January Hunt with my Brother

By Karl DeHart

Copyright Upland Idaho LLC

Finally, my brother made it up to Idaho from Utah this season for a bird hunting trip. It was January so we were going to have to work for our birds but I picked out a couple of the better areas and we put our hiking boots to work. I was anxious on this trip to get his new dog Baron into some real birds and see if I was right in telling my brother I thought the dog would be a good hunter. So, the next few days of hunting would be kind of a test of the 2 weeks I spent with Baron evaluating his potential. Obviously I told Faron that his pup would be a hunter…now it was time to see if I was right.

First hunt with Jason Talbot in the Owyhee Mountains (pictures)

Faron arrived on a Thursday night so we had a good chance on Friday of hitting birds that weren’t spooked during the week and avoiding the weekend crowds. I picked a more popular spot in the Owyhee’s hoping that no one had hunted the area during the week. A couple weeks earlier I had pushed the spot we would start at on a Sunday and although I didn’t get into any birds the area was scattered with bird tracks and droppings. Unfortunately it was also scattered with human track and shell casings from lazy individuals that can’t pick up their litter. But in one way that is ok, it just tells me that there was some decent shooting to be had in the area and might be worth going back to during the week sometime…we were doing just that.

We met Jason early that morning and headed out. I brought a couple pigeons to work Baron on before we headed out to the real stuff. Once we reached our first hunting spot I set a pigeon out with its wings tied-up and had a second one in my vest. With Faron and Jason as gunners I worked Baron across the scent cone about 20 yards out and he immediately did a 90 degree turn and worked in another 20 feet and stopped on a great point. I turned to my brother and had to confirm that I was right about Baron’s potential and the proof was in front of us…I’m not sure if he was buying it yet. But Baron held his point as I took a couple steps back behind him to toss the live bird over his head. When the gunners were ready on each side I took the pigeon and tossed it low and in front of the pups head. As it passed by and took a flight low to the right Faron took a clean shot and Baron retrieved the bird. I was pretty happy with his performance and looked forward to possibly shooting some wild birds over him in the next couple days.

I have to take a moment here to tell Ryan he should notice that both his uncles can shoot training pigeons…don’t worry you’ll get there some day!

We finished up with Baron’s “get him excited” training and we were ready to move on to the hunt. We fanned out across the slope with Jason on the top edge, me in the middle and Faron down low. We hiked for almost 2 hours without seeing anything we could shoot at…in fact I never even saw Z get really birdie. Although Baron did flush a couple sage-grouse up on the flats for Jason but those were the only birds we saw. Baron and Z were working hard and covering lots of ground and we didn’t even see any wild flushes. We covered some great looking country. Unfortunately we did find human tracks and I think they were from the last day or two so the birds may have been pushed out. We made it back to the truck with nothing eventful happening. With 2 or more hunters, after pushing great cover and not finding anything you inevitable have some comment like, “that’s why they call it hunting and not killing”.

We weren’t discouraged though. It was a gorgeous day so far and we had more than half a day left for hunting and I knew if we picked the right hill we would find some birds. And we did just that. In fact all we did was cross the valley and head to the big hill to our North. We could make out some old 2-track covered by snow which no one had driven up since the last snow…promising. We drove about halfway up the hill and parked. The terrain was steep hillside, with rim rock and a Mesa on top. This was perfect. My suggestion for this specific terrain is always work around low to the top, spin around the top and then work the middle again. The point here is to start low and push the birds up to the top…chukar will run to the flats up top. This worked out perfectly. We were less then 100 yards from the truck when Z goes on point below me. Faron and I move down to see what the “point was”, sure enough a small covey of huns gets up (flying downhill of course) and we take a bird from the covey…and yes then we have to walk back up to where we started. At least we got into some birds.

Now it was Faron’s turn at the gun. Faron was at the low end of our sweep around the face and got into a couple unexpected flushes. The dogs were up higher and Faron had to try to move fast with these unannounced flushes. He got off his shots but to no avail. As I watched from above I smiled, at least he was getting some shooting in. I have to give him credit, he was having some trouble with his 20-pump and given the issues he was dealing with it was a wonder he was getting some shots off.

We swung around to the far side of the Mesa from where we parked and then started up a ravine towards the top. Hopefully our initial push had chased running birds higher. With a Mesa it’s nice because there is only so far up a bird can go. About halfway up I looked down to see Faron knelt down next to Baron checking his front pads. He yelled up to me that they were scraped and that I should check them out when Baron got closer to me. It wasn’t long before Baron came by and I called him over. I checked his paws and they were scraped on the outer edges of both feet but nothing I thought warranted any change in hunting plans.

We pushed on to the flats up top. Faron took the edge of the rim I was in the middle with Jason pushing the middle area of the mesa. At this point I get to hear in relatively short order listen to Jason and then Faron popping off shots. I don’t see what goes down in either situation but Faron starts to look for a downed bird. YES! Faron finds his first Idaho chukar but leaves it on the ground and works at directing Baron to the downed bird. In our previous hunt in Utah we had tried this similar encouraging tactic with Baron on a couple huns that I had shot and between trying to figure out the game being played and his excitement he repeated just ran past and even over the downed birds. This time was different though. Baron crossed the scent cone not to far from the chukar and immediately turned and snaked his way to the bird on the ground. What a change!

In another 200 yards I got a point from Z. It was one of those classic moments when you watch your pup go out-of-sight over a ridgeline and when they haven’t returned you now she is on point. I crested the ridge to look down over some small rim rock to see Z standing tall on point. I move in on the birds and a nice covey of chukar busts not too far from her. The bird tumbles to the ground, dead before it hits and Z quickly locates and retrieves the bird to hand…God I love my dog!!

I send Z off to find more birds and toss the chukar back down into a bush. Faron and Baron moved up to the area with the pup still racing and excited from the recent shooting. I watch as Baron moves in from downwind and again catches the scent of the chukar in the bush. I encourage him to find the bird and I’m expecting that he will move in for the retrieve but to my surprise he locks up on the bird! This was awesome. The best part of the whole thing was that he held point even with me moving about and yelling for Faron to come up and check his pup out. I was very happy to see the progression as Baron figured out the rules to the game.

Baron’s Pads

About halfway into our hunt we stop at a nice overlook for some photos and to chat. Looking at the blood-stained paw prints in the snow I knew Baron’s feet were getting worse. Faron took another look and the look of concern brought me over to inspect Barons pads too. They were shot! It had been a long while since I had seen pads this bad. He had gone from slightly scraped to really bad in very short order. Unfortunately this meant that Barons hunting weekend was over. Next season…

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