Tag Archives: Pheasant

Hunting Birds and Truffles

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Lira is back to bird hunting after last year’s injury and subsequent stem cell treatment to try and get her back.   She’s been out after birds a few days a week only, not wanting to push her daily like I used to so we tend to hunt Mondays or Tuesdays and Thursdays or Fridays.   I do have her drag a check cord to help slow her down a bit but she’s been doing great and finding birds every single time we get out, whether or not I get a shot is another thing but this week I’ve hit every bird that we found and the freezer is getting some pheasants again.

To give her something to do on her off days we enrolled her in truffle dog school through the Truffle Dog Company in Seattle.   We started the Foundations I class a week ago and have her booked up with classes through the end of the year.   She seems to really enjoy “hunting” truffle scent under cones in the house, is getting used to clicker training and loves all the extra treats.    This should be a good activity for the off season for her since truffle season here picks up about the time bird season is slowing down.

2018 – Looking back

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2018 was a good year but a tough year in several respects and I’m actually kind of glad this one is over with.   Thanks to Lira I hiked close to 2000 miles this year and we managed to get out and do quite a bit of fishing and hunting, logging 108 days total in the water, hills or fields.   I also somehow managed to build a boat for the sole purpose of taking her fishing with me since she coludn’t quite work out in a float tube.   Catherine and I had a lot of fun spending many days exploring the Middle Fork Valley this year and also camping and hiking on the Oregon coast.

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Adding more bird species

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Up until this year Lira and I spent all our time hunting pheasants but this year that changed.  Yes, we still hunt a lot of pheasant but we also started hunting frequently in Eastern Washington for other upland birds as well as spending some time in the woods hunting grouse.  Trust me hunting is the appropriate word for grouse, we didn’t spend much time killing grouse.   So far this season we’ve added four new species of birds to our list.

Chukar

Chukar have sort of always intrigued me as a game bird ever since reading East of the Mountains by David Guterson.  Tough terrain to say the least and they are hard to hit.  Early in the year we hunted some planted chukar at Cooke Canyon just to get Lira onto a new bird.  While deer hunting in Ellensburg we saw so many chukar that I decided it was time to hunt them for real and have spent several days now along the rimrock and high flats searching for them.  We have managed one wild chukar and that is one Lira literally grabbed out of a bush.

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Trip to the dry side

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The rains started in the Snoqualmie Valley last Thursday and things got wet fast.  Friday mornings pheasant hunt was wet and windy, we got out of the woods when big branches started crashing around and we never found a bird.  With the rivers rising and no end of rain in sight it was time to head east and get into a drier climate.   On Sunday I packed up the shotguns and Lira and met Lisa for a 3-4 day trip to Ellensburg to hunt chukar, quail and pheasants and also, hopefully, to break my slump.

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One month in slump

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The last bird we took home was a previously shot one Lira recovered.

Pheasant season has been going for about a month now and I’m in a slump which I’m hoping will break soon.   We’ve managed to get in 14 days of bird hunting so far and have bagged 14 pheasants but this week Lira has worked her tail off and found 10 birds and I’ve missed or not had a shot on all of them.   Up until this Sunday I’d been hitting the majority of birds but now I can’t seem to hit anything.   What changed?  I’m still shooting my Benelli 20 gauge, still using my Carlson Early Season choke, still using my Prarie Storm FS Steel, …  I have started wearing gloves part of the time and yes, a few of my missed birds were because i didn’t get the safety off,  I’m also wearing a jacket instead of a few layers of wool.  I think the real problem though is I’ve got myself psyched out.  Shooting is a mental game for sure and I know when I’m in a trap slump it gets way worse before it gets better.

What to do?  Going to mix it up and head east.  Go after some quail and chukar instead of only pheasant and hit the sporting clays course.  Maybe I’ll pull out my 12 gauge, my only issue with it is that we don’t seem to find birds when carrying it and am convinced it has an old Italian curse on it,   Probably hitting the local fields tomorrow then off to Ellensburg for 3-4 days and hopefully bringing something home for the freezer.

Pre-season tune-up

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With hunting season starting to open up I wanted to get Lira out for a pre-season tune-up hunt over at Cooke Canyon in August so we headed over to Ellensburg on the 30th for a morning in the fields.    Lira was  beside herself when she saw the orange come out and as soon as we arrived in the field she began doing high speed laps in the parking lot.  She was obviously ready to get out there and find some birds.

 

I picked Area 1 since it is the closest thing to Western Washington with some fields, some trees and brush on the borders.  Lira did great, no problems finding any of the birds and had to do a bit more work than usual.  One bird had basically dug itself into a hole underneath  some roots and just would not flush.  I finally reached down and felt what was going on and told Lira to “Get it, get it” and she did, bird in mouth and handed off to me.  Another spot she found a bird deep in the willows and had to push it out to the edge of the field.  The bird took  flight at my feet but flew low.  I missed the first shot but never had another shot as the bird headed across the open field, Lira in chase.  The bird hit the ground at about 100 yards and was immediately tackled, it managed to get loose and run towards grass but Lira caught up in the high grass and came out with bird in mouth.  Otherwise she retrieved shot birds well and even found two coveys of quail which were new for her.

All in all I think she is ready to roll for October though I’ll get her out at least once more between now and then plus we’ve already been out looking for grouse one morning and will get in more of that this month.

 

 

Tips for the adult-onset hunter

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I was given a shotgun the day I was born, that is how much my dad was into hunting back in 1960.   I grew up having him teach me to shoot and ultimately tagged along on many a hunting trip going after squirrels, rabbits and pheasant.   By the time I was 14 or 15 I was going out with friends fishing or hunting, sometimes both in a day.  My parents would drop us off in the woods with loaded shotguns and come back to pick us up hours later, it is amazing no one ever got hurt.  I did my last hunt as a teen home from college break, some college friends wanted to go bird hunting so I went along and bagged a pheasant which was possibly the first thing I ever shot on my own.

I stopped hunting shortly after that trip and didn’t do it for decades.  I kept fishing most of my adult life but it was almost all catch and release trout fishing.  I even gave up fishing for part of the time but ended up back into it since I just loved it so much.  When I got sick and needed to eat meat I got back into hunting which was a bit of a challenge as an adult even having grown up doing it.  Now there are aspiring adult-onset hunters or fishers out there and they face a big challenge getting into the sport.  Having done it I hope I can offer a bit of advice.

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Pheasant Thai Coconut Soup

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While I usually pluck birds and roast them whole there are times when I either have one a bit shot up or too many birds to process that way in which case I breast them and take the  hindquarters (along with the heart, liver and gizzard for Lira.)   We use the breasts in place of chicken breasts in recipes and usually slow cook the the hindquarters in a creole, cacciatore or some other similar dish.   This last week I have had a bad cold and was in the mood for a Thai Tom Kha Gai soup so decided to try and make one from pheasant.   I merged together a few recipes I found on the web and came up with something delicious and  cleared out my sinuses.   The recipe is totally Paleo, Gluten-Free and Dairy-Free.

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2017 – A lot of firsts!

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My seasons of 2017 – spring lake rainbows, spring turkey season, tenkara trout,  summer fly fishing, summer steelhead fishing, pheasant hunting, elk hunting, late deer season,  chukar hunting

I can hardly believe that 2017 is drawing to a close already, where did it go?   As I sit back and look over the year I realize that I have had one heck of a year with a lot of firsts.  For the first year in a while health was just not an issue, as you can tell from my lack of health related blog posts, so it freed me up to get back into fly fishing, to really get into hunting and to finally reach my goal of stocking my freezer by myself.   On top of spending almost one-third of my days in the field I was able to get out for daily hikes (and later runs) with Lira and still find time to work all year long.

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Lira’s second season

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Acting nonchalant

Last year Lira did pretty well as a pup hunting in the fall, she found birds, she mostly pointed and rarely bumped them and she retrieved most of the time.  She also liked to chase other dogs around the field quite a bit and locally found ‘easy’ birds that were not in too thick of cover for the most part.    This year she really changed a lot.  No more chasing other dogs around or even wanting to outside of the usual parking lot sniffing and the who let the dogs out initial walk into the fields.  Once she gets to the grass she is all business, nose to the ground looking for birds.   She’s also become fearless of heavy cover.  She will go into anything that she can possibly get into to go after a pheasant and has flushed birds out of brambles so thick that i couldn’t get the bird to move by kicking the crap out of the outer layers of the stuff.   She’s grabbed cripples and even a few unscathed birds that got trapped in thick stuff and couldn’t get out before she got to them.  Just a few days ago she ran down a wing shot rooster who took off up a corn row and brought the bird out still kicking and flapping but Lira’s tail was up. She also finally lets me take a photo without constantly trying to grab the bird on the ground, that was a huge accomplishment.  We’ve gotten twice as many birds in the first three weeks of the season than all of last season and I’ve missed or not had shots at quite a few that she found in really thick stuff where shooting can be a challenge to say the least.   The season is about half over since I’ll be gone most of next week but I can’t wait to see what November brings.