Swiss Army Dogs

 The past decade or so, I have left the pheasant belt of eastern Montana immediately after the opening weekend each year. The hunt is mostly a tradition amongst friends with good dog work on young birds, often ending our hunts by mid-morning each day. After the two or three days of hunting wild roosters in CRP and brushy draws, I repack my gear and head to Minnesota for ruffed grouse and woodcock. The mid-October window is a good balance that is late enough in the season to offer some leaves on the ground, but not far enough into fall to miss all of the resident woodcock.

Maggie and Katy. All they knew were grouse and woodcock and it showed.

Growing up in the north woods, our dogs were specialists. It wasn’t an attempt at elitism, but strictly a pragmatic decision.  We never considered traveling, leaving birds to find birds. Blaze, Maggie, Katy, and Lucy hunted ruffs and timberdoodles exclusively, with maybe one or two outings for sharptail that were just outside of the big woods.  When you combine that narrow focus with great hunting in your backyard, a young setter learned the game very quickly.  Woodcock were a great training tool, the wary grouse a slightly more advanced course. I took our good hunting and stellar dog work for granted.

Now, with just a handful of days in the MN woods each year, I won’t pretend that my current pair of bird dogs have that duo mastered.  Sure, they do well-enough, but I can notice they handle ruffs better on day three or four, then on day one. I am not sure they even remember the smell of woodcock until they bump one and grouse, well, they might get a bit too close for comfort when the tailgate first drops. Switching from running roosters to wobbly woodcock in 24 hours, is a significant change. 

Huns. Great dog work + sporty shooting. 

A feathered stew of chukars, blue grouse, sharptail and Huns, an occasional sage grouse and a few valley quail each year, only adds to the diversity that my dogs see. September sharptail usually play fair, but the weather can be hot and dry.  Are mountain blue grouse an adequate fill-in for ruffs?  Do Hun coveys act and smell like a bunch of chukars?   Does the variety of birds make them mediocre at each species or are bird contacts all part of the bigger picture?  I am not sure what the answer is, but I know in my six-month sojourn chasing birds each year, it is sure fun to see a variety of country, with a lot of unique birds alongside my “good-enough” dogs. 

Chukar country.  Birds that run like pheasants, flush like Huns. 

The Season That Wouldn't End

Growing up in the icebox of northern Minnesota, I didn’t fathom hunting upland birds after Thanksgiving, let alone January 1^st or into February. We got our licks in though, hunting steadily from September 1^st (woodcock only) until deer season in early November shut down the setters and hunters.  There were a few years where the snow didn’t accumulate to levels that impeded our search for December ruffs, but usually Thanksgiving was the tail end of our season.

 

When I finally ended up in Montana, the climate allowed for ample pheasant hunting until January 1^st, many years without any snow on the ground. The birds were as crafty as heck in the late season, but it didn’t matter. Hunting pressure was nil and the dogs were in prime shape.  The four-month season offered a lot of variety from blue grouse at 8,000’ in September to Huns and sharptail in October. Pheasants were the primary quarry the final half of the year, which often varied from the easy birds of the opener to tougher days of busting cattails and deep snow. Four months of bird hunting seemed adequate.

 

When chukars, and to a lesser extent quail, entered the picture, instantly an additional month of hunting and road trips were attained.  Idaho chukar and valley quail and Wyoming chukars and Huns, had become my addictions. While I have traveled to Kansas and Arizona as well, they weren’t getaways that could be done on a long weekend.  I could be in Wyoming chukar country in four hours, so why wouldn’t I sneak to the Cowboy State as often as I could?

 

And, sneak I did this season (often alone and wearing a mask). For all of us in the North who value a good ice-auger more than golf clubs, winter weather can shut down the hunting season or make the travel back and forth miserable. We tell our spouses, “one more hunting trip is needed before the snow flies”, a line I used repeatedly this fall. Four trips in a five-week span were made to Wyoming, with varying results each sojourn south.  My goal was to find birds in a new location each trip, so I did cross off some areas about as often as I successfully scribbled Chuk on my maps. 

 

I also made two trips to Idaho, both of which were enjoyable as I took two different hunting partners to see the majestic Hells Canyon. Hunting in that scenic terrain, with all public-land, is hard to top.  No fences, no permission needed, the only requirements consisted of being in good physical shape and remembering which ridge the truck was parked.

 

When January 31^st came and went, I had partially cleaned up my bird hunting Ready Piles in my den - collections of things I used so often that I really never unpacked from each getaway. Dog collars, my 28 gauge shell bag, dog food and boots I rotated based on the upcoming terrain, were always at the ready.  But, when I realized Nevada’s chukar season remained opened until February 7^th, I quickly restocked. While a winter storm was going to impact the home front in central Montana, northern Nevada was downright balmy, with temps in the 50s.  I would worry about returning home later.

 

It was my first trip to Nevada, outside of many work trips to Las Vegas, which really do not count.  Like many expeditions to a new area, one wastes a lot of time scouting and finding the birdy ground.  Letti did her part and found plenty of Huns the first day and finally struck gold with chukars on the second.  It was an enjoyable, albeit short trip, but I hunted into February for the first time in my life, so what’s not to like?  The season ended abruptly, as I drove the final 300 miles on ice, all the way to my doorstep.  But, I had to make the final trip, before the snow came.