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The Best Way to Turn Your Shotgun Into a Paperweight
Last fall my dogs and I traveled to Idaho to try our hand at chasing chukar. We joined a few friends early one morning along a river on public lands, set up our camp, and made ready for our first ascent. A friend and I trailed my two shorthairs up an extreme vertical chute. We…
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White-tailed Demons
Something is wrong with me. Any other sane bird hunter would have packed up and moved to the interior where the bird numbers and density are greater. But I’m entrenched in the Kenai and I can’t get away from it. I’ve shot a White-tailed Ptarmigan already. I’ve seen where they live. I know their confounding…
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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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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 Tailgate Obsession
Bird hunters seem to have an unhealthy fixation with placing birds on tailgates, bumpers, and hoods for photos. I honestly don’t get it. Upland hunters are blessed to pursue game in some of the most scenic places known to man: mountains, prairies, marshes, desert — the wildest of places. We hunt with dogs that are…
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Preparing Birds for the Cooler
Most folks who watch hunting shows on TV or who are new to the sport may never see what happens to birds after they are brought to hand. Because we camp and travel most of the season, often in places where access to fresh water is limited, we like to clean birds in a way…
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To the Edge with Friends and Dogs
We all have limits. But that edge is never static. It’s a river that rages perilously close or meanders docile and aimless in the distance. Most people are perfectly comfortable keeping a healthy distance—there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But there is something about that torrent that is captivating and revealing. What we see…
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Making it Count
When I hunt alone, which is often the case, there’s a certain ritual to leaving the truck. It’s become habit without much thought anymore. This invisible checklist guards against hiking miles from the truck and realizing I’m without shells, water, remotes or worse. It’s this same reason everything has an assigned place in the truck,…
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The Baseline Hike
Climbing mountains, the only way to really know how bad climbing mountains with heavy packs is gonna be. And getting the young Setter, Hawk, more familiar with the grind.
