![]() ![]() It was then that I saw the flashing blue lights coming at me. I scared up a mallard that my dog retrieved perfectly. ![]() I pulled off and headed down the dirt road…right past a ‘No Hunting!’ sign. ![]() “On my way home, I saw something off the highway that looked like reeds in the distance, and I could see some water. Unfortunately for Costner, the day was far from over. It was a mess, and I was miserable and so was my dog. “It was public land,” he said, “but it just didn’t look right and there was no beauty to it. Instead, Costner lamented that Fish & Game had released 300 ‘confused’ birds in the dessert and let the first 200 hunters pursue them. But it didn’t look like the kind of ground Curt Gowdy would hunt with his friends. There were no pheasants in Orange County, so I drove out by myself to the Salton Sea on the other side of Palm Springs. “It was the first day of pheasant season in California and I was in yet another school in Orange County. What mattered was that I was out hunting.”įrom there, Costner’s hunting horizons began to grow, which led to another turning point in his young life. I think we hunted every ditch in that county, scaring up maybe one pheasant if we were lucky before school. Suddenly the world wasn’t flat anymore-it was just me and that dog. “The next day I went out and bought a bird dog…a little German shorthair pointer. It wasn’t something that he witnessed on TV, but rather it was something that he watched play out before his own eyes-and it changed him forever. It was picture perfect and the scene was frozen in time forever.” He was hunting and I could see him carrying his shotgun across his chest. As I was driving one day, I saw a man out in the fields near Visalia with a dog. My older brother was in Viet Nam, and I was tired of trying to fit in…I was lost, but then something changed. I was having a hard time with everything. “My junior year of high school I found myself living in the Central Valley of California. Then a chance encounter set him on a new path. His father’s job, however, came with a lot of moves at a young age, so it was difficult to continually leave old friends and make new ones. The author and Costner amongst a sea of dignitaries and honored guests. ![]()
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