The past few weeks I have been shown a few WMAs (waterfowl management areas) near my home. They are State managed lands where waterfowl and other wildlife can flourish in prime conditions. Today we explored a 560 acre WMA just a few short miles North of Richfield, Utah. It is bordered on the North edge by a sizeable reservoir and along the eastern edge by a river. After yesterdays big snowfall we thought it would be a perfect chance to get the dogs on some tight-holding pheasant. The dogs pointed quite a few hens but the lone rooster of the morning flushed out of range and flew across the river onto private land. I was impressed by the amount of cover available for the birds.

Up until today my only pheasant hunting exerience locally was at my neighbors pheasant farm. The public vs. private lands debate came to my mind as I wandered for hours on public lands only seeing one other hunter way off in the distance. I enjoyed seeing a large variety of birds and waterfowl, most of which I have never seen on the local pheasant club grounds. We were surprised to flush nearly a hundred mallard ducks that were resting on a bend in the river.

From a training standpoint it is nice to have easy access to both types of lands. The pheasant farm is a very controlled environment which is nice for training puppies on bird introduction or working on specific problems. As my pups progress it is fun to present them with new challenges in cover and conditions. The public lands are quite difficult to predict and much harder for the dogs to get lucky on. They learn to work smarter and to make thier searches a little more thorough. I am fortunate to have many types of terrain nearby where my dogs can hunt Chukar, Grouse, Pheasant, Quail, Dove, Ducks and even Geese.

I am discovering how out of shape I am as I find myself frequently out of breath while chasing chukar. They seem to enjoy living in steep rocky terrain where most people wouldn’t bother hiking for a trophy mule deer, let alone a feathered creature with eyes in the backs of their head. Even though we were able to locate the roosting spot of a sizeable covey of chukar, it is still quite a challenge to sneak up on them. We are able to find them eventually but quite often they are way ahead of us and flush out of range. So far, the best tactic we have found is two hunters approaching from different directions for a squeeze play. Even still, we rarely get a decent shot off. The troubling thing is that we are enjoying the challenge and we keep going back for more. One day I hope to actually get my limit. If nothing else it has been good excercise for a couple of computer geeks.

And I thought hunting Blue Grouse last week was challenging. Chukar hunting in the Central Utah desert is quite a bit more challenging than grouse. First, you have to hike and hike and hike and it’s all uphill hiking mind you. Chukar seem to be able to live where nothing else can eek out enough food to survive. Second, they like to run way out ahead of you so you can’t get close enough to flush them and when they do flush they are usually well out of shooting range. Last, when they do flush they hug the terrain like an A10 warthog on a strike mission and they always fly downhill at about 120 miles per hour. After missing several chukar I finally figured out how to pick one out of the flock and shoot more quickly.

Since Jake is struggling with a major bird shy problem I decided to take my little female GSP Abby along for the ride. She seemed to do pretty well and worked well with my buddy’s yellow lab named Allie. I was most pleased with Abby’s instinct to check back with me frequently as we were huntng rocky steep terrain. Closer working dogs seem to be more effective when chasing chukar in the desert. I can imagine how a big running dog would probably inadvertantly bump a lot of birds. It was really a pleasure to watch Abby work even though she is still young. As the sun dropped and the winds kicked up the temperature dropped considerably and snowflakes started falling. Lucky for us it was getting dark so we headed on home.

This afternoon Jake and I were invited to go grouse hunting with my neighbor and new friend Chris Colt. Chris brought along his two one-year-old labs and I brought Jake. It was a new experience for myself as well as for Jake. We went up on Cove Mountain near my home and found some really nasty terrain (around 9,000 feet in elevation). It was steep and thick with pines and aspens and we just started hiking the upper edge of the tree line. It only took about ten minutes before we had our first flush. There was a storm blowing in so the grouse were roosting in the trees which gave them the advantage. The first one flushed straight at me and passed over my head and by the time I fired he was on his way down the mountain and well out of range.

After flushing four grouse and hiking some extremely rough mountainside, we dropped down and doubled back hoping to pick up the missed birds. We flushed one bird on our return trip and my buddy blasted him. A very healthy grouse, I was surprised to see that they are nearly as large as a pheasant. His labs did a great job of marking the bird and retrieving to hand. They made Jake look like a chump, very impressive since they are basically the same age. I attribute their success to the qulaity of training, since I know Jake has an inexperienced trainer. I think it is good anytime you can hunt with dogs that know the game better than yours. Hopefully a little of it rubs off on Jake and he gets a better idea of what is expected.

This weekend my friend Brett Henke and his family came up from St. George for the weekend. It was fun to catch up on old times and let our kids play together. Brett just recently got into shotguns and skeet shooting. He purchased a Benelli Super Black Eagle II and has been enjoying shooting sporting clays with some friends from work. I arranged for him to go hunting pheasants with me and my dog Jake. Since Jake is a work in progress it was nice to focus on working with Jake while Brett did all the shooting. Jake ended up pointing 6 pheasant and my friend was able to shoot 3 of them. Jake is making some good progress and even retrieved all three birds to hand. He still chases tweety birds a bit and runs a little too far but for a one year old german shorthair he is doing pretty good considering his rookie dog trainer. A big thanks to Russ Peterson of Rooster Valley Pheasants for setting the birds out for us. He runs a first class operation and his pheasant are healthy and strong flyers.

Well, it was more like a little training session on some live birds. But, Jake did find and flush this pheasant and my friend was able to shoot the hen before she got away. It was the first hunt of the season on our local pheasant hunting preserve. It has been great to have a quality hunting club only mintutes away from our home in the country. We just load the dogs and our hunting gear up onto our ATVs and head out into the grain fields. Most of the season we will simply work the dogs on birds leftover from the previous weeks paid hunts, the table scraps if you will. Occasionally when we bring friends into town we can set 10-20 pheasants out and have a little more action. The pheasants are a little young still but another week or two and things will be just right. The weather will be cooler and the birds will set and hold better instead of running.