Not just for the birds
If you've never been to Hells Canyon on the Idaho/Oregon border before, the first thing you notice as you're driving down the long, narrow, windy road of Highway 71 and descending deep into the canyon are the very steep hillsides covered in sagebrush, bitterbrush, golden-colored grasses and lots of rocks. Some people say, "It's no …
I'm nervous about this, but there is a point. Let me get to it. First, neither my wife nor anyone else's wife -- as far as I know -- has died on a chukar hunt. This whole thing started because some of my students learned I was a "YouTube" star (I disagree); for them, stardom …
"The lunar landscapes above and below the conifer forests that necklace western mountains, the "chukar hotels" (rock outcroppings used by birds), and the overwhelming panorama that negates any notion of supremacy man might harbor is witnessed only by a small percentage of hunters. Climbing defines hunting in the West. There was elation when, after a …
Sunday, September Sunday ... Outdoors, Like an early page from The Appalachian Book of the Dead, Sunlight lavishes brilliance on every surface, Doves settle, surreptitious angels, on tree limb and box branch, A crow calls, deep in its own darkness, Something like water ticks on Just there, beyond the horizon, just there, steady clock ... …
Lucky to spend the weekend in Hells Canyon, and lucky to be able to hike in great weather in that awe-inspiring place. We didn't find as many birds as I thought we might, but we found some. The lack of moisture has so parched the earth and all its vegetable accoutrements that it feels like …
One thing I love about hunting chukar is trying to find the birds. That involves working with my dogs, looking at maps, doing lots of exploring (often in vain), figuring out why birds are where we do find them and why they're not where we don't. It's a mysterious thing, and -- for me -- …
It's this. I spent most of today's hike weaving together phrases of future, present, and past memory fragments: stressing to keep up with the dogs through backlit bunchgrass on 45-degree slopes toward the water punctuated by dried cattle hoove divots; no concept of my identity but just a pursuit; no concept of the fact that …
There's a gorgeous but reviled magpie out the window scarfing up birdseed. A Eurasian dove just landed 5 yards away. Peat and Angus are snoozing after today's opener, dreaming of getting skunked because their idiotic "master" took them to a parched desert landscape to look, duh, in vain, for the first chukar of the season. …
Preparing for tomorrow's season opener... Besides making sure we have the shells we need, everything is charged, deciding where we'll go, I've also been going through photos from last season and reminiscing more about it. Tomorrow, it will be out with the old and in with the new season. Here are some of my favorite …
We anticipate a lot things. The big yellow school bus recently started up its route again driving back and forth on our gravel road twice a day, spewing a cloud of dust behind it. We knew that would happen, just as we knew Bob would be returning to the classroom to teach literature and poetry …