There had to be birds!?
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Write down the directions. Even if it seems straight forward, still
right it down. Simply putting a dot on
the map isn’t always good enough. And if
you are anything like me, the illusion that I’ll remember every landmark and
turn 4 days later is ridiculous.
Just because the spot looks good certainly doesn’t
mean it has birds. But how else are you
going to know for sure unless you give it a spin.
There had to be birds! Really! Chris (founder of Boise River Volunteers) and his two dogs Alona and Zane were running the woods with Z and me. Most times Chris and I were busting through different areas. Z was working hard and the year old Alona; let’s just say she has no motivational issues! Zane kept closer but still worked the areas between us and the other dogs. The ground was being covered.
We started our trip hunting a draw that has produced regularly for Chris. As he describes, he has hunted it and gone through 2 boxes of shells before getting his grouse limit. I was pretty amped at the prospect of finally having a great forest grouse day with some sweet points and retrieves. We parked the truck and as I’m getting geared up Chris shouts out, “There goes one!” This heightened my anticipation. I moved a little quicker to get the trail gaiters on and load the shotgun. We were off.
We moved into position, each on a side of the drainage we were going to walk up. It looked great! The dogs started their work and they covered the ground. A couple miles later, a few scratches from the brush, a big bruise on my right leg from thumping the blunt end of an upright stick and we were resting at the edge of a gravel road wondering if the rumor about aliens beaming most forest grouse out of Idaho to the planet Zintar were actually true. Things that make you go…hmmm. Nothing, not even moments of watching Z get into her birdie behavior. It was crazy, but no crazier then the lack of Blue…ummm…I mean Dusky grouse the weekend before with Kevin and Travis. What a way to start this hunting season.
Not to be discouraged we charged on, side-hilling, moving through the country we missed on the way up, still nothing. At this point we decide to move on try and a spot I was told about by Carl Stiefel. Unfortunately I had to rely on my memory from a phone conversation with Carl to get us there. Yep, you guessed it, the old memory banks failed me again and here I thought the directions were so simple.
Once we reached what I thought was the area we geared up and hiked in. That’s when the directions and what was before us didn’t seem to match up. We kept moving though determined to get into some birds. After hiking a couple miles we turn our collective noses downhill into the brush and bog surrounding the river. The cover was thicker and had a mix of evergreen, scattered aspen and lots of shrubs. Chris got this “feeling” and so I pushed into the tangles trying hard to follow Z. I was no more than 40 yards into the thickets when a Dusky busts up between the branches followed closely by some lead, unfortunately not closely enough. A dozen steps later and another bird drops from a tree limb trying to mimic the previous birds aerial maneuvers to out run the gun, but I connect this time.
Chris is standing on a high spot and hears
the bird flutter, drop and stop fluttering ahead of me. Yes! A nice shot between the trees limbs and
I should have my bird in the bag. The
dogs race over but the bird has crawled into a windfall of trees. Z follows her nose and works hard to get down
between the tree trunks to the bird, getting stuck at one point with me having
to lie on the logs, reach down at full arms length and pull a branch out of her
way so she could crawl out. In her next
dive into the maze of logs she leaves behind her hunting vest, which I need to
use a stick to reach down and retrieve.
After 15 minutes of trying we give
up on locating the bird. Geez, had I only
strapped my chainsaw to my back we would have had that bird. I never like leaving them behind.
We cross the river and start pushing the other bank back towards the truck. This is some gorgeous country. Now the dogs are getting birdie! You know those times in the thick brush when you can’t follow your pup and she is gone just long enough that you know she found something just out of earshot. The dogs were all racing hard and working the woods. Chris got another feeling he said and turned off the little two-track road we stumbled across. Not 20 steps later a ruffed starts its nervous chatter just before flushing up to fall to Chris’ clean shot. Finally, a bird in the bag.
We pushed on, hunting some great cover but to no avail. We were back to the truck with a Dusky left
in the woods and a Ruffed in the bag. I
was happy and the dogs were tired, it had been a good day. Now it was back to a cold beer and the
We had just gotten back to camp when Ben pulls up, a friend of Chris’. He had just spent the evening pulling fish after fish from the S.F. Boise. If I remember right he said he caught at least 15 fish in an hour! For the S.F. that’s a hot day, his comment was that the river was boiling! There was a great hatch of coming off in the afternoon and evening and the fishing couldn’t be better. We immediately adjusted our plans for Sunday and took the back roads over to the S.F.
Ben, a recent transplant from
Now here is something I’ve noticed about the
S.F. and Glenn has commented on it too…forget fishing it on Sunday! The fish get shy after the Friday and
Saturday slam fests of many weekends.
The fish were still feeding heavily on the hatch coming off but they
were not so easy to fool into taking a carefully place fly.
Ben and Chris fished while I took Z up for one more hunt. I picked a new spot and headed up the draw. It was hot, so I stuck close to the water and the thick cover where I was hoping a Ruffed, Chukar, quail or hun would be cooling off in the heat of the afternoon. I have shot them all in these hills. I hiked hard and pushed several different types of cover for my quarry, to no avail. No Ruffed grouse, no Chukar and I didn’t get back in time to catch any fish either. My comment to the guys was, “I’m changing my Web site name to takingyourgunforawalk.com”.
