A Feather in Your Cap
Bob McNally 10.02.16
Jody Brandenburg is an avid duck hunter and had put several tail feathers of a particularly attractive pintail drake into air holes on the side of his camouflage hunting cap. He was wearing the hat during a bow deer hunt one afternoon dressed in complete camouflage and sitting quietly in a tall oak tree stand.
Brandenburg had just turned his head slightly to check a woods trail behind his stand when he heard a “whoosh” and his cap was knocked solidly off his head, falling far to the ground below his stand.
Startled, he looked up, and saw a large hawk darting away from him through the timber.
Unknown to Brandenburg, the hawk had been sitting high above him in the trees, and when he turned his head the hawk saw the pintail feathers. Believing the feathers were attached to food, the hawk dove, slamming into Brandenburg’s cap, knocking it off.
“To think that hawk’s talons could have sunk into the back of my head gives me the willies,” he says remembering the moment. “I’ll never put another feather in my cap, not ever.”
