Morning snipe, afternoon grouse.

You may be shooting too quickly on snipe.  If memory serves, an old snipe hunter explained, "First they zig, and then they zag, then they shit, and after that they straighten out and you shoot 'em."  I spent many happy hours snipe hunting on the flats of the Skagit, but unfortunately I didn't know this technique. -- Personal correspondence from Gerry Cox

A brace of snipe on the counter.

Went after snipe on Sunday morning and grouse in the afternoon with my son who was visiting from Portland.  I can't , nay won't, say exactly where we hunted the snipe. Look for marshy country and cross your fingers that they are in.   I killed the first snipe on the first flush with one shot from the right barrel on Sidley.  I'd rather not say how many shells were expended by both of us before Garrett managed to drop the second one.  Once again, the open right barrel on the Sidley proved it's worth.

Two snipe in the field with the 20GA boxlock.

In the afternoon we drove up high to a spot I know for grouse.  Erdos was past tired after slogging through the muck all morning - but he hunted hard for us and we (Garrett) killed two birds.  On the first flush, two birds went up with Erdos on point, I hit one at some distance, feathers flew and the bird wobbled and glided into the forest.   Did not find him until we managed to flush him about an hour later from where he'd hidden in a tree.  Garrett dropped him.  Of course it is hard to know if it was the same bird, but we both thought it had to be.  We hunted more and flushed another four birds, one of which Garrett also managed to drop.

A brace of grouse taken up high.

Not a bad day at all, two snipe in the morning and two grouse in the afternoon. 

Rainy Afternoon Grouse

 “The physics of beauty is one department of natural science still in the Dark Ages. Everybody knows that the autumn landscape in the northwoods is the land, plus a red maple, plus a ruffed grouse. In terms of conventional physics, the grouse represents only a millionth of either the mass or the energy of an acre. Yet subtract the grouse and the whole thing is dead. An enormous amount of some kind of motive power has been lost.” – Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac”

In the quote above, Aldo Leopold was writing about Ruffed Grouse, here in Wyoming I hunt Blue Grouse.  Hunted behind a dog, blues are not all that different from their ruffed cousins. The blue grouse is a bit larger, probably a bit slower, and possibly dumber - but they inhabit the same kind of cover as the ruffed grouse and they perhaps hold a bit better for a dog than a ruffie does.  In terms of their ability to escape from danger - they are no less wily, they somehow always manage to put a tree between themselves and the hunter before they embark on their  thunderous escape.

Blue grouse hunting starts on September first in Wyoming. It's the first bit of the hunting season. For me, there is a nice symbiosis between grouse hunting and hunting for deer and elk.  Grouse tend to inhabit the edges of the best elk habitat and they live in the same country mule deer do.  This means that a grouse hunt is more than a casual deer and elk scouting trip. And it works the other way as well, I have found my best grouse coverts by noticing birds while hunting deer and elk.

Hard work on a rainy afternoon in the grouse coverts.

One day earlier this week Mike and I managed to get away from work a few hours early to hit some favorite grouse coverts.  I prefer to not say which day that was. We did not plan on the rain - hell, it hasn't rained here in weeks.  Never mind, I followed Erdos carrying the new Sidley 20GA SxS and Mike followed his setter Luna carrying one of a pair of 16GA Woodwards. We got into birds, big males in one covert and some young of the year in another.

Mike and Erdos in good cover. Where Luna?

The grouse theorists pretty much all say that at this time of year the big males will be up high and the young of the year down lower near water.  It's all about the altitude - when you find birds - stay at that level and you'll find more.  This theory may make perfect sense along the Front Range in CO where the forest starts around 6000 feet and goes up to around 10,000 in a kind of continuous rise.  Here in southeast Wyoming, the forest starts around 7500 feet and in large areas there is not a lot of elevation gain or loss for many many square miles.  There are grouse there and they don't migrate up or down as much as the biologists might have us believe.  I think they a re more keyed to water than altitude in these areas.  Once the snow flies, they are freer to find the big Firs they like for winter cover. My evidence is that I tend to find grouse year round in the same spots every year and it seems to have little to do with altitude.  Where I mostly hunt - it's all high - around 8000 feet or more.

Sidley 20GA with a brace of Blues.

In the first covert Mike and I hit we got into a large covey of big male birds. There were at least eight birds, maybe more, I lost count.  I only managed one bird there though a good shot might have had her limit and an unethical hunter even more than the allowed three.  The bird I shot was a big male as were the others in covey - or so I believe. In the second bit of cover we hit, one I had never hunted before but which looked good, Erdos went on point and a bird flushed as I moved up. It uncannily managed to perfectly place a tree between me and his escape.  As the bird exploded out of the cover, I shot the tree and the bird flew off unharmed.  And then, for the first time this year, Erdos did not run off after the escaping bird. He has a great nose but he suffers from having had a poor trainer. (That would be me.) When he does run off after a bird he bumps the others in the covey on his way and I am reduced to watching them all bombing up and flying off into the distance. A beautiful sight - but not the one I hope for.  This time, with some serious urging from me, he stayed with me.  He pointed another bird quite nearby and as is flew up I managed to cleanly drop a mature female.

Mike and Luna with a brace of grouse.

On the way out, we spotted a covey crossing the road.  We stopped and moved in on the birds and  Mike managed some nice shooting and dropped two birds on the wing as darted off between the pines.

*                               *                               *

Even though all of us, dogs and men, got very wet, it was a wonderful afternoon.  The symbiosis of the grouse and elk hunt was working too, in anticipation of upcoming elk seasons, we spotted two nice bull elk on the drive out.

Nebraska III

Mike showed up at Super-8 In Ogallala around 9 PM with a bottle of Ardbeg and a copy of the Double Gun Journal.  Like his father and grandfather before him he hunts behind a setter (named Luna) and, on this day,  carried one of a pair of early Woodward under levers with sleeved barrels chambered for 2 1/2" 16 gauge shells.  

 Luna and Mike.

We spent the day hunting walkin areas in Perkins and Lincoln County.  After a days rest, Erdos seemed good, he was not limping and I was relieved that he could hunt.  He started off rather slow, but as soon as he got on some fresh scent he perked up and hunted hard. I apparently misread the walk-in map and we almost immediately wandered off onto private property. As we tried to get back to the approved walk-in, three roosters flushed wild out in the cut corn and we headed across to the shoulder high grass they'd landed in. I asked Mike if we should try to pinch them and he said to just head for where they'd landed as fast as we could, which was not easy in the heavy cover.  We pushed into the absurdly thick cover,  moving together, parallel to one another.  A rooster took off in front of Mike and then another and he missed them both. I did not have a shot.

Hunter and his dog on a country road.

We split apart, Mike heading back into the cover where we'd just jumped the roosters while I headed off into the reeds, ostensibly chasing the ones we'd already jumped.  The cover was so dense and the going was so tough that I abandoned my attempt to hunt and bushwhacked out the back edge of the CRP.  I walked the edge of the corn cut field hoping to hike back to the truck by making a loop. About a hundred yards ahead of me Erdos was clearly making game.  He was onto fresh spoor and headed back into the tangle of reeds; it was not long before I saw three pheasants fly and then land again, perhaps only fifty yards further into the heavy cover.

Following Mike's earlier advice I quickly waded in after them.  The reeds were over my head and I had to hold my shotgun up in front of me to make my way. I could hear Erdos somewhere near me but this was not cover for pointing.  One bird took off not far in front of me, and then another, and then more to my left and right, perhaps eight or more all together.  I finally pushed forward to a spot where the reeds transitioned to a reddish chest high grass that I could see over.  A rooster flew up in front of me, I took the shot and he tumbled as he went down - a solid hit.  I marked the spot as best I could and when a second bird went up in front of me and before I knew it I had two roosters down.  As I started towards the point where they'd fallen I lost the optimistic hope that I would ever find them at all.  Erdos was no help and the cover was so thick that at ground level I could only see a foot or tow in any direction. I started searching in a regular grid from the tall reed I'd hung my hat on where I'd marked the second bird down.  Eventually, I found a few feathers. It seemed like a small miracle. I worked my way out in a spiral until  I found more feathers, and then I found the dead bird a short distance away, along the line defined by the points where I'd I found the feathers.  This started to feel a bit more like tracking a wounded big game animal than bird hunting. I recalled Datus Proper's assertion that a pheasant rooster is a trophy game animal.

I searched for the other downed bird for another half an hour before I finally gave up; I was already late for the appointed meeting with Mike at the truck.  And later, after Mike had a rooster in his game bag we could count the hunt as a success.

Woodward underlever sidelock and Jeffery boxlock and two roosters.

It is a deep disappointment to hunt and kill any animal and to not be able to retrieve it. I killed two pheasants on this trip that I was unable to retrieve.  First and foremost, such a failure is a waste of life that is hard to justify. It seems that uncertainty is the foundation of the compact between hunter and prey - the hunter will try his best for a clean kill and recovery and the birds will enlist all their instincts to thwart that objective.  Uncertainty is the essence and the very nature of the endeavour, to bring down a bird on the wing at a distance with a few pellets of lead. That birds are wounded or killed and never recovered is inevitable and serves as evidence of that uncertain footing.

 A lost bird is an abrupt interruption of the intimate relationship between hunter and prey that begins when the bird falls to the ground out of thin air.  Once to hand, the hunter must often kill an already dying bird with his own hands.  This usually accomplished by wringing its neck.  The attentive hunter inspects the miracle of the warm feathered form closely before depositing it in his game bag and may walk miles with that body pressing against his back in the game bag.  I hang pheasants undrawn for a week and then pluck them and gut them saving the liver and heart.  As individuals of the species, each pheasant is special and they present a challenge in the kitchen. Pheasant should never be overcooked, but nevertheless must be cooked. The intimacy of the relationship ends with the enjoyment and sharing of an honest meal of wild meat. A lost bird is a lost opportunity for a kind of perfection.

British game guns and long tailed rooster.

By the time I was home I'd driven over 750 miles in the course of three days -  and that number does not include the driving Carlos did Saturday and Sunday morning which was at least 160 miles more to be summed with my own total. I drove home leg tired, with a tired and satisfied dog and with three pheasants and two quail.

Sunset on the drive home.

Nebraska II

A man and his dog.

Our second day was overcast and cooler, better for the dogs but it turned out not to be as good for us with the birds.  We hunted walkin areas closer to where we were staying.  We saw birds but both of us were not shooting well.  Birds we'd have easily killed just the day before we could not connect with if our lives depended on it.  we jumped hens and more hens, and the roosters we saw mostly flushed wild.  Erdos' shoulder was so bad, I left him in the room while we hunted in the morning and then only hunted him very briefly in the afternoon after Carlos left.

An ocean of grass.

Walking pheasant cover is physically tiring.  It's a lot like walking in snow, the thick grasses force you to lift your feet high and offer substantial resistance to legs moving forward. A large walkin area in Nebraska can be a whole section (a square mile) though most are smaller.  Still, in a days hunting we end up walking miles and the dogs who quarter back and forth in front of us cover at least five times as much distance.

The rich colors are astounding.

In some ways, driving around Nebraska is a little like stepping back into the 1960's.  The following scene of an abandoned motel and an antique car was rather striking though not atypical.

I thought this might be an Edsel but now think it's a 1961 Chrysler New Yorker.

Nebraska I

Erdos pointing a pheasant the first morning.

I met Carlos in Sidney NE and drove on further east to small town where on weekends he regularly rents an apartment in an old brick hotel.  He prefers I not mention the location.  The next morning we headed south, almost to the Kansas border.  It was opening day of rifle season for deer and there were hunters roaming the countryside everywhere and in fact we saw a very nice whitetail buck on the edge of the walk-in area as we pulled up.

Oscar the nine month old Drathar is ready to go.

In the first area we hunted the dogs were on scent almost right away.  Erdos was ecstatic.  Carlos and Oscar flushed some birds about 150 yards diagonally to my right and then they bumped two more. Erdos and I kept hunting parallel to a fence line next to a corn field that had recently been harvested.  I heard shots ahead and Carlos had killed a rooster. Erdos was on a trail of scent and I followed him as he carefully followed the birds for  a good distance, more than a 100 yards. And then he went on point and would not move.  I stepped forward and a pheasant flushed just behind me.  I turned, raised my shotgun and pulled the trigger and nothing happened.  Much of the fall I've been hunting my single trigger 20 gauge  O/U and, like a fool, I did think to pull the other trigger on the Jeffery.  As I struggled to reload (an unfired shell will not cock the ejectors and hence will not eject) I realized I'd had a misfire. And then, another cock went up right in front of me.  I got off a late shot, a feather flew, but the bird did not seem phased and disappeared over the next ridge.  Typical.  And then, in a few more minutes, Erdos was on fresh scent again.  This time I was ready and when the pheasant flushed I fired once and again.  On the second shot the bird tumbled into the tall grass. I marked it down and ran to the spot but did not see it. I looked and looked and looked some more -- with no help from Erdos who was off on more scent.  Carlos came by with Oscar, and we all hunted for the downed bird, but still we did not find it. A bitter disappointment.  I regret not having worked with Erdos on retrieving.

The dogs get a drink and cool off.

Carlos and Oscar with the first pheasant of the trip.

Erdos' right shoulder has been injured for some time - the vet says - and a long energetic hunt in tall grass had him hurting.  At the next walk-in I left him in the truck and Carlos hunted Lola, a six year old Pointing Griffon. Lola hunted hard quartering back and forth in front of us until she went on point.  We moved in quickly and a cock pheasant went up. Carlos shot and I shot and then he shot and the bird tumbled down. We marked it down and ran to the spot and there was no bird to be seen.  We dropped a hat to mark the spot and circled.  We found no bird until Lola found it, more than fifty yards from where we'd both seen it fall.  Carlos had two now and I had none.

Oscar, Lola and Carlos.

Within the next half hour I was carrying two pheasants in my own game bag. Expertly pointed by Lola.

Sitting in the shade eating lunch.

After lunch, we looked around for Erdos and Oscar.  They'd just been sitting with us as we ate in the shade of the truck.  We called them and then saw they were both on point on the far side a hedgerow.  A covey of quail took off like a rocket.  I grabbed and loaded my gun and moved to the other side of the fence where  Erdos was still on point.  I kicked the brush and Oscar and Erdos charged in -- but no bird came out.  Erdos moved further down and went on point again.  This time the quail went up out the other side by the truck.  I mounted and took something of a hail-mary shot as the bird flew just above my line of sight over the hedge.  Carlos heard the shot and saw the quail drop.  We would not have found it without Oscar.  We followed up on the singles and Carlos killed one more quail.   We separated, with Carlos dropping into a ravine and Erdos and I hunting the top.  Erdos  had been following fresh scent for more than a hundred yards, intent on birds every few feet. As I was starting to loose faith in his absolute conviction that the birds were near Carlos and Oscar came up from the ravine below where they'd filled out Carlos' limit on pheasants. Oscar went on point and when the quail flushed I instinctively mounted the shotgun and cleanly dropped one of the fast fliers.
 

A brace of quail from my game bag.

It turned out we were in the Republican (river) region that Nebraska Game and Parks had reported as having good Northern Bobwhite Quail populations this year.  Quail populations are estimated by whistle counts and by interviews with rural mail carriers.

A great day in the field.

A day like this one makes it almost seem easy.  Good dogs, good guns, good company, lots of birds.  Our next day was to prove that good days like this do not come for free.

The bag from an exceptional day.

Grouse Hunting

Even though we had record snow pack winter last winter, it didn't seem to hurt the local grouse numbers. In fact, I've seen more grouse this year than ever. Erdos and I found grouse every time we went out. That's not unusual for my friend Andy -- the grouse killer -- but he has long legs and is willing to walk as far as it takes to find them. I usually hunt a loop less than a mile from the truck. As time passes my own inventory of places I've seen grouse has grown. And they tend to live in the same places year to year so this leads to more easily obtained successes.

I took my Dad out with me and he waited in the truck while Erdos and I hunted. Before I could get my shotgun out and loaded he was onto birds. They had walked through some time before. We followed the scent, with Erdos continually locking onto point and then looking ahead, ovbiously expecting to see a bird right in front of him at any moment. We followed them for about 200 yards, and then Erdos went on point and would not move. I walked forward and birds went up everywhere. I shot, and shot again, and two birds were down with at least five more flushed. We tried to follow-up on them, but they'd flown the coop.

We moved up the mountain to another spot. Erdos was scenting birds but we did not find them as we moved into the breeze.  I knew there was a bird there and so we circled back and we bumped two birds in a tangle of scrubby aspens.  I had no shot.  Heading back toward the truck where my Dad was waiting, Erdos went on point again.  I stepped forward, flicking the safety on and off on my 20 gauge. A bird flushed and angled across an opening in the trees, a perfect shot.  I mounted the gun to a perfect sight picture, I flicked the safety, and pulled the trigger.  And nothing happened.  As bird flew off into the taller timber Erdos turned and looked at me like I was hopeless.  I'd had the safety on when I mounted the gun and flicked it off instead of on.  Some practice with the shotgun before the season starts would not hurt me at all, not one bit.

Malheur Chukar

Driving out of Oregon this past summer we passed through Bend, to Burns and then down the Malheur River drainage and into Caldwell Idaho. There is a bit of the Central Oregon Highway that follows the Malheur River out onto the plains that is stunningly magnificent.  It makes me think of Hemingway's description of the landscape in The Green Hills of Africa; not because the landscape is the the same, though perhaps there are similarities, but because Hemingway talks about loving a landscape and being connected to it in the same deep way a man can love a woman. Malheur means misfortune or tragedy. Somehow, I am connected to this place.

When I started thinking about and researching chukar hunting in Eastern Oregon I ran across a recommendation for hunting exactly this area. I have to say I was surprised to find that a lot of the land along the Malheur is publicly accessible.  Aside from national forests and in the few places where the state has obtained public fishing access rights there is virtually no public land access to rivers in Wyoming.  River bottoms are too valuable for the public, they are private and tightly held.  Down the Malheur drainage there are many miles of beautiful river with BLM access.

There was snow on the ground and the dense clouds were low enough that we could not see the ridge tops above. The valley floor is about 2800 feet in elevation, the tops of the ridges are another 1500 feet higher with the highest rising to 5200 feet.  Penelope and I dressed for the trek up one of the ridges into the mist. It was around 34°F and there was about four or five inches of snow on the ground in the valley, we wore our hiking boots with gaiters.  I carried the 20 GA Citori and wore  my shooting vest, one pocket loaded with #5 shells and the other with #6 shells.    Penelope carried her walking poles and a pack with some water and rain gear should the heavy clouds really open up.   She loves walking uphill, interest earned from climbing Munroes in Scotland, and so we were off.

I've never hunted chukar before.  Approaching a sea of grass and vast open country it is daunting and it is something of an act of faith to believe you will find the birds you are looking for. There's not much I have faith in, but this I do. After being couped up in the car for a day an a half Erdos was anxious to go and we headed up a long ridge with him in the lead. Of course, he'd never hunted chukar before  but he knew just what were were looking for. When he started to make game about five hundred feet above the river I ran up the ridge trying to keep up with him. 
 

We were headed up a long ridge when Erdos started getting interested in the slope off the west edge. There was a pull to go higher, but when the dog starts telling you which way to go you really need to listen. Erdos, a Vizsla, is a pointer and when he knows he's found birds, he locks on point. My gaiter strap had come undone and I stopped to rehitch it, watching him maybe 200 yards downhill working hard the way he does when he's on birds. And then I heard one clucking, a warning to the others. Penelope heard it too and so I started down and across the slope as quickly as I could, but Erdos bumped the birds. It happens sometimes. A covey of about eight Chukar lifted up, clucking, and flew down into the deep draw below us.

Chukar fly downhill and run uphill. I carefully watched the birds drop into the draw to try to mark them down so we could hunt them up as singles. No such luck. I hunted up and down the draw in the thick brush there with Erdos in a tizzy, desperate to find the birds he'd jumped. Finally, I hunted up the far slope and once over the top of the ridge just above a small saddle which was 200 feet higher than the draw below Erdos was clearly on birds again and he locked on point. I started to drop down the steep slope and then he moved down the locked up again. Now I started to run downhill (top photo) but then a covey of about thirty birds exploded off the slope about 40 yards below me. Chukar can fly about 45 miles per hour and in the instant it took me to mount the shotgun and fire, I knew it was too late, they were out of range and flew off to the far slope across the next draw at least 800 yards away and probably close to a mile hike.

The sun was down and it was getting dark quickly and we still needed to hike up and over two ridges and back down to the truck. On the walk out, a deep form of tired contentment built. This feeling has happened before, though rarely:  a hike out in the dark through a heavy snow fall after ice climbing on Frankenstein Cliffs with  Phil and Don; a hunt for Mule deer down a long ridge at last light, high over the Platte River and the hike back in the gloaming through lightly falling snow with Gerry; a freezing late November ride  in the back of a pickup at dusk after waiting for hours on back roads hitchhiking to the Gunks from Cortland with Bill Ravitch.  These moments are far too rare, elusive and, as far as I can tell, they can not be constructed, if you are lucky they come to you.