A good duck hunter speaks hail calls fluently, levels a shotgun in pouring rain, stays warm in pelting sleet, and stands firm in hurricane-force winds. These qualities go far for bagging a limit of ducks. Great duck hunters, however, fight half the battle from the comfort of their couch. Great duck hunters approach the hunt like a college football coach approaches a National Championship game; they have a playbook and study it cover to cover. They know how to respond to the weather, have backup ...
Nov 01, 2023•10 min
Sharp-tailed grouse, often known as sharpies, sharptails, or sharp-tails, are iconic birds of North America’s prairie landscape. Their spring mating ritual takes place on breeding sites called leks. At these sites, sharpies put on an amazing display of calling and dancing called booming. Those same general areas are where broods are raised, and early fall activities occur. Their survival requires large tracts of unfragmented, treeless landscapes. This is a trait carried into modern times; these ...
Oct 30, 2023•16 min
Just like with other forms of hunting, there are enthusiasts that prefer different methods of take for their game of choice. Squirrel hunters tend to fall into two distinct groups along a strong dividing line: those who use shotguns and those who use rifles. Within these camps you can break them down further into people who like the various gauges, calibers and the like. Particularly for rifles, there are hunters that pride themselves on skill with open (iron) sights and those that enjoy the tec...
Oct 27, 2023•10 min
Pheasants bring out every emotion for most upland enthusiasts, including awe, joy, and frustration. Add in the difficulty of hunting these regal birds on public lands where roosters can be more intelligent than an MIT grad, and your emotions might include astonishment and downright rage. Hunters spend thousands of hours chasing pheasants across public lands each year. State-owned wildlife areas, federally owned national grasslands and wetlands, and state-leased private lands in walk-in hunting p...
Oct 25, 2023•11 min
My earliest memory of hunting features a cool fall breeze skating across a remote forest lake. The wind swirled in the canopy, and yellow oak leaves drifted in the wind like a thousand deflated balloons. One landed at my feet as I paddled in a beat-up fiberglass canoe with my dad. He let me skip school that morning, and I remember the paddling keeping me awake. The stars glimmered, and the silhouettes of Atlantic white cedars reached up to them like giant black mountains. A great horned owl echo...
Oct 23, 2023•11 min
My Wirehaired Pointing Griffon worked the cover 50 yards ahead of me, his bell sounding gently in the warm, opening day of the ruffed grouse season in New Hampshire . We had hiked a mile and a half to get to a section of early successional growth that we had mapped out months before this moment of enjoyment squeezed between meetings on a busy Thursday schedule. My peaceful wait for the silence of his bell was shattered by the sudden eruption of yelping. I sprinted forward through the thick grous...
Oct 20, 2023•13 min
Humans and dogs have been hunting together in some capacity for thousands of years. What presumably began as tentative cooperation between the two species eventually led to the development of specialized dog breeds intended to perform specific tasks to benefit the human hunter. Today, hunting dogs play an essential role in assisting hunters in the field and have also found a place in modern culture as beloved companions and competitive athletes. Read more at projectupland.com ....
Oct 18, 2023•13 min
Fall is the time of year that gives the Pacific Northwest its moody, wet, and misty reputation. It’s also when some of the most coveted edible mushrooms arrive on the scene. Out here, mushrooms are as much a part of the landscape as the moss-covered logs, ferns, and towering old-growth trees. Fungi seem to be everywhere, and it’s easy to overlook them. Read more at projectupland.com .
Oct 16, 2023•11 min
“Woodcock are neither the hardest nor the easiest bird to shoot.” I am not sure I can sum up woodcock shooting better than those words of George Bird Evans, author of Upland Shooting Life . Over 35 years have passed since I shot my first woodcock, and I have learned from others and my own errors how to get better or at least improve my woodcock shooting skills. While the American woodcock can fly upwards of 30 mph through impossibly thick cover, they are also capable of some of the slowest fligh...
Oct 13, 2023•16 min
The venerable ring-necked pheasant , the most-hunted upland bird in America . Most of us are likely aware the bird hails from East Asia and, despite its popularity in the United States, is not native to our country. Nevertheless, hunters young and old, bird-dog fanatics or bird-dog-less, head afield in the hundreds of thousands each year to chase that unforgettable cackle. Millions of these birds are plated each year, so logic dictates some general culinary info might benefit us orange-clad dieh...
Oct 11, 2023•9 min
I’m an adult-onset, first-generation hunter. Over the last five years, I’ve learned everything I can about upland bird hunting. This learning experience has been overwhelming. I looked at the obstacles I encountered as a set of parts to make becoming a hunter feel more attainable. With bird hunting, that challenge is all the greater since the parts are literally moving. During a disheartened phase in my second hunting season, I wrote a list of the moving parts for upland hunting. It helped clari...
Oct 09, 2023•12 min
To my delight, my time spent on Duolingo, a popular language-learning application, came in handy while reading Craig Koshyk’s Pointing Dogs Volume I: The Continentals . Although I am an utter noob with hunting dogs specifically, I cherished a dog breed encyclopedia as a child. As a result, I was familiar enough with French dogs to know breeds like French Brittanies and Papillons exist. However, I had never heard of the gorgeous Épagneul Français (aye-pan-YUL fran-SAY) or French Spaniel. “I don’t...
Oct 06, 2023•12 min
I worked part-time at a gun shop during my college years, which offered me the privilege of handling hundreds of used shotguns. As I stepped behind the gun counter one day to start an afternoon shift, I spied a unique 20-gauge side-by-side on the rack. Etched on the side of the left barrel I read, “BROWNING ARMS COMPANY.” Stamped on the right barrel was “B-S/S SPECIAL STEEL 20 GA.” I was instantly intrigued and, after breaking it open to be sure it wasn’t loaded, swung it on an imaginary covey r...
Oct 04, 2023•13 min
A decade ago I wrote a book, The Urban Deer Complex . Growing up just outside of Boston, I was fascinated by the idea of whitetail deer being able to adapt so well to human environments. It inspired a whole section of the book I labeled “ The Science of Fear .” Through rapid evolution accelerated by an encroaching urbanized environment, whitetails were able to pass down behavior that would allow them to distinguish between non-threatening and threatening human behavior. That ideology would subse...
Sep 29, 2023•15 min
During my four-year stint at the Elk Public House in Spokane, Washington, I likely pounded out thousands of chicken breasts to prep for the grill. As line cooks—mostly greasy-haired, chain-smoking, beer-guzzling proletariat—we had our own terminology for such a process, which I’ll leave to your imagination. Nevertheless, taking a meat mallet to a chicken breast had a couple of distinct purposes. Yes, it tenderized the meat, but more importantly—for the purpose of short ticket times—it made sure ...
Sep 27, 2023•6 min
Upland hunting, for me, is as much about enjoying the outdoors as it is about hunting. For this reason, I tend to hunt very quietly, speaking to my dogs only as much as necessary. I don’t run a bell for the most part, though I will on windy days to keep better tabs on them. Being from the northeast, wind storms can drive birds away from primary feeding areas towards more protected grounds such as conifers. Both woodcock and grouse rely heavily on conifers for their survival. On windy days, woodc...
Sep 25, 2023•19 min
It was the same story each time we visited the Olathe Gun Shop in Kansas . As soon as he entered through the front door, my father would walk towards the over-under shotguns. There, neatly displayed upright, were a variety of stacked barrels. To the upland bird hunter shopping for a new shotgun, there were plenty to choose from. However, for my father there was only one that stood out: the Ruger Red Label. This time, his hands would carefully grab the shotgun’s forend to admire it one more time ...
Sep 22, 2023•14 min
After 35 years of bird hunting, I have been fortunate enough to harvest nearly 90 percent of the readily huntable gamebird species in the lower 48 (please don’t @ me, Himalayan snowcock hunters). While each species is special, one bird in particular holds a special place in my heart, a bird I hold above all others: the greater prairie chicken. A lot of this comes from studying prairie chickens in the Kansas Flint Hills for my Masters degree. I also spent seven years trapping and translocating gr...
Sep 20, 2023•13 min
There are three species of teal in North America: the blue-winged teal , the green-winged teal , and the cinnamon teal. Telling them apart is pretty easy because, long ago, someone was smart enough to name them based on their looks. Read more at projectupland.com ....
Sep 18, 2023•12 min
Dove hunting is a popular and fun way to celebrate the beginning of the hunting season. One of the earliest upland bird seasons to open across the United States each year, many hunters head for public lands to chase doves, break in their hunting gear, and practice their wingshooting skills. However, when it comes to enjoying fresh dove meat, most hunters wrap skinless dove breasts in bacon or stuff them into a jalapeño. Honestly, bacon-wrapped wild game and dove poppers are overrated. Isn’t it h...
Sep 15, 2023•10 min
I’m finishing this story on the eve of Montana’s 2023 bird opener , and I’m feeling very strange about the birds I’m about to start chasing. Over the past month, I’ve had dozens of conversations with some of the most passionate bird hunters and dog trainers about Senate Bill 280, Montana’s new bird dog training regulation. In summary, many believe this is an important regulation to get on the books, but it has a lot of downfalls and unforeseen impacts. At the root of this new regulation is an at...
Sep 13, 2023•14 min
Most of us become familiar with North America’s plains while reading accounts of Lewis and Clark’s voyage west or Laura Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie . For some, this is where their curiosity about the grasslands stopped. My journey, however, continued well beyond that initial exposure. Growing up in the plains, I was surrounded by true naturalists—folks in tune with the ebbs and flows that the seasons provide on this landscape. These naturalists, along with my own experience and educat...
Sep 11, 2023•11 min
When I first started cooking, I had no idea what a bird tenderloin was, let alone where to find it. Then I thought it was along the back—but every big game hunter knows that’s where you find the loin, not the tenderloin. But after several years of butchering birds, I have come to believe that not only is a bird’s tenderloin very easy to locate and remove, but it’s something worth doing every time you breast out a bird. Read more at projectupland.com ....
Sep 08, 2023•6 min
Do you think of yourself as fashionable? Probably not, and most of the bird hunters I know would agree with you. For us, fashion is a four-letter word and as appealing as watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians . But that doesn’t mean we’re immune to fashion-like whims. Like any group, we have things that are in ( Gunner Kennels ), things that are out (beeper collars), and things that were out but are now kind of in (smoking a pipe—I guess). We have hip gadgets (Garmin fēnix watches), trendy do...
Sep 06, 2023•24 min
Small Munsterlanders, fortunately for me, are one of the pointing dog breeds I’ve gotten to know in person. Feisty, handsome, and highly energetic, this breed is the tenth most popular bird dog breed in the Project Upland community , according to our annual survey. It’s also the third most popular versatile hunting dog breed in Europe. This is likely due to their broad skillset that includes searching, pointing, flushing, retrieving, tracking, and water work . Read more at projectupland.com ....
Sep 04, 2023•11 min
There are a few things that serve as reminders that fall has officially arrived – and dove season is one of them. Taking the time to plan a successful dove hunt can be easy if hunters do a few simple things when they locate the ideal dove field. Here are three dove hunting hacks that can be utilized in the early season when doves are naïve and easier to shoot, as well as for hunters who venture out in the late season when doves are skittish. New to dove hunting? Read: A Complete Guide to Dove Hu...
Sep 01, 2023•5 min
It wasn’t quite noon on the prairie and the light northwest breeze made the early season hunt seem almost cool. Usually on these early September prairie grouse hunts I would call it quits by noon, but after a rough summer at work and this being my first outing of the season, I decided Emma and I could make one more loop. Read more at projectupland.com ....
Aug 30, 2023•12 min
While many people associate the mourning dove with quiet suburban neighborhoods, perhaps perched on a utility line or visiting a backyard birdbath, dove hunting is a very popular pursuit for many across the country. But if you haven’t gone before, how would you know where to go? Surely, you can’t hunt in someone’s suburban backyard, right? If you fit into that bucket of understanding, here are some tips for identifying mourning dove habitat in different regions, so maybe you can try your hand at...
Aug 28, 2023•9 min
“We need a name for this place. Every special hunting spot is given a name, and this one is no exception.” Leaning back on our elbows, the four of us pondered the assignment. It was a cold, gusty November afternoon on the South Dakota prairie, but we had found a perfect resting spot on a leeward slope dotted with junipers. The sun warmed our spirits as we gazed across the expanse and reflected on the day. A lake sparkled under the sunshine in the distance, and thousands of sandhill cranes cackle...
Aug 25, 2023•14 min
I will say it upfront: I am far from being an expert on bird dogs. But if there is one thing I have become certain of over the years, it is that there is not enough information out there for new people to understand the proper etiquette of hunting over someone else’s bird dog. Now more than ever, the influx of mentoring in the upland community coupled with a real thirst for knowledge from novices begs for some helpful guidance on the etiquette of hunting over someone else’s dog. I may say this e...
Aug 23, 2023•11 min
