Walking Your Way Into Birds......

is the only practice I vouch for and is really the only part of the hunt we control.   The adage isn't complex, but to what degree we take it, varies from hunter to hunter. It simply means the more you walk, the more birds you find.  As Yogi might have said, the mantra is 90% accurate, half the time.

But, the theorem was tested and failed a few times this fall, regardless how many times the boots hit the ground.

When asked by first-timers and bucket-listers hunting sage grouse, my reply has been consistent: find good sage in the eastern 1/2 of Montana and Wyoming, walk in a straight line until the dogs find a flock.  You will eventually encounter a group of bombers.

Well, that routine let me down one day this fall near Winnett, MT, an area that is the epicenter for endless sage range.  I left the truck one cool September morning,with less water than normal, assuming that the young setter Letti and I would find a reservoir holding some adequate liquid and/or we would quickly shoot our token sage hen for the fall.   I was wrong on both accounts. By 2PM, we had walked 6 hours straight, ran the well dry and only saw some grouse droppings.  The sage itself was healthy, very little sign of cattle traffic, but the birds were simply not in our swath. Could they have been 50 yards to either side of us? Yes. This day, eight miles was not enough and I had to get back to town for some less important task.

Kansas was also a bit of a puzzler this year.  Ryan and I were after bobwhite, something that is a novelty for us Montana types.  We hadn't been down to the sunflower state for a couple of years, but based on the bounty we had discovered two years prior, we were optimistic. Just walk the known coverts until we find a covey or two.  And we did. (The walking part, not the finding)  We literally walked from breakfast until darkness each day.  Our frustration (more for the dogs than us) did a nice job of masking the fatigue and sore feet.  Two coveys and two birds the first two days. One of us, never fired a shot the entire trip.  The other gent, fired four shots to kill the two bobs and one rooster.  The third day, we changed our focus to prairie chickens, but it was also a dud.  Walking definitely didn't reward us in southwest Kansas.

Kansas bird numbers were in the tank for us this fall. 

But, there were days where a long walk led me to the promised land.  I left the truck a couple of days in Wyoming this fall hunting new territory, not knowing if I was 100 yards or 100 miles from wild chukars.  When Letti eventually locked up, I knew I had found undiscovered chukar country and a covey that would not need to be shared with anyone, maybe ever.  The danger that day was when one covey lead me to another and I didn't know when to quit.  The harsh reality was I had a two-hour return hike ahead of me with about one hour of daylight.  But, at least I had walked myself into a few birds.

Chukar coveys in Wyoming can be miles apart.