Had a solid few days hunting quail in Idaho with Chaos and Maybe.
I tell you about my 2021 season and maybe you'll understand why I didn't have much to talk about.
Valley Quail & Excuses 2023 Episode 2
Hey, here’s something that’ll likely gross you out. I let the dogs lick my cooking and dining hard stuffs clean and then give them a good scrub with disinfectant wipes and towel dry them. Beats the hell out of heating wash water and scrubbing. A guy could lose half his hunting hours each day being unnecessarily hygienic. After many years of this practice, I haven’t gotten sick and my wife still kisses me. You guys aren’t going to tell her are you?
The area in Idaho, that I most wanted to revisit, burned late last summer. Some time after I last studied the fire maps. BLM ground workers were there when I topped the last hill on the two track leading to the spring. They were working the soil for seeding. They were nice guys who suggested other areas, where they thought I could find birds. I thanked them for their work and I could tell by their expressions they don’t often hear “thank you’s”.
I’m sure that many traveling hunters aren’t aware that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) employ wildlife biologists just like the states do. Some might argue that they don’t do enough to prevent wildlife habitat from being over grazed, but they do great work in attempting to restore habitat lost to fire. In just the past few years I’ve also noticed sensitive water source areas, within large tracts of BLM, fenced from livestock intrusion. When you see workers out in the heat, stop and offer them a beverage or ice water. But mostly, just stop in the field or a regional office, to say “thanks”. We hunters don’t have enough friends out there, but these employees are some of them.
Another note on thank yous. If you call or meet face to face for advice from any public source, send them a note after your hunt, to let them know how you did, and repeat your thank you. I once stopped at an office I’d visited on a previous trip and saw a note I’d sent after that visit, pinned to their bulletin board.
I decided to bug out to hunt the areas I storied in the previous podcast. Somewhere in between, I returned for a few days to chase quail near the burned area. I always moved quail there, but not large or plentiful coveys.
I arrived after dark and parked off a two track near good quail cover. In the morning, I let the dogs run off some steam while I cooked eggs and bacon for our breakfasts. I used to bring a lot of dry dog food on trips but I’ve found that like me, they’re often too tired to eat at the end of the day. And dry kibble is about the last thing that they look forward to. So now, I just bring about 3xs the amount of food that I would normally eat and we sit down together at a family meal. I also know there are a lot of cautions out there about feeding a dog too heavy before they hunt. I guess there stomachs can twist in their abdomen, causing a horrible death. I don’t doubt that this has occurred but I do question the likelihood, and further, I wonder why food is an issue, but water isn’t? I’ve never heard of a hunter who deprives his dog of water based on that fear. With all my questions, I still feed them just a lite breakfast, but jammed full of protein and fat.
I sort off the egg whites when I crack them, I’ve heard that they aren’t good for dogs but I really do it for me. I don’t think there’s any nutrition in egg whites and they’re probably just the base for feathers anyway.
I decided to drive the two tracks after breakfast just to look the area over before deciding where to start. I had barely moved the rig when about 2 dozen quail flitted across the track and into a steep ravine. I let the dogs out just to push them deeper into the bottom so I’d be sure the birds wouldn’t back track away from where I intended to hunt. I loaded up the Wingy just in case they flew the wrong way, but no shots were fired. The pups only flushed a few stragglers, as most of the covey was disappearing over the next bank 50 yards away. A guy can’t be certain he’ll relocate birds like this, because quail can sometimes just disappear, but hunting is more fun when you’re certain that there are birds in the area.
I finally parked along another steep heavily wooded and brushed in ravine leading down to a river. I’d never hunted this draw before and it just screamed valley quail. I just let the dogs run through the cover as I would be lucky to get a shot at 1 in 10 flushes in this thick stuff. I needed to push any birds into a more congenial environment.
The brush necked down at mid elevation and that’s when birds busted out. It can be really difficult to estimate flushes in cover like that, but there were a lot. Unfortunately I was plagued with a large population of migrating robins as well. There were robins flitting around in the trees. Hoping through the bushes and flushing from the ground. Did you ever notice that robins are about the ame size as desert quail?
I don’t know how many shells I started the day with or how few I ended with. But I’m sure the difference was substantial. On the good side, I didn’t kill any robins.
The shooting was a lot like downhill chukar. The hills were steep and most of the quail flushed from the upper shoulders of the draw then strafed the brush tops along the bottom. They were practically sizzling when they went by. I couldn’t begin to tell you how many shots I took or how few birds I connected on. However I can tell you it was torture for the girls to try to locate a downed bird in there as the brush was so thick the birds seldom hit the ground. After cat fighting the thorns to get at a dead bird suspended many feet above the ground I realized that nobody needs a 4 ounce quail that bad. It was time to chase the singles that flew into more open fingers and hillsides.
I do know that I crossed a small stream to a small range of hills so I could have some elevation above the dogs and hopefully birds. I only picked up one quail in the few hundred yards to the river but on the return, the dogs rousted out two singles that began plumping out my game bag. Then walking the same path back, not 15 minutes after our first pass. The dogs were into a big covey. I think I only took one shot. There were so many robins that it was almost painful to try to pick out a legal target. Seriously, there were as many robins in the air as quail. I did take a swipe at a quail that was a little too close and he did bloody up my coat some. At one point I could hear more singles calling from a more open hillside on the return side of the stream. We cut through some mature trees with a fairly open understory when a quail flushed from above me. I’ve shot ruffed grouse diving out of trees before but this quail was the first small bird. We were up to five birds in the bag and I was feeling confident if I could take two or three more here, there was another part of the drainage that I could pick up the remainder of a 10 bird limit.
By now, we were nearer the van so I dropped off Chaos amid much protest, and began hunting the hillside away from the rig. I had a couple of near shot opportunities, but I really didn’t want to rub near gunshots into Chaos’s wounds.
Even in the more open areas, I was only getting shots at about one out of every 3 or 4 flushes. Maybe and me probably spent another two hours marching around the 200 acre bottom when we finally returned to the truck with a couple more quail reaching 7 total birds. I missed a couple of “shoulda had” singles that offered split second clear shots before diving out of sight. I don’t know how many coveys or quail were in that bottom. Maybe 75 or 150 birds. I was just confident that I hadn’t done them any real harm and I wouldn’t chase them again this trip.
Back at the rig, I had to tempt Maybe into her kennel with some raw hamburger. Once she experienced a little freedom in the field, she became a lot more independent. She was a little lover at home wanting to snuggle and be held. After a few days out west, she just wanted to run and for me to kill stuff.
I drove a couple miles to another wet draw that I’d hunted for a couple hours, the night before. I started at the bottom near the river and worked up. WE flushed three different moderate sized coveys of quail, and I shot two birds. The draw trailed away from the roads in the higher country. It was my hope that if I had to walk in more than a half mile, few hunters would have preceded me.
ME and Chaos hiked through some pretty good looking Hungarian partridge cover on our way across to the drainage. I kept her up on the edge for almost a mile paralleling the cut in the hopes of flushing some larger birds from the rock edges but it wasn’t to be.
I was disappointed in the bottom just from my view up above. It was heavily grazed. Enough so that I knew we would be lucky to find even a small covey of quail hanging on. But we were here, and only had a couple hours of light, so we may as well stay for the walk.
Chaos flushed a single digit covey hanging around some cattails and brush the cattle hadn’t yet trampled. A single from that group flew past me. I sent a protest shot in the air just to give Chaos some excitement. It was a cheap shell that I didn’t mind wasting.
I didn’t mention earlier, that I bought up some Federal “Field & Target multi-purpose” shells to shoot wobble trap during the summer. I’m pretty particular about the shells I shoot at larger game birds, but an ounce to an ounce and an eighth of 7-1/2’s out of a cylinder barrel is pretty deadly on quail no matter the manufacture.
That’s true, as long as they chamber in your gun. But all summer, a couple of shells out of every box required more than a little convincing. The Federals were highly resistant to the confines of the Wingy chamber. It was a good thing that the forearm wood was firmly attached to the slide rails or I could have pulled it clean off. I should have known better than to take them on this trip. But I never saw a hunt where one or two shells would have made much difference so I didn’t think much of them. They may have cost me a chukar on a covey flush I mentioned in the earlier podcast and more probably a quail or two earlier today.
I shot a pump for many years and it doesn’t take long for your body to pre-set for the amount of energy an action requires. My arms knew when the pressure to close the slide on a shell was too great and would immediately eject the shell and cycle the next.
Another tidbit you may not be aware of: there’s a reason that building codes are exacting about the height of risers in stair construction. After you navigate three steps on stairs, your brain has measured the height for your feet on the remainder of the flight. If any subsequent step is more than ¼”off, you’ll likely trip. I believe that our brains do a lot of adjusting for us even in shooting that we aren’t conscious of. After missing similar shots I believe that our brain makes adjustments that we aren’t conscious of. We may think we’re maintain the same lead and speed of swing, but our brain has figured out what it takes to achieve our goal and makes slight adjustments for our success.
Do you see what I did there? I just gave my brain credit for most of my successful shots. I’m not really a very good shot at all. I’ve simply managed to miss enough for my brain to command successful adjustments that I’m not aware of. I can be happy about my shooting, I just wish the damn thing paid more attention when I was trying to make money.
Chaos and I had a long, steep walk back to the truck, a couple miles away. I finally saw my rig about three bends in the road after I thought it would surely be around the next one. I was beginning to wonder if I should have turned downhill at the road instead of up. I don’t pay enough attention to things like “how to find your rig”.
Maybe and Chaos were arguing about how many heads should be in the water bowl at the same time, when I noticed a Hungarian partridge walking across the two track in front of the van. I scooped up Maybe before she had time to engage in owner avoidance and closed her crate gate. Stuffed a couple shells back into the Wingy and tapped my leg for Chaos to heel.
I sent her ahead and planted my feet for a shot. That bird must have been high stepping because it flushed at about 35 yards. I didn’t want to take a chance on crippling a bird this late, so I let it go.
Then Chaos swung to the other side of the track and flushed another single but at 20 yards. I knew I centered the bird, but feathers flew like I got nothing but tail. I was expecting more of a covey to flush at my shot, but that was it. Chaos returned with a very dead Hun. I don’t recall why, but I had changed from the skeet barrel to the full choke while the dogs watered. I should have let that bird get a little more air under its wings. I know guys like to see a string of feathers when watching bird hunting videos, but I don’t like to kill my birds that dead.
I should mention, that was the only time or bird I shot with the full choke barrel that trip. Nothing but skeet for chukar Huns and quail. I seriously doubt that you’ll hear me refer to anything but skeet choke in future podcasts. That’s all I ever shot in my old Weatherby and I learned to make clean kills on any bird out to 40+ yards shooting quality shells. If anyone doubts that, just do the math on shooting 7/8 ounce loads out of your sub-gauge and a modified choke and compare that to 1-1/8 or 1-1/4 ounces through skeet. Skeet is especially effective in open fields where you can dump another shell into a longer range bird before it moves another five yards.
The next morning I was in an exploring mood. There were several sections of grass habitat a few miles further up the ridge that I wanted to check out. At nearly the same spot that I shot the Hun the evening before, I saw a covey of about a dozen Huns fly across the road and land in a sage clump right off the same two track, right where I was parked.
Chaos had broken a toe nail a couple days earlier when chukar hunting, so I hunted her sparingly the past few days. I knew she would only be out for a few minutes here and she hadn’t favored her foot the day before so I gave her an opportunity for more feathers. I really believed the covey had run off as they landed 50 yards from my truck. Yeah, I occasionally refer to my van as a truck. It’s not a minivan, it’s a ¾ ton E-150 passenger van. More a truck than not.
It was overcast cold and windy but I didn’t grab a jacket as I knew this would happen quick or not at all. I circled Chaos down wind and she caught scent right away. There was a whirr of birds and I waited for one to split off. There it was a lone Hun flying right to left at 25 yards. I could see it’s was dead at the shot, but there was something fuzzy in the background. I saw Chaos chasing under another split bird heading the opposite direction. I hit it well and it tumbled in front of her.
Chaos has always been the worst at marking falls of any dog I’ve owned. She marks triple retrieves doing yard work with no problem. I can mix up which ones I send her on and she can remember them in any order. But in the field she’s clueless. I finally noticed, that every time I shoot, she looks back at me instead of watching the bird. I can’t explain it, and will have to try to find a correction. But since several hundred birds haven’t changed her, I don’t know what will.
Anyway, she went straight to the truck with her bird as if to say she was done. So I kenneled her up with her prize and let the little hellion out. I can’t ever let her run without smiling. I’ve never seen a dog waste so much joyous energy accomplishing nothing. Soaring over three foot tall sage just for the fun of it. Like the wind whistling in her ears is hypnotic. Without any coaxing she swung downwind and lit up when she smelled bird. She was 10 yards deeper than the bird had fallen and scooped up a dead Hun. It was more of an effort on my part to separate her from warm feathers than convincing my wife that we don’t really need a new sofa. I hid the bird from her in my game bag, a trick she hadn’t seen much of and convinced her there must be another toy in the grass. Sure enough she picked up another dead Hun confirming my fuzzy sight picture.
The rest of the day was making fruitless walks on cold windy ridges. But in the end, we were all tired and everyone had a taste of birds.
I was determined to walk new ground on this trip, so I headed north to what was supposed to be excellent quail and Hun country. I only worked cover for a few hours. Apparently we were too close to Boise as the area reminded me of what happened to southeast Minnesota 30 years ago. They called them “Hobby Ranches”. You know, selling off 15 acres at the top of a wooded hill. A weekend getaway for townies. They chopped up the private timbers enough that it just wasn’t fun hunting ruffed grouse there anymore. Well, realtor and developers do that everywhere. They pick the few places that are pristine because there isn’t a house there, and convince someone to buy and build. Then it looks just like everyplace else, you don’t want to live.
The first place I stopped, I had barely closed the door when a truck pulled in front of me and two guys jumped out with their black guns to shoot up a gravel bank. I talked to a nice lady further along that suggested another area that I had already circled on my map. There was 6 or so inches of snow that had melted making mud holes on the dirt road, south slopes, that I wasn’t about to drive through. So I parked on a lookout and a truck with bird dogs passed me when my head was in the back of the van. I only took Maybe to hunt down a steep brushy ravine. There were boot and dog tracks on both sides but I didn’t feel like I had much choice except to see if I could find a few single quail. We worked the steep hills around the ravine and down the length. Didn’t find any Huns or tracks but flushed a 50+ covey of quail in the thick stuff. There was lots of flushing, very little seeing and no shooting.
The quail did more flitting from one bush to another than actually flying. I finally sorted one above the brush and hit it. That was a painful mistake. It hung up in some of the thorniest, vine tangled brush you can imagine. I left more blood than that bird contained batting it out of there with a long, dead branch. Maybe’s face was scratched and blood stained as she kept trying to climb the thorns to get to the bird. That one bird and outing was enough to tell me that yes, there were a lot of quail in this area, but like everywhere, they were near water, most of the ground with water is private, and I just wasn’t going to be in the area long enough to justify knocking on doors. Especially since most of the acreage was all chopped up with houses. I couldn’t even convince myself to spend the night. I drove most of the night in the rain back to Pocotello where I left my wife visiting her daughters.
One daughter was trying to prepare her house for sale, and had opened a can of worms I would have warned her against had she asked. With my wife spending the month there. I felt obligated to help as I could. So this entire vacation trip was spent a few days in the field and then a couple in Pocotello taping sheetrock and prepping the most irregular subflooring for laminate. I really enjoy my wife’s entire family and don’t begrudge the time I spent with them but I sure would have preferred more time in the field. I eased myself with the realization that this was the last hunting season I would be gainfully employed.
Well, I may as well tell you where I’ve been the past couple of seasons. Two years ago, I hunted the sandhills of Nebraska in the early season. A listener and his friend from Atlanta, would be passing through Nebraska on their way to hunt sage grouse in Wyoming. They were thinking it would be nice to shoot a few prairie grouse along the way. I timed my hunt so we might meet up. I heard from them after their first day. They were still excited but hadn’t seen a game bird.
I stopped east of them for a short walk. Most of my favorite sections had dropped out of the CRPMap program, so there wasn’t much to hunt. My most reliable cover was still in, but it wasn’t large. Chaos flushed three pairs of grouse, but no chickens. I took one poke at a pair but missed. There was a series of small ponds in the section and we flushed teal off all of them. I did buy the necessary stamps to shoot ducks, in the hopes of filling out a day if grouse came early. I still didn’t have a feel for grouse numbers so passed on the ducks. That was foolish. I forgot that the possession limit for all migratory birds had been raised to three daily bags. I had plenty of room for ducks on my three day visit.
On my way west to a large public area, I saw a couple of ranch hands shoveling out a cattle guard, and turned around to chat. I offered them each a couple of cold waters and asked about grouse. To my surprise, one said he hadn’t seen a grouse all year and the other said he saw a small family group in mid-summer. They said they ride a lot of fence and it was unusual to not see several groups a day. I’ve never ridden fence in that country but would myself be surprised to not see prairie grouse every day.
They were thankful for the drink and wished me luck. (I should add, stopping to talk to locals is an opportunity I seldom miss.) I forgot to mention in my last podcast that when I was trying to locate a public area in Idaho I stopped to talk to a fuel delivery man filling a tank in a small town. I asked if I was the first guy from Iowa to ask him about bird hunting. He said he’d never had anyone ask before. Turned out that like most non-hunting locals, he said there were birds everywhere.
With the dismal report just a couple miles from where I was intending to hunt, I decided to drive north to more familiar ground. The first piece I wanted to hunt had a truck parked. In the 25 years I’ve hunted that area, I’d never seen anyone hunting that piece. So I drove to another ridge that I’d shot a lot of chickens and grouse on. The only good thing was that there was no one hunting it when I arrived. Chaos and I worked several miles of the ridge, both high and low, without flushing a single bird. This was really strange.
I camped for the night with two other bird hunters and we talked over a fire. One had shot a single chicken in three days and the other thought he’d done well shooting 9 grouse in 11 days of hunting. When comparing notes, he said there was another group of guys from out of state that had hunted the ridge I was on that afternoon, for several days. He also said that that group and he had hunted the eastern field that I hunted the day before.
As you might guess, I didn’t think the guy with 9 birds had done well at all. He said 5 of his birds had come from small family groups and that there were several days he didn’t see any birds. His experience was absolutely horrible considering what those hills usually held.
The Atlanta boys were further west still, so in the morning I packed up and headed their way. I saw more bird hunters that day than I would normally see in two seasons. I stopped at a shop where hunters normally congregate to see what the consensus was. The owner said that the locals couldn’t understand what happened. He said they had decent numbers the previous year and a soft winter. The spring and summer had moisture and there was only a couple of weeks in late summer with dry hot weather. Everyone was expecting good bird numbers, but they weren’t.
I hadn’t hunted this area as much as others as there was never a need for me to drive this far west to find birds. I noticed that all the trucks were driving two tracks deep into the hills, so decided to parallel the roads from about 200 yards out. Grouse aren’t a bird that you road hunt and I’ve never noticed that they shy away from vehicle travel.
Chaos had just stopped in the middle of a patch of prickly pear waiting for me to help her out. I laid down my gun and carried her to an opening to start the removal. When I was finished, I picked up my gun and a covey of 7 grouse flushed 30 feet from us. Grouse seldom hold that tight. I clipped a bird with my second shot and watched him land on a far hillside. Several others dropped in with him. When Chaos and I were still 40 yards from the cripple it flutter flushed and I knocked it down. One bird is better than none when you crave camp meat, but as few birds as there seemed to be, I wasn’t happy about killing it.
The remainder of the flock had flown deeper into the range and I heard a shot that direction. I thought there was a possibility it was the guys from Atlanta so I followed. Turns out it was, but they had shot at a dove, never seeing the grouse. We had a nice talk on the walk back to our trucks and I apologized emphatically that they hadn’t even had a shot at a grouse in nearly 4 days. They were good sports saying any day with a gun and dog was better than driving in Atlanta traffic.
WE parted ways but I never did hear if they got their sage grouse. I did miss a call, that may have been their report. If you’re listening send me a text and let me know how you did!
The next morning I returned to the first ground I hunted and chased some teal. I didn’t realize that a guy could shoot 6 teal on my Tier license so I only shot three.
Had I done more research, I would have stayed for a few more days to shoot teal. I just couldn’t rationalize sitting around for twelve hours a day and spending the night just to shoot three teal in an hour. Besides, there was lots of work waiting at home before heading to South Dakota for pheasants and grouse.
I did shoot a limit of sharptails for three days up to opening day of pheasant season. And spent a good part of each day scouting for pheasants. But the pheasant scouting wasn’t good. First, I checked out all the small plots that I shot birds on the year before. Two hens and one rooster in more than 6 hrs of walking. And the campground. More than twice as many hunters as past years.
The big sections of Walkin were mowed. All but a hill top here or skinny slough over there. Opening morning I hunted the same section I hunted opening day the season before. I saw three hens and not one rooster. I did manage to shoot one sharptail out of two small flocks. That was my South Dakota opening day. There were other hunters all around me and I don’t think I heard 10 shots all morning.
The following day I hunted a small corner that held a limit of birds both times I walked it the season before, and flushed a half dozen with one young rooster holding too long. Just a few miles north, I saw as many pheasants from the road as ever. But there was no public there. About the only weather event that makes that much difference is hail.
I don’t want to sound like some alarmist, government hating whiner, but the only thing I can figure for the sandhills and other large western public accesses is that the government sprayed for grasshoppers. I know the drought was bad two years ago and in most areas grasshoppers were about the only thing that saved young birds. They got protein and moisture from them. I saw few grasshoppers everywhere I hunted while most field reports were grasshoppers everywhere.
Those two trips took the starch out of my mid-western bird hunting. It was then that I realized I was burned out on the mid-west. I’ve been hunting most of the same old haunts and birds for decades. I only had a few dual limits left in these states and other than pheasants and Huns in North Dakota, they were tough. Maybe too tough to even consider. My hesitation for North Dakota is that 3 Huns just isn’t much of a challenge. I feel like I should attempt that dual in Montana or Idaho where the daily bag is 8 partridge.
I really wanted to hunt the far west, but just couldn’t justify the trips and expense when I would have so much more freedom in 2023.
I did a little coyote calling in Montana last winter. There’s a coyote caller I introduced to my rancher friends a few years ago. I always had the impression that he hunted a lot of ground and didn’t hit any one area too hard, but I found that he’d set up a permanent camp on my best ranch. I was still welcome to hunt, but this guy starts in October before the dogs are prime and calls into February, long after they’ve lost most of their value. Some guys just care about numbers.
So I did a lot of scouting, driving hundreds of miles. I secured permission on new ranches and saw a few yotes. I think I still could have done well, but what few days the wind layed down, it was variable. Variable wind is the pits for calling. I would walk a half mile or more to approach an area from downwind, just to have it shift about the time I’d start calling. That’s really frustrating when you have a responder and you think you know where to stop him, but the wind shifts and he bugs out at 400 yards. I was so frustrated that I blew the only two good shots I had in 5 days. But I asked myself, “What do you want with just two coyotes anyway?” I could buy pale tanned coyotes for less than I’d have in tanning and shipping for just two.
And It wasn’t just me. A game warden stopped at my rig one evening to chat. It was his day off and he and a friend had been calling all day. He asked how I did and said I called in a pair that approached within 10 yards, from behind. I didn’t see them until they bolted down the back side of a saddle. He said they called a ranch that was normally thick with coyotes and they didn’t see a single dog.
On the bright side, I did flush a lot of Huns and sage grouse. I’d never seen a sage grouse there before and I walked into two large flocks.
My first morning after getting the bad news about the other caller. I was calling some state land in high winds and 12 below temps. A rancher saw me out there, and thinking I was in some kind of trouble he drove to help. He showed me around his ranch and maps of thousands of acres he had scattered around the county. Said once deer season closed I was welcome to come back and hunt it anytime. I walked a short loop on some ground he farmed and flushed four coveys of partridge in less than a quarter section. Only one small covey of 7-8. I’ll be stopping back to talk to the owners for permission to bird hunt next year. The first couple years I called the area, I saw partridge every day, but since then only two or three coveys in a 7-10 day trip. I think/hope, they’re coming back.
Well, I’m done whining now. I’ve already filled my calendar with all the species opening dates for Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, Montana, the Dakotas and Nebraska. Once I start hunting I’ll be studying the southwestern quail states: Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma. There’ll be good quail numbers somewhere.