In Part 1, Sam and I brought half-sisters, Ila & Sage to Montana with their trusty sidekick, (GWP) Rye. We had a good time despite having to battle with high winds and storm surges on the daily. For Part 2, we returned to Eastern Montana to meet up with Josh, and his lovely boy Dio. Dio is from the  Tule x Fen Litter of ’21. Tule being a Dutch Import, and Fen a boy produced from Powder’s first litter with Munson back in 2017. So, with that, we had Grandmother, Mother, Son, and Ila as an Aunt/Cousin depending on how you looked at the family tree. We also had Fizzy and Rye along for good measure.

Man, it was amazing to see the change 3-weeks had brought to the region. Once green and lush, everything was crunchy, dry and brown. On the way into town Jenna and I stopped in an area to air the dogs out and get a quick hunt in before checking into the hotel. The area held plenty of ditch parrots mid-September,  so what would we find? Well, it isn’t so much of what we found, but what did Fizzy find? She found the only pit filled with gloppy black mud, that’s what she found. Her bright and vibrate orange and white coat was rendered black with stringy ropes of muck dripping black, scummy water rife with the stench of rotting organic material. A simple bath wasn’t going to fix that, we needed a priest. Now this is how you end a twelve hour drive a short way out from the hotel! Yeah, in case you wondered, no birds, hell the girls didn’t even get birdy. We covered every square inch of the property. Frickin’ sweet man.

​We met Josh and Dio in the morning, as he had succumbed the afternoon before to the siren’s call of good-looking habitat and had to pull several Sharpies from the sky – poor guy…but the detour made an evening arrival out of the question.  We decided to hunt a pheasant rich area that wasn’t much of a secret. Just a few days into Montana’s pheasant season and Holy Moly were the birds thinned out and wise to human activity. We spent some time on the struggle bus hunting other areas with very limited success. This trip was going to be hard. Later that afternoon we hunted an area we like, because it takes some walking to get into, and because of this, it usually is pretty good. We were not entirely disappointed! All of the dogs did some really nice work on the ditch chickens and our game pouches began to collect birds. Fizzy, normally very “sticky”, showed marked improvement with her tracking and relocating and became an effective pheasant dog on this trip. Dio, managed a few points. Ila and Tule, a great team on phez, did what they do – one tracking and pointing, the other getting the bird boxed in, which translates to some fairly easy shots.

After such a frustrating day, we decided we needed to change the script, and so we began afresh in an area I had only briefly hunted a few years ago. This did in fact change the game for pheasant for our hunting. We saw generous numbers of birds, and many were still very huntable using pointing dogs. In short, we had a blast! We spent the last days of the trip trying our new to us parcels of land, rotating dogs, and hunting to our limits, which were filled with fat birds and colorful feathers despite their being an alarming amount of hunting pressure.
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On the last day, Josh managed to bang out his limit in short order, and I had one last bird to get. A decision was made to get that bird elsewhere. To be honest, I wasn’t really on board with this, as I wanted my last phez and to head back out and work on mix bag hunting! We toured around the area, and each property we looked over really didn’t hold much if any magic for my sensibilities. Wasting time, and feeling pressured, we selected a parcel we wanted to hunt the day before, but trucks were already there. I said, “that’s it, I’ll hunt it or pass – and after that we’ll switch gears”.

Arriving at the property and getting a good view for the first time, I wasn’t exactly excited. A small square of cut wheat stubble surrounding a dished out, dried swamp pit the shape of a pear. It was filled with tule grass, cattail, and dense tall grasses that grow in these areas. Just great, this was gonna be tough with one gun. I made the decision to throw it all at the wall, with one critical handicap – no GPS collars! So, we ran Powder, Tule, Ila, and Fizzy, hoping the chaos would encourage at least a bird or two to make a mistake.  Josh and Jenna off my left flank, we walked counterclockwise starting from the 6 o’clock position. We reached 12 o’clock, and nothing had stirred, also I was having some regrets on running the dogs without collars. They spent most of the time burrowing sight unseen in the deep thick vegetation. At 1 o’clock, hens were starting to pop, hey that’s a gooder sign. By 2 o’clock, Josh motioned me to punch out to the tree, I nodded in agreement and stepped up and out of the deep channel I had been in to see Fizzy on point to my right 15 yards away. Then I saw the white fur of Tule, and Powder on the right and left flank of Fizz. I made my approach, and walked to Fizzy’s left, there was Ila, deeper in and to Powder’s left. I began stomping and smashing the dried crispy vegetation aggressively. Whoop! The rooster lost his nerve and down he went. What a way to finish it out, all the dogs on point together, doing it all without any influence. Just fantastic!

Hello gang! Well, that is likely an ambitious statement theses days since I have not been regularly making blog posts for a while now. I do hope to correct that moving forward, and possibly win your hearts and minds back.

We recently returned from a bit of a whirlwind tour of Montana for some "early season" birds. This trip we were accompanied by Sam and Sage, with the intent to show them the ropes of hunting Montana. I think we did our jobs right. We got Sam and Sage on Sage Grouse, Huns, Sharptail, and mass of pre-season Pheasant, and contact with Blue Grouse. It is hard to shake a stick at that!

We dealt with some extreme weather, high winds, and poor shooting - yeah. It seems our shooting mojo got left in the garage... Seriously, never omit that from your packing list. Ever. Additionally, and rather regrettably, I failed to pack my good camera. Temperatures were surprisingly cool for this trip. So much so my phone case hardened up, which made the "quick camera launch" feature impossible to use.

Fortunately for me, Ila and Rye can and will hold a point. I'm standing there like a fool trying to capture images, gloved hands, camera not activating... at a certain point a guy has to come to terms with losing the photos for the attempt to bag a bird. Hence the dearth of photos from what was otherwise a good trip.

Rye and Ila worked well together, and backed one another with very little or no intervention - that work is starting to pay its dividends! Sage hunted very well, and for what was essentially her first "big girl" hunt, she did fantastic! She was field trained entirely in-house as well. She hunted her own hunts, she made solid points and backed/co-hunted like a much more experienced dog - this was exciting to see as her breeder and trainer.

We'll be getting back out there with the whole horde soon - maybe we'll see you?

​I learned that temperatures in the low 100’s for over a month straight caused any early season chicks to perish from exposure, since they would have been incapable of regulating their body temperature. Additionally, due to the high heat, hens will not lay eggs. Then there was the “heat dome” itself, which caused the vast majority of the much-needed monsoon storms to skirt around the areas most needing them to create food and cover. Then there is this other massive complication, the ranchers and the Forest Service itself.

​The winter rains of ‘22/’23 created a bumper crop of prairie grasses. It was incredible! So the ranchers brought in record numbers of cattle to eat all of this grass. In sixteen seasons of hunting the same region, I honestly can’t think of a time where I saw so many cattle. Then the heat dome sat in, and warded off the summer rains, aka monsoons. With that grass production halted and the huge herds acted like cancer of the prairie and consumed tens of thousands of acres of Forest Service land down to rocks and dirt. Many areas simply looked as if a bomb had gone off. The cattle were even eating young mesquite shoots, and old yucca leaves. It was surreal. Ranchers aren’t always the stewards of the land that they oft claim they are, and the U.S. Forest Service gets and F- for their management efforts.

As you might imagine, it all made for a tough year for the quail. With ground cover either being non-existent or in fairly rough shape, the Mearns, famous for holding tight, were acting a lot like desert birds and running like track stars. It was hot, mid-70’s, no cloud cover, and no air movement. Basically, it was tough, but there were birds. Some areas coveys weren’t healthy, maybe two or three birds – no shooting, and we never went back. In other areas, coveys were healthy, the typical six to eight birds and in select places there were large coveys, twelve or more birds. The trick was to find places where the rain managed to sneak in, where the terrain and cover created cooler micro-climates where the birds could thrive.

​With all that being said, was it really that bad? Well sort of, but also not at all. Thankfully word got out, and the army of hunters who normally find their way to the region flagged off and went elsewhere. So, hunting pressure overall was much lighter, basically COVID levels. Still people figured out some of the bigger easier to get to areas and turned the screws, sadly decimating the quail populations that were there… We continued to explore new to us areas… We certainly found our share of birds and Ila turned out to be the hero of the trip. Despite tough conditions, she managed to come through over and over for us. Everyone else did well, and even little Rye started to figure out how to work in the hot, dry conditions.

​In fact, the dogs did such good work overall, I had several days my shooting (hitting) was 100%! I don’t know that I’ve ever had a day of quail hunting where I hit everything, I shot at let alone several of such days! When the dog has the birds dead to rights, and you have the opportunity to walk up slowly and calmly, consider your shooting lanes, or on many cases, windows. Release the dog for the flush and pick your bird(s) in a quiet Zen state, wow, just wow. Of course, I had a few days I didn’t do so well, but that is rough shooting for you, and Mearns quail hunting is oftentimes some very rough shooting!

All in all, we had a solid season, and made a few new friends. We can only hope the monsoons are good this coming summer, the ranchers scale their operations accordingly, and that the Forest Service does their job to protect the land.

Yes, you read that right. There are easier and far more typical places to hunt Sage Grouse, but when Dominic Bachman invites you to go hunting with him, you clear out your calendar to make it happen. Even more so when the hunt is in such a unique and challenging environment.

This distinctive southeastern Oregon hunt must be applied for in advance, then if you are lucky enough to be chosen for this intense event, with less than a 10% chance of being drawn, you have to be prepared for high elevation. All the best hunting is right around 8,000 feet of elevation. The breath-taking views encompass Hawaiian-like canyons, dramatic mountain peaks, desert oasis’ and alpine lakes – all in one spot!

The hunting itself is incredibly challenging, even more so for me since I battled intense bouts of sciatica the entire time. The sage brush is low, compact and incredibly dense which makes walking nearly impossible. Each step is literally more akin to a high step march, with the footing of each step being questionable. This was hard and I wanted to quit, badly. But I was there. I signed up for this adventure for this experience. So, I did my best to put my big boy pants on and see it through.

​I brought Ila, Fizzy and Rye along for this adventure. Up before dawn and rolling in the dark to a new location can be a surreal experience; follow the leader. With the sun beginning to light the horizon on fire, I took solace in having downloaded a lot of extra maps in my OnX. We arrived and Dom said, “This is your oyster”. A large roughly triangular shaped piece of mountain slope with a few rocky knobs. We Jimmy Jammed from the bottom to the top – straight into the sun. With sciatica firing off with nearly every step, and in some cases shorting muscles out robbing me of what little power I have. Good times.  For this first hunt I had Rye and Fizzy down, once at the top, we began to roughly zigzag the rest of our “field” back down and roughly into the wind. It became clear that bird numbers where not what Dom had anticipated. I kept waiting to hear a shot in the distance… because we had nothing. No sign at all. This hunt got long, my legs a tad wobbly, and mentally I was starting to check out. I began to wheel around to the left to make what would be one of the last zigs to be made. Within a few steps, the girls began to come around. BAM. Rye froze, Fizzy froze. I completed my step, and a grouse few wild! I took a passing shot and wiffed but had the presence of mind to look back to exactly where it came from, as it was highly likely there would be more. On cue, a second bird few, and with a little more zen I took and made the shot! We were on the board. We hunted later that day, still with no success for the party. 

We got the spare on, then took Dom’s truck to do some exploring and decided to hunt the hilltop above where he and Aaron had collected three birds earlier in the morning. I had Ila down, as I really wanted her to have a successful Sage Grouse hunt. As we were coming to terms with the hunt turning into a walk with dogs whilst carrying firearms a single grouse flew wild from Dom’s right. Once the grouse had cleared the dogs, he dispatched the bird with a cool dispassionate efficiency. He was done, which was good for him, as he needed to pack up and go home…he had to work in the morning. We had a good laugh over Aaron’s misfortune the morning before. Their hunt took them basically up to my tuck, where they had seen a few grouse land near. They had dropped off some of their surplus gear in my truck, and while they were farting around, Aaron had discovered an interesting perfectly heart shaped rock. He stepped on it and it gave more than he had anticipated, which prompted him to turn in over. This is when he learned I had used said rock to cover my morning expurgation. He was, mortified. This gave Dom and I a hell of a good laugh. Day two ended with a beautiful, but unproductive hike where I ran all three girls in a Hail Mary attempt to pick something up. ​

​I was prepared to leave early to get to Burns to have the truck checked out, after all the steering wheel was rocked nearly a full 90-degrees out of whack. Not an exciting prospect when facing an eight-hour drive home. Jenna and I chatted, and she convinced me to go ahead with the plan to do the short hunt close to camp, if for anything just for the girls to stretch their legs – tomorrow was going to be a long day in the truck for them, in particular if I had to wait to be seen at the Les Schawb there in Burns. The only place in a zillion miles that could be of any help to me.
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We set out, and about 30 minutes in I was about to turn back to the tuck to wrap this encounter up and there it was. A single grouse turd. Really. One single grouse turd, old and dried up. All alone. I laughed to myself. Only I would find a single grouse turd. Within a few steps an old roost. Hey, not bad I thought to myself. Then another ten feet, another roost, then another, and another. My hopes began to rise. This had been the most sign I had seen in all the hunting I had done thus far. But where were they? Up to my left a single snowberry bush stood proudly above the sage like a sore thumb. As Fizzy approached it, a single grouse flew wild, and it bombed down and into the ravine to my right. No way for any shooting there, and really there was no way I was going down after it. My brain clicked on, go to the bush! As I did Ila and Rye came around and became birdy. Rye hung around the snowberry, Ila went into tracking mode, head down, tail swishing. She was on ground scent. They were running! A bird flushed wild well out ahead of her. I shot; the bird was down! I was finished. I had done it. I had made it through the difficulties, it was a great feeling to have.

Would I do it again if given the opportunity to do so again, yes, of course. It was an incredible trip, thanks for inviting me Dom!

​What a grand time we had! Now that is out of the way, I’ll share a few details with you. I took Powder and Rye on the paired down, lean camping trip for Sharptail and Hungarian Partridge in Northeastern Montana. These early season hunts have marked temperatures in the 90’s, which limits how long you can be out running dogs even more so than the relatively low limit on Sharptail. However, if your shooting is on point, your day can be closed out in a matter of minutes!

We camped within a quarter of a mile of the Canadian border. With the windows on the truck canopy fully open to allow the breeze to cool us and blow the flies out, we were gifted with the occasional call of a Sharptail. I had indeed picked a good spot! Later that night we had a “Blue Super Moon”, which Rye wasn’t too sure of. She did her due diligence to ward it off initially, but in the end she settled to watch it carefully while Powder and I slept.

​In the morning we were hunting directly at legal light and were in birds a few minutes later. The girls did their job, and I did mine – we were on the board with our first Sharpie. The covey flew a short way uphill, landing at the fence line directly below where a large raptor had been roosting. Our presence kept the raptor from doing what it wanted to do, and amidst the confusion, the grouse flushed again over the hilltop and to the Northwest. I thought perhaps they had landed short to take advantage of the better cover, but I was wrong. The covey rose as a group out of range. As soon as we resumed our walk, that is when a much larger covey just a little way further up the hill took flight – well out of range. Popcorning to the sky, easily 30 birds if not more. They wanted nothing to do with us. Once they were gone, Rye was still standing…

​We looped around the wheat field to hunt the lower portion of the hills to the south. I zigzagged into and out of the various levels of cover for a while then settled on a little higher elevation where a dozen or more deer had been resting. Right in the middle of where the deer had been camped out the girls got birdy. Powder swung wide and to my left. Rye stayed pretty much right in front of me only about 40 yards out, and went on point as soon after the “good cover” turned scrapy and thin. Her tail was vibrating vigorously, so much so it appeared she was flagging! I approached her, and stroked the underside of her tail to steady it. Her body tensed and birds started to fly. Rye stood. I shot and took a bird. Looked to Rye, where she still stood, and I took another shot toppling our third bird of the day, and a true covey rise double. Rye still stood. I was beaming and remembered to shout, “hunt dead”. Powder had begun to retrieve the second bird first, which they carried in together. The softer hit first bird evaded us for a while, but it was Rye who found the young male for me in some deep cover!

​Barely five minutes later we were into another covey. Powder was first on the scene. She bumped them, and three or four birds came up. The girls were steady, so I shot and subsequently missed. Powder gave a little chase, and more birds came up. Then a few more. On the last of the covey, both girls stood smartly, and I took a passing shot on a Sharpie with it’s warp drive online and managed to dump it. Rye located the bird and retrieved it to within a few feet and set it down. I’ll take it. She has been reluctant to retrieve whole birds, despite enjoying retrieving all sorts of unusual items. It has to start somewhere!

By the time we had made it back to the truck, the heat was up, and becoming quite oppressive. We ate our breakfasts, and I got to make my coffee. We spent the rest of the day scouting for a new camping spot and hunting grounds. 

Sparing you some of the agonizing detail, day two was also an equally great day of hunting and dog work, in particular from the puppy, Rye. We had six coveys of Sharptail within 600 yards of the camp and had my shooting been half as good as opening day we would have been shut out within fifteen minutes of starting our day! But alas, my hit ratio took irreparable damage for the season… Of note, Rye offered to honor Powder a couple times without any intervention or encouragement.

​​Day three we camped near to the Canadian border again, and had another great day of hunting, dog work, and shooting! Later that morning I got invited to hunt with a couple of friends a few hours away. Me being who I am, and being easily confused with my days and dates left the area 24-hours before I should have… None the less visiting with Eddy and Anita is always a treat, so I have no regrets for making time to visit with them. We left for the mountains the following morning for Rye to have a chance on Blue Grouse – she didn’t disappoint!

​The longer I have been into upland hunting, the more I have gotten into quality dog work. It is fun to watch and be a part of. Additionally, it’s safer for the people and dogs involved and typically offers the easiest/best shooting opportunities that can be had for the situation at hand. My journey to learn highly effective and humane techniques has been fairly well documented here in this blog. As I have slowly gained proficiency as a trainer and handler over the years, my dogs have also become better and better in their performances. One hand washes the other. Making the whole experience more and more rewarding.

​​Next, we depart for a special opportunity to hunt Sage Grouse in the Steens Mountains of Oregon… possibly another story will need to be told?

​Since you are reading this, it is a safe bet we are back in cold, dark, and wet Spokane and we are no longer in the business of shoveling sunshine and hunting quail in the high desert. I could make this the shortest recap ever: we had a great trip. But then that isn’t a lot of fun now, is it?
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A week prior to heading South for the big Pheonix dog show, Jenna had gone to Oregon to help our friend Stacey. It was an eventful stay, and to say the least, Stacey was helped, as was Mr. Kim & Laura. A made for TV drama if there ever was one. As an added kicker, she contracted COVID and it hit her while on the 9-hour drive home.
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Jenna did a turn and burn move, and we left with her having barely 24 hours at home. It is a full twenty-hour drive from Spokane to Pheonix, and all was going well until we were about five hours out – the VID hit me like a freight train, and I had to pull off the road. Driving was no longer possible for me. Day one I missed the dog show, then life began to return to me. We wore our masks, and stayed away from people, which was pretty easy to do at the enormous West World horse pavilion. Ila did pretty good in her Open shows, and Fizzy did well in all of hers, as we have come to expect. After the show cluster ended, we headed further South and got started with some desert quail hunting.

​Jenna and I spend our summers training, showing, and fooling around with our dogs, but also, we have an unusual hobby of tracking rainfall for the areas we prefer to hunt in Arizona. Mearns quail populations are tied directly to the summer monsoons. So, knowing when and where the rain fell would likely help us to produce more finds. One might think this would be easy since rainfall data can be found with relative ease on the internet… but not if the primary area you hunt, over a million acres, doesn’t have any rain gauges! We use a myriad of odd sources, and spend time watching the active weather radar, which helps us to identify areas of interest. I then draw borders on these areas in OnX for us to go and investigate using boot leather.

​This past season was a high-water mark with how extremely systematic we were with this approach. In all we located and identified over 140 new and unique coveys for us during our thirty days of Mearns hunting. We did hunt a few Old Hunts so our total covey count was a good bit higher, but what really interests us is the “new to us” category. It serves to validate our methodology and makes the exploration into the unknown even more rewarding. We rarely hunt past noon, that more or less makes us “half-day” hunters down there. Say what you will, but we aren’t there to make money. Making it back to the house by one or two in the afternoon to eat, shower, relax, and enjoy some of what the area offers is also part of the package for us. We are proud of what we do and how we do it, one or two dogs on the ground at a time, a casual pace, and short-ish days. If you are running three or four dogs at a time, doing a crew swap at lunch to have fresh dogs on the ground and hunting until dark – well, I’d hope you are finding more – better yet, do some better hitting and you’ll have to stop! Most folks I compare notes with find much fewer coveys and spend a good bit more time walking…but I digress.

​We’ve also always kept a soft count on covey finds for each dog, but this year, and the number of birds we were finding got a little more serious in this department as well. The Leader Board Emerged. We established a few easy rules. Coveys would be counted even if the dog made errors, it just happens e.g. bumping. If we were running two dogs and they both pretty much tied into the covey at the same time both got credit. If one was on a covey first, they got solo credit, the backing/cooperating dog was along for the ride. We joked about figuring out a handicap in the event a dog with a bunch or errors passed a dog with few to none…it was close, but it didn’t happen. So, for now that will remain a project for another day.

​You may find the results surprising. The Old Guy Fowler came in last, but also with the fewest days hunted by far, with 14 coveys. Tule was 4th with 15 coveys. The Queen of Mearns Hunting (8 seasons), Powder, came in 3rd, with 35 coveys. Ila was second with 51 coveys. Fizzy, in her 2nd hunting season, came in 1st with 54 coveys – also with the fewest errors by far!

​What does it all really mean? Well, having several months to reflect on this I can say we had a grand time! We hunted with new and old friends, had dog work I couldn’t have dreamed of just a few years ago. I my shooting was always on point (that’s a joke kids), and at times it was the things that fuel the creation of colorful memes, but I also had days where my hitting was literally the stuff that gets written into song. If I never had a Mearns season like this past, at least I had it as an incredible high-water mark to remember contemplatively while enjoying some fine libations with the sun on my face.

Not a lot to say, other than we had an exciting time and definitely found our share of birds. We hunted hard and the girls did some excellent work and upped their game to meet the edginess of the mid-season birds. Not to be mistaken for the puppy friendly early season birds... Each dog was able to work and point Pheasant, Hungarian Partridge, and of course, Sharptailed Grouse on this blitz style 5-days of hunting trip. Sadly, I started off by missing some great opportunities to take game I had been gifted with. However, I managed to find my mojo at an undisclosed location and started filling the bag and completing great hunting sequences for the girls - which was nice. Here are a few shots, in no particular order, from the trip.

​During hunting season, we have been taking some time to moonlight for Sage Canyon Outfitters guiding discerning clients on preserve hunts. I get to hunt the girls at least twice a day for some really good folks. The sets are rather generous, and we can easily expect 25 to 50 points per hunt... tailgate photos are about half the birds taken on each hunt (I must do a drop and call for support). Tule likes to sneak in for the group shots, while Ila and Powder prefer to lay in the shade and drink water, Fizzy tends to be all business unless there is mud to roll in. Here are only a few of the group photos from that vigorous five days! Enjoy