I’d given him last year. A Model 1200 Winchester pump, it had been a Christmas present to me from my father more than 50 years ago.

I never saw the bird that Ace flushed from a thicket of willow saplings as it rose cackling into a stiff wind blowing off Fort Peck Lake.

I yelled “Rooster!” but Isaac and his father, Aaron, didn’t need the warning. The bird dropped at Isaac’s shot and their English cocker Chloe made the retrieve.

It was a magnificent first bird, gaudy in its coloring with long tailfeathers....