
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 13, 1995                   TAG: 9503150025
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FROM BASEBALL TO BIRDS

Ed Ott has been following bird dogs across the rolling hills of Bedford County, where the sage grass has taken on a late-winter amber hue. He calls it therapy, but you get the feeling Ott would be doing it even if he wasn't exercising to overcome an operation on his knees.

There is a picture in the Buffalo Creek Sporting Club lodge, at Lynch Station, that shows Ott in a Pittsburgh Pirates uniform. He is making a twisting slide, his body just beyond the reach of Rick Dempsey, his toe snagging home plate to score a winning run in the 1979 World Series.

"You know, I always loved football, but it interfered with hunting season," he said. "So I chose baseball."

Hunting now is a second profession for Ott, who started his professional baseball career as a Salem Buccaneer in 1972, played with the 1979 world champion Pittsburgh Pirates and managed in the Carolina League. He currently is the wing and shot manager at Buffalo Creek, not far from Leesville Dam and a long way from the sound of "Take me out to the ball game."

Of course, there is little real baseball anymore; besides, like many aging catches, Ott has bum knees. So it has been an easy transition from a boy of summer to a man of the fall and winter bird season.

It is Ott's job to add hunting to the Buffalo Creek program, which has built a reputation as one of Virginia's best sporting clays facility. Ed's brother, Bob, has managed the sporting clays end of the business since 1992. When bird hunting was added a season ago, Ed was the obvious choice to get it started.

"I said I'd love to," so he arrived from the Houston Astros, where he had been coach. He came limping, fresh from his knee operations.

"After 25 years in the game, it was like, 'Yeah, I want to do something different.' I've always said, if I ever could make a living hunting, I would do it."

But on a recent March day, when the sun was bright and the temperature was climbing, Ott admitted there was a stirring in his soul. The rememberance of the crack of a bat was beginning to have the same kind of pull on him that the crack of a shotgun had back in the early autumn.

"I would kind of like to get back into baseball," he said. "Bird season is only October to March, so I can work the two together."

Bird hunting preserves are becoming big business in Virginia.

"For many years, the number of shooting preserves has languished around 50 or 60," said Bob Duncan, chief of the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries game division. "The last time I checked, it was like 90 and growing. It is a great place to train a dog."

With the scarcity of native quail and grouse, preserves have become the only reliable place in many sections of the state for dogs to savor the whiff of a game bird hunkering in cover.

"None of us liked a hunting preserve when we were kids growing up," said Ott. "But back then you could go out in the wilds and get all the pheasants that you wanted."

The preserve industry in Virginia is being nurtured by the General Assembly. In 1993, legislators added Sunday hunting to the season. Last year they expanded hunting at both ends, setting a season that begins Sept. 1 and ends April 30.

That's really longer than necessary, Ott believes. September is still too warm, and in April the birds don't fly well because they are molting, he said.

Many hunting preserves now have sporting clay ranges, and the combination of hunting birds and shooting targets has made the industry more attractive, said Duncan.

In March, Buffalo Creek is offering what it calls "Dream Day." For $150, a visitor gets a half-day guided bird hunt, 50 targets on the sporting clays range and a choice of 25 targets on either the five stand or skeet range.

It is the kind of deal that can help a guy forget about baseball.

by CNB