West vs East

I was invited on a turkey hunt / business trip last week by a colleague.  I had not ever hunted Easterns, only our "dumb Merriams", as the joke went,  and the Osceolas of Florida, so I gladly accepted. It was a good trip, although I did not bag a big Kansas bird. We heard a few, saw a couple, but had more bad luck than good.  The first bird was run off by coyotes at dawn, the second gobbler was shot by another hunter on public land just across the fence and the final Tom, just didn't need our fake hens more than his real ones.  That is turkey hunting.

Hunting on the Kansas/Missouri border was new and interesting.  I left with a reminder on how things differ out West.  In Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, we measure everything in miles. Sections.  Hours of walking.  The farther you trek east, the smaller things get.  Hunting properties are 80 acres.  Maybe 160.  640 acres is huge. Often a complete farm to some.  Fences and roads seem to stretch every direction.   All of the private lands open to hunting were littered with deer feeders, growth supplements and game cameras.  Deer are king, turkeys and waterfowl are a close second.  Every conversation with other hunters resulted in a discussion about racks and the eventual cell-phone displays of big bucks that are on the short list for next fall.

Nothing against how others hunt.  Or where they hunt.  I am just grateful for all of the open space and variety we have in the West.  There are many places in Montana where I could walk in a straight line, all day, hunting on public land.  Our seasons are over four months long and involve numerous species of big game, along with another seven species of upland game birds.

I also tried the grits (nothing to brag about), sweet tea flowed everywhere (not too bad) and the humidity was miserable for April.  It was a good trip overall, but I was glad to be back in Montana, where I can chase our "dumb" turkeys again.

Playing It Safe With Another Native

Maybe I am just getting older, maybe slightly less of a "killer" or maybe I have seen things occur in the past that I envision happening again with other species.  Woodcock numbers have definitely declined since the mid-eighties, when they were so thick in northern Minnesota that if we didn't shoot a limit of five daily, it just meant that we had to be in church until noon that Sunday.  Now, the limit is three, the season is shorter, and we only shoot Timberdoodles to reward great dog work.
Sage grouse, well, their plight is very much center-stage right now.  While there are still very healthy populations across parts of Idaho, Wyoming and Montana, that season could be shut down permanently   at any time.

It didn't really hit home until last season, when some nonresidents at a local hotel had their dogs staked out while the pooches were being fed and their owners were swapping stories.   I was jogging with my own dogs so I walked over to converse.  Long story short, they all had found a fair amount of success in central Montana, hunting sharptails. All four gentlemen were headed home the next day with their four day possession limits of grouse.  In other words, four birds daily, for a total of 16. Completely legal.  64 sharptails taken out of a state as large as Montana, is not "biologically significant", as most upland bird experts or biologists would attest.  I concur.

However, is this one of those situations where we are proactive and play it safe, for the sake of the native bird and future generations?

I only have my first-hand, anecdotal evidence to base it on, but it does seem that Montana is increasing in popularity as a destination for prairie bird access. Similar to prairie chickens in South Dakota, wingshooters from all over the country make a trek to experience wide-open country that they don't have back home.  One difference is that the prairie chicken bag limits are smaller, at three birds allowed daily.

While CRP has been a huge boon to pheasants, it has also boosted sharptail numbers in many areas of Montana.  There was near-panic when pheasant numbers have begun to nosedive in South Dakota, following the loss of CRP acres the past few years.  The governor has called pheasant "summits" and Pheasants Forever has even opened their first regional office in the state.  If only sharptail would receive 1% of the attention of pheasants.  (do not take this as being anti-ringneck. I enjoy hunting pheasants as much as anyone)

My proposal? For now, treat them as conservatively as pheasants.  Three birds daily, three day possession.  In most views, that is still adequate, even for those folks that have to cough up plenty of cash for an out-of-state license.  And, if you consider that with pheasants, we are only shooting the males, bag limits that are equal might still not make perfect sense.  So far, I haven't had many takers on my suggestion, but contact me via email if you have any thoughts, for or against.

Things I Wish For

I wish states like Montana would quit stocking pheasants.  Invest those dollars into habitat.  There has never been a study that shows that released, farm-raised birds are successful. Habitat.

I wish all bird hunters would pick up their empty hulls.  I like to blame this on auto-loaders, ejecting shells out of reach or out of sight.  However,  I have also seen hunters break open their double, make a conscience effort to grab their empties and then toss them on the ground. Then again, people roll down their truck windows to throw out bottles, so I guess it is simply part of their makeup.  The shells might degrade over time, but not in our lifetime.

I wish CRP guaranteed some type of public access when it commenced in 1985. Yes, I know it is private land, but taxpayers are funding the program.  And when that CRP is used for a commercial hunting operation, well, that seems like we are being duped.  e.g., South Dakota Hunting Lodge.

I wish my favorite hunting boots would be a model that is made for more than one season.

I wish road hunters would park it. Get off the machine, get out of the truck and see some country. Stop making all of us hunters look lazy. Where I hunt in northern MN, the newest generation of road hunters looks at me funny because I am not riding a four-wheeler. That is all they know.

Dad up high hunting blues. Definitely not a road hunter.

I wish outdoor writers would be more creative.  Quit using terms such as ditch parrots.  Late season pheasants are sporty as heck. Don't hunt them opening weekend, if you find them below you. And don't wax poetic about bourbon, Scotch and Hoppe's gun oil. It has been done already. Since 1940.  And enough of the word epic, please. Sandwiches and 28 gauge reloads are not epic.

I wish that sweet spot in autumn between heat stroke and icy roads would last for months. Not days.

I wish dog trainers would not start putting their pupils on young-of-the-year birds until mid-August.  It seems like they are showing up in rural Montana earlier and earlier each year.  If you recall seeing how young some pheasants look on the opener in October, just think how vulnerable they are in late July.

I wish dogs lived longer.  Horses live up to 30 years old. Some bears have lived for four decades.  I would settle for 20. Although 25 would be better. Hand signals? Heck, by age 20, they would know sign language.

Tess and Abby. 18 years combined. Good and bad. 

I wish it was September 1st tomorrow.

Year In Review

42 Days in the field
Three States (MT, MN, ID)
8 Species (Sharptail, Huns, Blue/Dusky, Sage, pheasant, ruffed, woodcock, chukar)
8 various hunting partners
228 empties in the box (169 28ga, 59 20 ga.)



Since I am most likely finished hunting birds for the year and didn't feel like driving 200 miles on icy roads to drill a hole through the ice to fish, I spent time reviewing the past 4 1/2 months of my hunting journals.  There really wasn't anything that stood out as a surprise, but overall, I am very grateful for what transpired.

One sudden shift in my routine was the lack of pheasant hunting I did.  In fact, I only shot one rooster in Fergus County, where I reside.  I shot some birds in northeastern and eastern Montana in October, but I also made fewer trips that direction this year.  Day trips locally involved blue grouse and Huns, but a trip to MN for ruffed grouse and woodcock and a few trips west for chukars, also ate up some weekends.  Big game hunting can complicate things too, but I only hunted elk two weekends and hunted deer a couple of days around home.  I do enjoy elk hunting, especially having the meat in the freezer, but I also hate leaving the dogs at home.  Of all the bird hunting I do, pheasant hunting access is the most difficult, even in the middle of Montana, so it makes sense that my days chasing roosters diminished.

As an earlier blog post stated, I did hunt sage grouse one day and harvested one bird, mostly for posterity. It was a very keen reminder on how important big parcels of sage brush and the legacy of sage grouse hunting really is. I simply left the truck with the dogs and took off walking one direction in a large flat of sage brush, owned by you and me, administered by the Bureau of Land Management.  The hunt was plenty sporty, as the big bombers gave me a good challenge and kept flushing wildly. One bird was plenty, but I would hate to see that opportunity disappear.

I fell in love again with the chukar and everything it offers.  Again, all public land hunting, with nothing holding me back except daylight and how many miles I could physically endure in a day.  Challenging shooting, beautiful scenery and not a lot of competition.

I had never tracked the shots I had taken in a season, but since I had all of the empties in the garage from each of my outings, it was easy to tabulate the results.  By design, I used my 28 gauge three times as much as my 20, taking the latter out for pheasants mostly and toward the end of my chukar adventures.  The number of shots isn't important, nor is the number of birds bagged. But, over 200 shots on wild birds indicates that either 1) bird populations were strong 2) I hunted a lot or 3) I took a lot of shots because I needed to after missing the first shot.  Maybe all three apply.

Hunting with eight different people was also by design.  For those of us that have hunted since Reagan took office, we have learned that hunting alone is sometimes better than hunting with people that we don't click with.  Since the pillars of upland bird hunting are safety, dog work and brisk walking, it isn't much fun if one doesn't prioritize similarly.  Highlights were taking Ted M. to eastern Montana to shoot his first sharptail and seeing Dad shoot his first wild chukar at age 68.

Dogs.  I hunted harder, longer and more often than normal this season since my setter girls were age eight and ten. Everyday is precious at this point.  The two work together like a machine, backing each other when appropriate and covering ground at the perfect speed and distance.  They worked well in tight woodcock coverts, as well as the wide open of Idaho and Montana.  Tess is starting to show her age, but still hunted hard.  The girls made it through the season without any major injuries, the worse being some minor barbed-wire cuts.  We did have some rattlesnake encounters, but the dogs seemed to keep their distance out of fear or perhaps blind luck.

Overall, it was a good upland bird season. I am saddened that it is over. But, then again, there are a few seasons still open around the country.....

Old Dad, New Tricks

Chukar hunting. Young man's sport. Chukars. Devil birds. Chukar country. Unforgiving. 

My Dad is an avid reader of sporting literature. He has heard all about the trials and tribulations of chasing the imported, red-legged bird in steep country.  Last January, when I proposed a trip west, he declined, citing his bad knees and the fact that father time had promoted him recently to age 67, without his permission.

This December, at 68, he thought it was time to give the Devil Birds a shot.  It didn't take a lot of encouraging.  Heck, he shot an elk on public land the Friday of Thanksgiving.  We left town that morning and had the entire elk back in his garage by 6PM.  As in packed out. On our backs. In quarters.  So, his fitness level wasn't a problem.  In fact, he is in better upland shape than a lot of my 43-year-old peers.  Being stubborn and Scandinavian doesn't hurt.

He had a lot of questions as we started planning this adventure.  20 gauge or 12 gauge? Double or auto? 7 1/2 shot or 6?  Valid questions from a veteran wingshooter. All I could suggest was to go with the gun he carried all autumn (20 gauge double) combined with his heavy reloads of an ounce and an eighth of 7 1/2 shot, followed by an ounce and an eight of sixes in his second barrel.

Friday morning found us doing what he expected to do.  Taking off a layer, as we toiled uphill, breaking a modest sweat, despite the temps being below freezing.  Thirty minutes later, Dad was a chukar hunter.  His big boy Blue was on point on the next ridge east of me.  I sat down on a rock and watched everything unfold.  A covey rose, I saw two birds fall and then heard the muted shots a couple of seconds later.  Not a bad start.

We made the most of our beautiful December day, making two long walks so I could swap setter dogs at lunch.  Dad and I ended up with a nice mix of Huns and chukars, good dog work from canine veterans and decent shooting.  The second day we awoke to fresh snow, which changed the game slightly.  We slipped and fell a few times, each putting a new ding in our walnut stocks.  The birds were still there, not afraid to take us uphill, where the snow was even deeper.

Dad and I had a long ride home to reflect on the glorious sport of chukar hunting.  We both wondered out loud how many years we had in the field, whether or not all three dogs would be able to hunt the rough country next fall and what we would do differently next trip.  Discussed chukar hunting compared to other species. Pheasants? Love 'em, but not as sexy right now. Ruffed grouse?  Still king, but only chukars can rival ruffs for public land access.

Dad introduced me to grouse and woodcock hunting 30 years ago.  Now I finally got the chance to return the favor. I bet he joins me next trip as well.

Chukar Lessons 2.0

Having only had a half-dozen chukar hunts under my belt, I am still learning each time I leave Montana for chukar country.  Some of that learning is painful, some of it is just relearning things I should know from 30 years of wingshooting.

Winter driving. I knew I had to get over three mountain passes on my trip west.  I knew they were ice-covered. And two of the three were. This really wasn't learning any lessons, but strictly a reminder that we are now in winter travel mode. Mix bad roads with darkness and deer and elk on the road and I was glad to have arrived at my motel.

Dog paws.  No matter how much I hunt in Montana from September 1 until chukar time, there is no way to get the dogs' paws conditioned.  In fact, I am writing this blog entry in a motel room, when I should be hunting.  Yesterday's 8A.M. to 3P.M. shift on rock and ice, took its toll.  I could have rotated one dog midday, but I knew I would be gone from the truck too long. Now Abby needs to be carried outside to do her business and Tess isn't much better. I am hoping a day of rest and the addition of dog boots, which I have never had success with, will get us through Sunday. 

My feet.  Even though I was hunting south-facing slopes, I still had a good deal of snow and ice to deal with.  Shame on me for not trying a newer pair of books on snow before strapping them on hundreds of miles from home. It seems like that every so often, I get a pair of boots where the soles are super-slick on snow, despite appearing to have an aggressive sole. These were one of those #$%&*!@ pairs.  My frustration was nearly comical at one point.  If the landscape had any slope to it, and it did, it was as if I was standing on ball bearings.  In 7 hours, I probably fell ten times.  I had another pair of boots in the Toyota, but I was too stubborn to give up my precious elevation that I had gained. Also had packed some ice-cleats, but they were also in the car.  

Shells.  I had been lulled into my normal Montana routine of grabbing 12-15 shells in the morning and restocking at noon. That is plenty for a three-bird pheasant limit. Not chukars, for Pete's sake. I finished my hike with one shell in the hole. Dumb.  Running out of shells should be a good thing. See the following paragraph.

Shooting.   I shot horribly.  Wasted shells on long shots, when the birds were getting up just beyond my 28 gauge comfort.  I also admit to flock shooting more than once.  Why?  I have hunted Huns enough to usually be the know-it-all to tell others that their frustrations probably stem from flock shooting. For some reason on this hunt, I had a heck of a time picking out one chukar.  

Enough of the whining.  I hunted behind my setters in beautiful country, saw plenty of chukars and one covey of Huns.  Saw elk, mule deer and bighorns.  It wasn't a perfect day, but it was still pretty darn good.

Season 2 Is Underway

Having always lived in the northern tier of states, around Halloween is typically when the weather is apt to catch you off guard in regard to one's outdoor pursuits. Seems like just yesterday, I was carrying a gallon of water for the dogs, trying to catch sharptail midday under the shade of Russian Olives and buffalo berry bushes.  Birds were gutted immediately and placed in the bird tray (isn't that why cooler companies give you that clunky, rack that is often in the way?) of the ice chest.

Just like that the days are now kaput at 4:30PM and and the mornings are cold, not cool.  I have never been a guy that is keen to shooting gloves, but now gloves are a must, just to keep the fingers in working condition at 15 degrees.  Hunting pressure has already diminished from the chaotic pheasant opener and the southern dog trainers that show in Montana in August, have headed south like waterfowl, worried that the cold weather will stiffen up their grits.  Whatever they are.

This past episode, just a week past the Halloween threshold,  we even mixed in some duck hunting, thanks to Ryan's griff, Kruz, who retrieved our  mallards and redheads. Timing the major cold front, which used to be a called an Alberta Clipper, but now goes by the moniker of Polar Vortex, geese and ducks were showing up in impressive numbers.   Of course we hunted some pheasants and sharptail, to give the setters some action too.  We hated to even take a lunch break, since the daylight was as precious as our appetites.  The first pheasant hunt after the snow always seems to catch the roosters off-guard too, as a few more birds decide to choose door #1(sit tight) vs. door #2 (run like heck until I run out of cover).  We paid the price as our three-hour drives home, took us five hours, due to the snow and ice-covered roads.  Maybe those southern boys are smarter than we are.