Gratuitous Bird and Dog Photos

Someone mentioned the Flathead Valley. When I came home from Germany I was stationed in lakeside. Used to get a few pheasant off the Big Forkcutoff, north side but my first love was grouse up around lakeside. Used to be lots of Blues on up the mountain and lot's of Ruff's down lower. I was back up there about 2004 and things have really changed up there. Damn shame!
 
Someone mentioned the Flathead Valley. When I came home from Germany I was stationed in lakeside. Used to get a few pheasant off the Big Forkcutoff, north side but my first love was grouse up around lakeside. Used to be lots of Blues on up the mountain and lot's of Ruff's down lower. I was back up there about 2004 and things have really changed up there. Damn shame!
I live just north of Ronan. I don't think it is legal to shoot grouse on the Flathead Reservation.
We were blessed to find a winter rental....due to pandemic influx of mostly folks from CA/WA
houses and rentals are in short supply from Missoula thru Kalispell.
 
Catherine confirmed with my siblings, the first year since I was twelve, 54 years ago, I haven’t chukar hunted over Christmas/New Years holidays. I’m working on going all Jimmy Buffet.
You guys who know, watch your footing, seen a lot of broken bones hunting Chukar in the snow. I think we’ll stay down in old Mexico for a few more weeks. Never done this before.
Merry Christmas.
 
Catherine confirmed with my siblings, the first year since I was twelve, 54 years ago, I haven’t chukar hunted over Christmas/New Years holidays. I’m working on going all Jimmy Buffet.
You guys who know, watch your footing, seen a lot of broken bones hunting Chukar in the snow. I think we’ll stay down in old Mexico for a few more weeks. Never done this before.
Merry Christmas.
I might as well not hunt either with the number of birds around here. Enjoy the warmth
 
This was a good afternoon. Thought it was going to be a bust, but 30 minutes before the gong (4:30 pm in Iowa), we finally put up a bird and I knocked it down for an easy recovery by Gus. Took close to 10 Gus Miles to do find this one bird. Thought that was probably going to be it for the day and the light was going fast anyway, so we stopped for a pic and a slurp of water. Gus isn't much for photo ops, but he has learned to tolerate it, so we got one.

20211223 Gus Cashmore Paragon Bird A.jpg


But dawdle too long and he lets you hear about it..

20211223 Gus Barking at me.jpg

So we press on.

With 7 minutes left, Gus rousts a second bird that had just come in from the corn and settled in for the evening roost. An iffy shot, and open-field tackle and #2 is in the bag. No pic, but we have about 300 yds to the truck and just enough time to make. Gus has a habit of literally waiting until the alarm on my phone hits the first chime before he puts up the last bird of the day, so I was hopeful. But we got to the truck and 10 feet from the door, I unloaded my gun and plopped the shells in my vest pocket. And Gus, suddenly lights up. 3 ft from the left front tire in the ditch, he is on something and quick lunge, short chase and a finishing lunge and we have bird number three (with a broken wing and someone else's loss), in my pocket. A limit of birds on just 2 shells. Making that ammo stretch!

Anyway, a good day.
 
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Looks like our season has concluded. Wanted to get out for a few more days but..
869A9FE7-ADE1-4A79-9D62-030E207F7651.jpeg


Looks like FWP might be extending the upland season through the end of January…
 
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