Before its hollow bottle baritone – “H’hoohoohoo… hoo… hoo” – interrupted the predawn stillness of a snow-draped January morning, I’d done most of my “bird watching” down the barrel of a 12-gauge shotgun. In fact, I was only in the backyard at four a.m. as a potty-break escort for our weeks-old Labrador, my new bird dog in training.

I play at predator each fall. What hours I can spare from making a living, I spend slinking around the mountains and sagebrush steppe. In a good year I’ll kill an antelope, an elk, maybe a deer and a few birds. These I bring home to my family, where I pour more hours, and more love,, Read More