I hunted pheasant the other day. I’m not a big fan of December bird hunting in the Northern Rockies, but it’s been a busy fall and days in the field have been too few.
Late season isn’t so great because it just gets too dang cold. That’s not just me being a wimp, which I am when it comes to cold and outdoor fun. There are many reasons I love fly-fishing and bird hunting, and the weather when those pursuits are most productive is an important one.
Spring and summer on the water. Fall in the field.
But winter, in my book, is for drinking dark beer, making chili and watching sports on television. I’ll bundle up if I get an invite to ice fish, but I’d rather be watching Liverpool or the Lakers with a pint glass at the ready.
Issues of winter fortitude (or my lack thereof) aside, the cold just makes bird hunting difficult. It was a nice, sunny day when we headed out, but I still waited until almost noon to load up the dogs because I wanted it to warm up. I think it was a balmy 20 degrees when we made it to our spot.
Twenty ain’t bad if you layer up and there’s no wind. Since I’m constantly walking I rarely get cold while bird hunting. But the cold makes it hard for the dogs to pick up scent, and snow only makes matters worse. The ground was covered with the kind of fine, dry snow — almost like beach sand — you get when a really frigid storm moves through. To make matters worse, a hard wind was blowing out of the south.
The dogs were eager nonetheless. But in my experience a good bird dog is either eager to hunt, or dead. They are too passionate for disinterest. Despite the wind we worked our way north on a section of state land. It was typical Big Horn Basin pheasant country: sagebrush flats bisected by small creeks lined with willow and cottonwood. The plan was to walk a big loop across the square, taking in the base of the hills at the far side where we might find chukar and huns, then back across the flats to where we started.
This put the wind behind us. Not ideal, but at least it would be with us on the way back. Jack got mildly interested at one point, but he was moving in the wrong direction and when I called him, he pulled off. Jack never calls off good scent.
I walked another 20 feet and came upon the tracks of a pheasant apparently moving in the same wrong direction; right where Jack was headed when I called him back. That says a lot about how hard it is for a dog to use his nose when it’s cold and dry.
The tracks appeared to be fresh so we followed. I hoped we’d spooked the bird out of a creek bottom and it wouldn’t be too far ahead. The dogs generally followed the trail that continued hard east. I kept my eye on the dogs and the sage ahead. Pheasants rarely hold for a point. Usually, Jack and I have to trap the bird between us, making it nervous enough to abandon sprinting and get in the air.
But this bird wasn’t as close as I thought. The trail appeared to slow, and then I could see where the pheasant had milled about under a lone cottonwood, apparently feeding. Then it was off east again, toward private land where we wouldn’t be able to follow. This late in the season surviving roosters have usually figured out where safety lies.
We found more tracks, but the dogs never really got birdy. The trails were either too old, or conditions too dry, for the dogs to sort it out. Still, they were happy, at least until the snow started to ball in the fur in their paws. When the dogs have to stop every 50 feet to chew off ice chunks from between their pads its time to head home, where there’s chili and beer that demand my attention.
Rob Breeding writes, teaches and watches his kids play soccer when he’s not fishing or hunting.