Finding a Place to Hunt

By Karl DeHart

What a month (November) as far as out-of-State hunting. It was pretty amazing that in one month I was able to hunt with all of my family that hunts and in 3 States other than Idaho. Heck we even took along a few walk-along family that doesn’t hunt. What a treat. The first hunt was in Washington with Ryan, then Utah with my brother Faron and niece Aubrey and rounding out in Iowa with a long list of family and friends over Thanksgiving. Birds, dog work and good shooting aside I thoroughly enjoyed the mix and time spent with my family and friends. There are few times that hunting can take on so much meaning as when you share it with the people you love.

The success in the hunts varied quite a bit though. Washington and Iowa produced many birds but Utah has so far proven to be a tough cookie to crack. How we found out about where to hunt was different in each State. Washington was emails and phone calls with an uplandidaho.com member to get the general area to go explore. Iowa was “guided” private land hunts by friends and family that lives there. Thanks to Bobby, Jim, Larry and Dan for hosting our Iowa hunts. Utah was just me and my brother (mostly) researching on the net and him asking at the State Fish and Game office about areas.

Now which method is best? Obviously the best way to go about hunting new areas is to have someone take you to their known bird spots. But few people are willing to do this for anyone other than family or close friends and even then some will hold out their best spots. We found out that even these hot spots don’t always produce. When hunting Larry’s best spots, an area that has produced 30+ pheasants in a day without the right wind and dog work we came out relatively empty handed. So, hunting in known areas is not always a guaranteed hunt and any avid hunter has experienced this at their own “hot” spots. How many times have you taken someone hunting and touted, “I always find birds here” and turn up few to no birds.

Now the Iowa hunts were fun but there is one thing rarely mentioned about trips like this besides the dogs on point and memorable moments in the field. It’s the Mom and Grandma and Sisters, and Aunts that cook, sew, does laundry, washes dishes and still hoots and hollers with everyone at the card games. Then there’s the family that shows up for the card games, brings food for potlucks, stops by to spend time with you while you are in the State. These really are the times I show up for and luckily I get to fit in my obsession to boot!

The Washington hunt was the next best thing to going along with someone to their spots. An uplandidaho.com member Kevin helped out my nephew and me when we planned a “meet halfway” hunt in Washington. He gave us directions to several public hunting areas that he has done some productive wingshooting. The only thing that varied between the Washington hunt and Iowa was that Kevin wasn’t physically there guiding us to spots that have produced birds for him within the public land. Kevin’s information was more than sufficient to allow us 2 fantastic days of exploring new country, watching Big Horn sheep, Mule deer and chasing chukar, huns and quail.

The Utah hunt reminded me of my efforts to figure out how to get my Idaho Grand Slam. For the Grand Slam I put in lots of time searching the net, looking at maps, asking friends and talking with Fish and Game. But in the end it was individuals sharing information about what they’ve done before or simply where they’ve seen birds that produced my Grand Slam; well that and a little blind luck.

The internet can yield some great information. Basic searches about wingshooting in Utah provided a few comments from other hunters. Most commonly these comments were descriptions from hunting preserves and if they were about wild birds on public land they were very general. For example, comments like we hunted the west desert in Utah, well there is A LOT of west and desert in Utah. Overall hunting blogs and comments were just a confirmation that the chukar and huns we wanted to hunt actually existed in Utah. Another source is birders Web sites, ya know, those people that just like to go out and watch birds. I have found locations of hunting areas from these sites as some list where you can go to see each species.

The most useful information for Utah came from the Utah Department of Natural Resources, BLM, U.S. Geological Service or U.S. Forest Service Web sites. Also, Uplandidaho.com member Jeff provided some links. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manage refuges and if the refuge allows hunting they will primarily have information on waterfowl hunting. Utah is just starting the equivalent of Idaho’s Access Yes! private land access program. This is the time to get to those spots before the program becomes well known.

Both the State and Federal Web sites contained important static maps. For example, the Utah Division of Wildlife site has a map that shows the distribution of guzzlers and one that shows the distribution of chukar. Faron found these maps and we used them to determine possible west desert location for chukar hunting. The results were somewhat encouraging in that we found the guzzlers, lots of empty shell casings but unfortunately only one covey of chukar. But it takes time to learn where to hunt in a State as large as Utah when you are starting from scratch. But we will get it done.

Another source of information on these Web sites were data layers for GIS software. All the shape files that are posted by these State and Federal sites can be downloaded, viewed and overlaid on each other using free software called ArcExplorer. It may take a little effort to learn the software but it is worth it once you have. It’s worth it because there is a wealth of information that will now be at your disposal.