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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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Challenges
Every time one of these birds comes to hand, it’s an affirmation of the core elements that can make life grand — hope, effort, skill, experience, cooperation and even a little luck. It feels easy for me to bring those pieces together into something that makes perfect sense in the uplands. The real challenge is…
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The Journey
I learned to bird hunt with friends — we weren’t reading about it or seeing it online or in social posts because there wasn’t an internet. We didn’t have a script or playbook from the past. We would unleash half-wild dogs into the field and walk our legs off in pursuit. Actually, we probably did…
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The Quail Hunter’s Lost Code
There’s a small, back corner on a piece of public land in Kansas that my dad and I have hunted for 10 years. It’s a good walk, probably a mile and a half each way. We are always drawn to the corner because every year there is a covey of Bobwhite in this tiny, scrubby…
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Fleeting Moments with Evaporating Birds
Chukar Partridge have some nasty habits. They hang out in lofty spaces, the rockier and more rugged the better. Chukar are a non-native species introduced to North America from Pakistan between the turn of the century up until the 1970s. Wild populations established a foothold across the Great Basin where they now thrive. Many game…
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A Labs First Day Afield
“No, I don’t think you understand, he has NO prior hunting experience…only obedience training.” I wrote to Brian, my new upland hunting buddy. The early morning email asking for my young lab and me to attend an upland hunt had caught me by surprise, putting a nice end to a long workweek. “Kali, it doesn’t…
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Lost……again
“I am lost” “Going to shoot. Let me know if you can hear it.” “Hear it?” “I was 50 yards from the truck.” It’s my hunting buddy’s first foray into the realm of the Ruffed Grouse. We’ve hunted a few days now, but this is the first overcast day in an area previously unexplored. It…
