Partridge and setter, each super-naturally gifted within his time. Bound within the all-consuming mission each was born for: to best the other. This story is true, as true as you wish it to be…as true as the truth of all the great grouse dogs and all the great grouse...
My first hunting dog was a Chesapeake Bay retriever. That might seem a poor choice of first-time hunting dog, Chesapeakes being notoriously idiosyncratic—if you use that word to express their penchant for independent thinking. Other words would be eccentric, singular,...
For more than 50 years I’ve been going up there. If it happens to be during hunting season – that is, deer season in the fall or turkey season in the spring – I usually have a rifle or shotgun in hand. For at least 30 of those years, my aging mother-in-law always...
We had just turned the horses into the wind when I noticed Beck, one of Jeff’s A-Team setters, getting birdy. Was it another bunch of meadowlarks or something better? Then, 50 yards in front of us, Beck locked down tight and Bandit, his canine partner from the A-Team,...
A long time ago, when I was a younger man, anticipation seemed to be the better part of everything. Everything, it seemed, was better, sweeter, more perfect in the planning stage than in the eventual reality. The “other hand” is that with the passing of considerable...
In the pine barren, the pasture’s edge, the orchard, this is the ruffed grouse’s court . . . and we are honored to be there. In an orchard, long abandoned, we make our way toward a solitary tree, one of few bearing apples this fall. That it has fruit at all strikes me...
Bird hunters around Montana, particularly those in the western half of the state, should be “bear aware” and prepared for an encounter with a grizzly bear. In recent years, grizzly bear populations have expanded into areas where they haven’t been for...
Autumn is coming hard now. For those of us who follow the gun and dog, it won’t be long before the gnats and mosquitos are replaced by quail and doves and ducks and geese and we’ll be ready for some good shooting. This time of year I typically get a lot of questions...
There are many reasons for sportsmen to place North Dakota on their bucket list. The entire state, or about 90 percent of the territory, is home to large ranches and moderate-sized farms. Agriculture is king in a vast swath of land that stretches from the flat Red...
“They fall out of the sky like a lawn chair,” my co-worker told me after he returned from his first sandhill crane hunt. “What do you do with a crane?” I asked. “They’re called the ‘ribeye of the sky,’” he replied, and that was all I needed to know. I was up for...
