Our Inverse Hour Glass by Ryan Sparks - QF Journal Editor
In the center of our kitchen table there is small glass jar. It once held caviar – an indulgence from a holiday gathering – but now it holds something else: the spent shot my wife and I find in game birds at the dinner table.
Despite my best efforts, a piece or two of shot inevitably slip through my initial inspection when I pluck or quarter my birds. So each time we sit down to a meal of quail, pheasant, or grouse, there’s always a chance of hearing that telltale clink of metal against the dinner plate, or worse, the searing pain of biting squarely down on a piece of “hunter’s pepper.”
At first, it was a novelty. But as the jar has slowly filled, I’ve started to see it differently. It’s become, in a way, an inverse hourglass. Instead of sand slipping away grain by grain, reminding us of time running out, the jar fills steadily
with the tiny markers of time spent doing what we love.
Each pellet is a story: a covey rise in November, a rooster cackling into
the sky, a woodcock knuckleballing through the timber, the prairiefireworks of a covey of sharptails.
The jar grows heavier as the years go by. It is a quiet ledger of our seasons – point by point, covey by covey, shot by shot. Unlike an hourglass,
its accumulation doesn’t signal loss but a growing collection of memories. A record of sorts. Time well lived.
Of course, finding a pellet isn’t usually an occasion for celebration. No one cheers when they crunch down on some field spice and have to spit a piece of
mangled shot into a napkin. Yet, strangely enough, the jar turns those annoyances into something worth saving. It’s a bit of upland alchemy – transforming what could be a cracked tooth or a spoiled bite into a small reason to smile.
Hunting’s bounty is measured in the accumulation of these small, imperfect, unforgettable moments.
When I look at the jar, I see the shot inside, but I also see the seasons behind it, and the promise of more to come.
One day, the jar may be full. Until then, it sits on our table – an odd little trophy of a life lived in pursuit of wild birds, filling grain by grain, like the sands of time running backward.
*This story originally appeared in the Winter 2026 Issue of Quail Forever Journal*
