From the Editor

It had been a good afternoon. SSM Sales Rep Jeremy Hatch had snuck out for a few hours alone in the grouse woods. No appointments, no meetings, no pressure—just a relaxing fall day in Maine’s western mountains.
    Jeremy’s shorthairs had worked well, finding a dozen-plus grouse and as many woodcock. In the day’s last covert Jeremy had bagged a grouse and taken a third woodcock for his limit. He and his younger dog, Molly, had then returned to the truck, where Jeremy had let out and watered his other dog, Sage, and tended to a cut on Molly’s foot. He then had loaded up the dogs and gear, turned the truck around, and driven the 1-1/2 miles out to the paved road.
    He’d arrived home a little more than an hour later, having stopped at a friend’s home for a visit, and begun unloading his truck. Everything was going fine until he reached for his gun case and noticed that it was particularly light. No gun! His mind raced as he tried to recall the last time he’d had his side-by-side; then a sick feeling came over him as he remembered having leaned it against the truck after that final hunt.
    He put the dogs in the house, jumped in his pickup and sped back to the covert. A trip that typically takes him 35 minutes took him 20. By the time he arrived it was dark, so with his headlights aimed at the short grass where he’d parked before, he hurried over to the spot where the gun had to be. Nothing. Only fresh tire tracks where another vehicle had pulled in after he’d left.
    Immediately he was on his cell phone to the sheriff. Then he was transferred to the state police. Knowing an officer would have a tough time finding—let alone getting to—the spot, he agreed to meet someone in the nearest town. There it was arranged that the following day a K9 unit would return to the scene to do an “article search.”
    After finishing with the trooper, Jeremy visited several stores frequented by local hunters. At each he left a short description of the gun and a phone number where he could be reached. By then it was getting late and he headed home.
     That night was one of the longest in Jeremy’s life. Although his wife reminded him that “It’s only a possession,” he couldn’t get the gun out of his thoughts. He’d bought the Arrieta 16-gauge less than a year earlier, and it had been his first “nice” side-by-side. He’d worked hard for it and saved, and it represented what he could accomplish if he really put his mind to it.
     Awake at 2 and unable to get back to sleep, he was at the parking spot at daybreak taking GPS coordinates for the police. He phoned those in, then waited several hours before calling area gun dealers to ask them to watch for anyone trying to sell a 16-gauge side-by-side. At that point he felt he had done everything he could, so there was no choice but to sit and wait.
     At about 3:30 that afternoon the phone rang. When Jeremy answered it, a man’s voice asked, “You missing something?” Jeremy said that he was. The fellow then asked him to describe the item, and Jeremy rattled off every detail about the gun he could think of.
    “Well, it happens to be sitting in my hands right now.”
    A meeting was hastily arranged, and on his way to town Jeremy stopped at a bank and took out a couple of hundred dollars as a reward. He continued to the agreed-upon parking lot, where he found the fellow waiting in a beat-up old Cherokee. The man, who looked to be in his late 30s, handed Jeremy the gun. The fellow was obviously pleased when Jeremy held out the money.
    Turns out they must have just missed each other the previous evening, as the fellow had found the gun around dusk, probably as Jeremy was speeding back to recover it. It wasn’t until the following morning that he’d stopped at the general store to see if it had been reported lost. “I knew it was a nice gun,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I knew someone would be missing it.”
    Before they shook hands and parted, Jeremy had one more question. “Do you like bird hunting?”
    “I sure do,” the fellow answered, “but I haven’t seen a single thing all season.”
    “Well, maybe one of these days we can get you out behind my dogs. I think we’d both enjoy that.”