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The Acreage Trap
Bird Hunters May Find Far Less Huntable Ground This Fall On paper, it can look like a great year to hunt birds in the West. The maps are full of public access. Walk-in programs advertise hundreds of thousands — in some states, millions — of acres of private land open to hunters. CRP still covers…
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Life Lists
Jon and I have been here before—heavy legs and burning lungs. We’ve circled this peak, crossing boulder field after boulder field. It’s taken nearly four hours to complete the circuit around this 12,000-foot Uinta peak. I’m drained. Ida’s standard Lab trot has surrendered to a nearby amble. But then I see it—for most, it would…
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Rio Flufferbunny
It was fall when she came to us on a plane from New Mexico, all legs and ears and sharp puppy teeth. She pointed from the womb — butterflies, song birds, turtles, tufts of grass stirred by a breeze — nothing was safe from…
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Quest for the Sage Grouse
Three Llewellin setters hunting together for the first time are on point. It’s taken 9.5 miles of walking across rolling Montana sage to get this dog circus to this grand finale. Yet somehow my new hunting buddy Jory and I walk past without even noticing. I suspect his male setter Ridge has lead the discovery…
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The Lab Knows
Wyatt knows he’s black. He also knows this is the color of night. He’s been able to surmise that humans have terrible night vision. During daylight hours when we take breaks from hunting, he plots. He knows most mischief will not fly in the light of day. Raiding other camps, gnawing a nearby rotting deer…
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Kansas Bird Hunting in Perspective
I make the annual pilgrimage to Kansas to reunite with old friends and family. It reminds me of where my passion for bird hunting was first kindled. Because this year was no exception to the rule, Kansas seemed like the right place to bring together our young Jornada Llewellin Rio with our veteran flusher Wyatt…
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The Hunting Singularity
The Singularity is a hypothetical future point where self-aware machines run improvement cycles resulting in super-intelligence that is uncontrollable. Basically, humans create machines that make human ideas and intelligence obsolete and irrelevant. In ways it sounds like a far off time somewhere in outer space. But dig into interviews with some of today’s tech gurus…
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The Fountain of Youth
The old boy doesn’t leap into the truck like he once could, but he still manages to lurch up the running boards and cross the center console. Instead of stowing him in the back for this road trip, I break the rules and let him ride shotgun. He acknowledges the exemption and quickly curls into…
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Inroads
We’ve been coming to this area of the grain belt for over 20 years. It took the locals at least seven of those to warm beyond a passing nod or the requisite finger waive to oncoming trucks. We now know many by name though most likely still recognize us only as familiar faces. Every year…
