Big Day

This has been a big week for us. On Monday the vets X-rays showed that Dee's leg had healed nicely from his trauma and surgeries. So Tuesday morning Dee was one of the dogs chosen for the first hunt. As Mike unloaded him from the kennel I'm not sure which one of them was more excited.


Dee ran and hunted as if he had never been injured. It was a beautiful thing to see the 2 French boys out there together causing terror for pheasants.



We got into some pheasants and later some quail so we returned to the Open Range content to relax and reflect on a good day. But when we returned there was a message waiting for Mike that his daughter had developed complications and was going to have an emergency C-section that evening. Several anxious hours later the good news came through that Mom and baby were both doing well - Mike was a grandfather!!! The next morning we were hooked up and on the road at dark-thirty, headed the 7 hours to the hospital over by Kansas City.
Mike and his beautiful daughter, Taylor


Christian was born a month premature so for precaution he is spending a little time in an incubator but the beautiful little boy is healthy and sound.



We will visit again this morning and then head back to the other end of the state because Saturday is opening day and we managed to score impossible to get tix to the Longspur Chapter of Pheasants Forever banquet. Never a dull day!


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Homesteads and hunters

I know there has been a gap in my posting but internet service is often absent or too poor to post. Not to mention that hunting leaves me very tired by evening and I have a hard time staying awake long enough! We are hunting in Nebraska while waiting for Kansas to open on Nov 10th. Although we are only 20-30 miles north of some of the KS places we will hunt, the habitat is a bit different, with less overall cover available but we are still getting into birds. There are also a lot of hunters which comes as a shock after Montana where we never came across another bird hunter. Twice already here in NE, we have had hunters who were either bold or rude enough as to actually enter a unit where they saw us hunting. Both times it appeared that they were hoping that perhaps birds would flush ahead of us and fly into the edge where they entered. Rude and disconcerting.

But one of the things that is similar between KS and NE and that fascinates me is the number of abandoned houses in the country. This is so foreign to this New Englander where a vacant house is rare and residents value and preserve old houses. Here on the prairie, populations have been declining for more than 70 years as machinery reduced the laborers needed for farming. The people who do remain here overwhelmingly want to live in the small towns and not out in the country. So there are empty and abandoned houses scattered every few miles in every direction. Some appear to be old original farmsteads, long abandoned, but others are much more recent. Sometimes the only evidence that there was a farmstead is a windbreak row of trees, now protecting only the remaining outbuildings. I have photographed a few to share and think about how proud the original owners must have been of these places and wonder where the families have gone.

What a beauty this one must have been. (click on any photo to enlarge)


This big home is pretty far gone but the many outbuildings are still good.














There is usually nothing around these homesteads for miles and miles. Well, except maybe bunches of these guys. ;-)





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Brrrrrr

The winds were howling and the forecast called for a low of 12 degrees with a wind chill below zero. Highs might break into the 30's and there was snow on the steps as we got up to exercise the dogs. Mike, a man full of surprises, said, "what would you think of leaving MT this morning and going down to Nebraska? Their phez and quail season open on Saturday.". Done deal. As I type this we are in South Dakota, headed for southwest Nebraska. On the road again.



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Coffee's on

Coffee's on, our days start early


From our warm bed we can often see the sunrise out the (dusty) back window


We hunt most every day but we did take a couple of days off and just relaxed by Fort Peck Lake








It was good to swim the dogs there....especially the couple who had met up with one of this guys buddies while hunting a couple of days before


A serious windstorm later that week covered fences with tumbleweeds


That same storm brought rain which made a mess of the roads and the rig


Mud and our camper are not the only things to watch for on the roads


The reflection in the windshield is of some of the permission slips and maps from the Block Management Areas that we hunt


The prairie sunsets help us to wrap up our busy days






We fall into bed pretty tired, yet happy





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Trifecta

A storm with wicked wind and rain blew in earlier this week. The rain was very welcome in this drought stricken area but the 40+ mph winds with gusts over 60 mph rocked the Open Range and sent us into town for refuge. A white knuckle drive in on slick mud roads with our 50' rig left us happy to be off the prairie for a day. But yesterday the winds had calmed a little so off we went. Our destination was a remote area with dry creek beds and ravines, or coulees as they are known here, to hunt out of the wind.

Pheasants in this area are wild and not widely known about. Their population can vary widely due to winter conditions and such. Just last evening a rancher whose family homesteaded his ranch back in 1911 told us that there are not many of those "Chinese pheasants" around. He had obviously not been on our hunt that same day not far from his home.

It was one of those days when everything went well. All of the dogs had multiple finds and points and we gunners tried hard to do right by them. So far I have carried only the small p&s camera so the photography has not been great but I managed a few snapshots. In this type of terrain most pics of points look something like this. Stickers had Storm's ears pinned to the back of her head.


Retrieve pics aren't much better. Raleigh delivering a rooster to Mike.


It takes a persistence to get these birds pinned and you have to deal with some rough terrain.





The birds would often sneak up draws as they saw/heard us approach and the dogs did a great job of trailing and pinning a number of them. Tweed trailed some birds about 50 yards up into a draw; point, stalk, point, stalk.


Mike and Jack swung over our way and when I moved in above Jack's point near the top of that same draw 2 roosters popped out, I dropped one and Tweed made the retrieve.


This particular draw topped out onto a modest stretch of grass before a huge oat field began. It was late and we were ready to head to the truck when Jack snapped on point toward some grasses at the fields edge. After Mike approached he relocated a couple of times before freezing, pinning the running bird. Knowing that he had nowhere to go, a large rooster burst out and Mike dropped it nicely. The spurs on this bird were much longer than on the roo that I had shot back in the draw: the older birds are much better at escape but he had met his match in Jack.





At this point Mike had shot his limit of pheasant plus had dropped a Hun earlier. We have been passing up on sharptails but he shot one on the way back to the truck to complete a hard-earned trifecta of 3 species from one cover in a day.





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Hun-ology

There are basically 4 species of upland birds to hunt here in eastern Montana: sharptail grouse, Hungarian partridge (huns), pheasant, and sage grouse. Birds seem to be in good numbers and are scattered across the vast countryside. Each hunter seems to have their favorite species and for different reasons.

Sharptail are the most frequently seen birds. Even driving down the road it is common for a group to flush in front of the truck and fly into a field. Early season (September) sharptails are usually scattered plentifully and can provide good training experience for dogs. At this time, late October, there are no grasshoppers and the sharptail have bunched up for winter around here and are now very difficult to get them pinned. Sharptail are easy to shoot and, as I learned, easy to drop with a single shot. They make you feel good as a shooter. However, their meat is dark and bloody and not our favorite so we do not focus on them.

Pheasant are always fun birds to shoot. We will be focusing on them ( and quail) later in Kansas. But here in MT they seem to be scattered in modest numbers. I was very surprised to learn that Montana has an aggressive stocking program and the F&G website provides a map of the release sites. Certain areas of the state, such as the Plentywood area, are particularly heavily stocked/released and many hunters are drawn there for the large number of phez that can be found as a result. Neither of us is interested in hunting released birds so we have not gone up there but have enjoyed the occasional encounters we have since they are good eating.

Sage grouse are a challenging bird, both for their habits and habitat. Sage is their food source and are found in areas that are often very rough and rocky. We have not yet headed to any sage grouse areas and may run out of time up here before doing so this year. Mike says they are very good to eat, I guess I'll have to wait until next year to find out.

Huns. Oh yeah. They are fun! These birds are smaller than a grouse but larger than a quail. They are a covey bird and when they flush they make a surprising screeching noise. They are true survivalists and wicked smart. When they flush the covey stays tight together and flies very low over or around the nearest hill or terrain before landing and can be difficult to locate again. I think that these are best tasting birds here and we are really focusing on them. It is important to not shoot more than a couple from a group to not put the groups survival at risk. Mike has hunted these birds a lot and we have been pretty successful in locating groups and especially in relocating after flushing. We call this schooling by these little birds "Hun-ology" and I am an eager student.

The spot where I shot my first Hun





"Got 'em, Jack?"





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Where the deer and the antelope.....have died off

A disease called Blue-tongue has drastically reduced the number of antelope and whitetail deer in the region where we have been hunting for the past few days. We have seen only a couple of small herds of antelope where there used to be many. While pheasant hunting some brush I came across what I thought was a cool 8pt skull and antlers in good shape. Mike packed it out and the back of the Open Range has a new adornment.







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Location:Montana