Seven-year-old Ryan Peterson voiced the question in each of our heads: “Did it have to go in the water?”

The bird had held tight in a corner of the cattails, but Riley, the 4-year-old pudelpointer, had found it. When the rooster blasted out of the tangle of brush in a blur of wings and sound, Ron Peterson, Ryan’s dad, was the only one in position. He missed with the first shot and connected with the second.

Splash! We heard the bird hit the water on the other side of the dike.

Most chagrined was my dog, Liesl. As a pudelpointer, she is supposed to be all about water retrieves. Liesl didn’t say anything, but she deferred to the older dog, Riley — to let him have the glory.

Neither of the dogs saw the bird hit the water, but after a bit of encouragement, Riley plunged in. Liesl watched. Now we know what we have to work on.

We were at Lake in the Dunes to fish for rainbows and hunt roosters. Russ Scott and Mike Thompson walked with our group. We took turns with three in front, guns loaded while the rest walked behind, guns broken across their arms.

Mike Lockman, from Prineville, and Tom Leland, from Bend, met me at the Wildhorse Harley-Davidson store. Mike was on an Ultra Limited, Tom astride a Street Glide. My ride was a black Street Bob.

It was 109 miles from door-to-door with one stop for gas in La Pine. Dave Jones and Sam Pyke drove down with our gear. Rod Rist brought the dogs and Ron Peterson brought Ryan.

“I want him to have the kinds of experiences I had when I was young,” Ron said, “so excited, not sleeping the night before.”

After three hours, we walked back to the trucks, our game bags heavy with long-tailed roosters. Halfway back Liesl began to trail a bird. It moved from rough patch to rough patch, and then it must have stopped because so did Liesl.

She locked up, one leg off the ground, her tail straight, horizontal, and then the bird was up, towering into the wind. Once again, Ron Peterson was the only one in position. The rooster was over the water, a different lake this time, almost out of reach when his second shot connected. Splash!

Riley plunged in and swam out for the bird. When the dog made the retrieve, it deposited the wet bird at Rod Rist’s feet. Rist presented the bird to young Ryan.

Peterson took the time to show the boy the plumage — the white ring at the neck, the barred tail feathers, the pinions, the webbed back hackles. He showed him how each bird was a little different, but how their feathers betrayed a Chinese heritage — Phasianus colchicus torquatus — one of seven of the common pheasants.

Peterson grew up in pheasant country, in South Dakota, hunting on his grandma and grandpa’s property. Now with his children he’s trying to keep the tradition going.

I looked over at Dave Jones. In a way that’s what he was doing too — carrying on a tradition. He cradled his grandfather’s shotgun in his arms, his grandfather’s memory.

Back at Summer Lake Lodge, we met 13-year-old Cassidy from La Pine. She and her dad had been hunting out in the marsh and although they’d had no luck with the ducks, she managed to bag two quail and her first jack rabbit. She held her prize aloft for us to admire. Perhaps they’d save the hare and quail for Thanksgiving.

Hunters brought Chinese ringneck pheasants to Oregon. They were stocked in the Willamette Valley first, and in that fertile ground they thrived and spread throughout the state. From here they were planted throughout the West and then in the rest of the country. If it wasn’t for hunters we wouldn’t have pheasants.

My own grandfathers hunted them, putting both rabbits and rooster pheasants on the family table during the Depression.

Neither of my grandfathers hunted when they were older, but they helped to pass a love of it to me. I still remember each of them recounting their first birds taken with single-shot rimfire rifles — one in Idaho, one in Minnesota. Whether they knew it or not, they were passing on a tradition.

That’s why, during the holidays, I try to put pheasant on the table. It helps me remember.

— Gary Lewis is the host of Frontier Unlimited TV and author of John Nosler — Going Ballistic, Fishing Mount Hood Country, Hunting Oregon and other titles. Contact Gary at www.GaryLewisOutdoors.com.