Plan Your Entire Season
We have taken an apples-to-apples view of every state for the upland hunter to give the best snapshot of how each compares in bird hunting terms. Click on states to learn license costs, minimum requirements for hunting, season dates, bag limits, species available and more. Then follow the links to visit state DNR pages and purchase licenses before loading up the dogs and hitting the road.
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Way Upland Season II Episode 8
I’ve said bird hunting karma exists BUT this episode proves it. We break a bike chain over two miles from a road and have to navigate our way to safety. If you’d like to read the companion article: Good Deeds in Badlands.
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Unspoken Alliances
A number of years ago I was riding shotgun pre-dawn on opening day in Kansas. My buddy was behind the wheel as we chugged coffee fixating down the narrow tunnel of light cast on gravel. Most of the time upland hunters don’t have to contend with the early rise routine of other hunting disciplines. But…
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Winging It
This upland season is fast approaching. The preparations of the past few seasons manifested in paper and piles. Maps stretched over more maps to cross-check terrain and access. Gear overflowing tables to neutral corners for ranking to make the pack or inevitable re-packs. The planning and gear goat rope is something to while away the…
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The Streak
Rio the setter is holding just below a lip of pitted volcanic stone a few paces up this 60 degree slope. We’ve climbed for over two hours to get to this point. The entire trek from the bottom the dogs have been trailing and repositioning. I can tell by Rio’s stature that she has trapped…
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Way Upland Season II Episode 7
Back on the trail at sunrise to try and beat the crazy heat. The quicksand that Roosevelt talks about in his biography, we find it. We also break down all our gear, share what we are using as we cross the Little Missouri National Grassland. Please subscribe to catch all the upcoming episodes AND live…
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Two Mountains Offer Different Views
Sitting here in camp staring at these two peaks in Arapaho National Forest. In the last week the dogs and I have visited both. It seems somewhat surreal, not that there is anything particularly outrageous about either. They aren’t the tallest or most dangerous. But the scale is so incredibly different from this low vantage…
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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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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 Cure for the Ailing Birdhunt
It took a decade of brush busting, sprinting after wingless phantom pheasants, whiffing on bunny shots, losing keys and warping dogs — but a buddy and I finally discovered the remedy for the bird hunt that has jumped the tracks. Spiced ham. That gelatinous, pulverized, sodium infused and form fitted rectagonal mass packaged in the convenient…
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The Hunters’ Predicament
A couple of years ago I found myself hunting late season public lands in West Virginia. Having never hunted here before I took to talking to every resident I encountered, inquiring of bird numbers, conditions and terrain. This area is a fairly well-known stronghold for hunters and anglers, so it was shocking when I brought…
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Perspective from the Road
The alarm starts chiming, but it feels like I just laid my head down only minutes ago. It can’t be daybreak yet. I must have set the alarm incorrectly. I pick up the phone to turn off the now blaring Alice in Chains’ “Rooster” and the clock reads 5:15am. Ugh. The bird hunters’ alarm doesn’t…
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The Alaska Standoff
Alaska and I are at odds. I’m here to take her birds. She’s not giving them up easily. I’m to earn them one vertical foot at a time until she has determined that sufficient toll has been collected. She’s happy to show amazing places, jaw-dropping beauty, an abundance of nature viewing unrivaled anywhere else in…
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Good Deeds in Badlands
I’m at camp making a final assessment of gear and doing one last pack as final preparation to embark on an overland bike bird hunt. These National Forest campgrounds can often see a lot of use. But, in late fall when the nights get cold, camp company is sparse. As I’m pushing essentials into different…
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Hunting the Polar Vortex
The first half of the 2014 Upland Season is over and it’s been a whirlwind of travel all across the country. But this last trip to South Dakota hunting in brutally cold conditions was a great reminder that some of the best memories afield come from facing adversity and overcoming.
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Way Upland
It’s the second day of the upland season and I am in a pre-dawn traffic jam. I’m following a string of crimson taillights up a dusty grade and poor excuse for a road. I’m unsure exactly how long the line extends at this point, but we are all crawling toward a pin on a map…
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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…
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Depths of Cold
There seems no bottom to the depths of cold. It’s one of the few solace for hunting in frigid condition: could be colder, windier, at least it’s not…more miserable. I’m assured by medical science that freezing does have a lower limit in terms of the human body. Paradoxical undressing: the point at which humans experiencing…
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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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On the Eve
I’ve been accused in the past of trying to make every bird hunt a “religious experience.” I laughed it off when first cast. But the truth is, that jab has stuck with me. I’m unsure why. But in the interest of being utilitarian and simple: I set up camp at the base of some mountains…
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There Are No Indifferent Snowcock Hunters
Between the years of 1963 to 1979 Himalayan Snowcock imported from Pakistan and Afghanistan were released in the Ruby Mountains of Nevada. Today it’s the only place in the Western Hemisphere these birds can be found. One can only guess why exactly the Nevada Department of Wildlife went to such lengths to establish a non-native…
