Grouse season is still two weeks away. But there’s no telling her that this is a dress rehearsal. “Scrimmage” doesn’t compute. I make room for gradients, progressions and half-measures, but she lives in a world of absolutes. There either are feathers, or there are not. And there happen to be some feathers very nearby., Read More
“Dada, can I um… can I go over to Al and Anne’s house… pleeease Dada?” asked my five year old. Al and Anne are our next-door neighbors. My son visits most days, but he’d missed them the day before. They’d been in the mountains, scouting for elk. They’re 81 and 75 years old, respectively., Read More
“Dada, can I say it? I wanna say it! Please Dada!” pled my five year old. To my left the dog sat rigid as a stump, staring at the distant spot where the lake swallowed her bumper. She was taut as a bowstring, but only the slightest tremble betrayed her growing impatience. Click here, Read More
If I’d had a pipe and an Irish setter, we could have been in a Norman Rockwell painting. Puffy white clouds floated in a bluebird sky above vibrant green sage and the rolling red-dirt prairie. A man, at ease with the world and confident in his forthcoming conquest, strides forth, a shotgun cradled across, Read More
It stayed packed for five months, always in the truck or near the front door, usually with a dog curled next to it. Carried through lush bottoms full of wild roosters, and over high sagebrush plains in search of sage grouse, it acquired blood stains from chukar, and the unmistakeable smell of scotch from a leaky flask. The, Read More
Frozen ground made for easy driving. We knew temps would rise and conditions would change, but thoughts of mud, chains and spending the night were shoved to the back of our minds. Instead we hunted. Side hilling steep faces, post holing through snow on north facing slopes. following the noses of our dogs. As the sun, Read More
The new neighbors are a noisy bunch. They’ve been raising hell every morning for weeks now. I put the neighborhood watch on the case. “There’s um, Dada there’s three now. I know because’n I heard a quieter one from way over… um over there and it had a different pattern,” reports my four, Read More
Parents often tell me that having and raising kids really cemented their place in a community. They’d been disconnected from whole populations of neighbors, ignorant of critical institutions and uninvolved in many cultural rituals until the demands of parenthood thrust them into the fray. I think that might be overstating it a bit, and, Read More
My heart sank. Three shots, three hit birds, none in the bag. It’s called hunting for a reason. Do it long enough and things don’t always go right. Good dogs, responsible shooting, and practice mitigate lost or crippled birds. Normally, in a given season I might lose a couple, but this was entirely new, Read More
It isn’t South Dakota. Grease wood at eye level impedes all progress. Russian olives pierce through layers of clothing, and they are out for blood. It’s tough country not traditionally suited for pheasants. Roosters take on the character of their surroundings – tough, wily, birds with well developed legs, that loathe to fly. They relish in mocking, Read More