The Final Day

Rather than hunting my traditional last-day trac tin Lind, I spent the final morning of the 2022 upland bird season with new friends Ryan and Jessica. They had traveled from Canada to Ryan's old Palouse stomping grounds to finish their season.

Ryan and I met a couple of years prior on social media, connected by the Palouse and a love for upland hunting. Once he had dates set for their trip south, he graciously reached out with an offer to join them in some formidable yet productive covers.

Steep, brushy, and prickly are the most accurate descriptors of the eyebrows the three of us would tackle. It was the first time any of us had laid eyes on the property, situated to the east of Dayton among the wheat fields where their ridgetop fingers crept into evergreen timber.

Gray skeletons of yellow starthistle encapsulated the hills, edged in by golden wheat straw and grasses. Pockets of crimson Woods' rose stretched up through the senesced vegetation, while large clusters of European roses speckled the hillsides. We had already spotted roosters sneaking through the wheat stubble, but somewhere among the pokey shrubbery were more pheasants.

A crisp, bluebird morning blossomed, and temperatures raced toward fifty degrees. And if that wasn't enough to make the day an instant success, the opportunity to share a hunt with new friends iced the cake. Being the last day of the bird season, it was the last opportunity of the year to put Jessica on a prodigious, wild, late-season rooster over the staunch point of my smallest setter, Yuba.

Late-season birds are tough. Few would argue that the intelligence and evasive skill of a wild rooster pheasant, having successfully dodged predators throughout the fall, is unmatched by other species. By January, pheasants have spent a lot of time beating feet and using cover to their advantage. Luckily, Yuba's pheasant savvy is unmatched within my pack of setters. Over the years, she has honed her skills in running birds, and I knew she would serve us well.

With Yuba on the ground, we set off for a long draw that climbed from the canyon floor. Time had carved a deep cut down its belly and choked it with rose and red-osier dogwood. The shrubby stems gave the otherwise senescing weeds a rouge flare, like a low flame licking through cracks in the earth's floor. Hemlock stalks popped under our boots, and starthistle nagged at our brush pants as we began our ascent.

Pheasants enjoy browsing in wheat stubble and loafing in cover near the field's edge. Therefore, Jessica and I hunted high with Yuba while Ryan brought up the bottom with his young yellow Lab, Dirx. Jessica walked the field edge as I side-hilled about twenty yards below, keeping Yuba working between us. Yuba's stubby legs projected her impressively across the steep terrain as she followed her nose and incessant drive to find the bird that some call the clown prince of the prairie.

We pushed the draw for an hour before reaching the top, certain that we would run birds to the end and witness a half-dozen erupt into the wheat. Our reward, however, was a healthy flock of dark-eyed juncos flitting beneath fallen tree branches.

Undeterred, we hopped across the field to the head of the next draw, where Jessica and I dropped into the top of an eyebrow that was clustered with the heavy hummocks of European rose and hawthorn. It looked as birdy as any cover I would have chosen.

Again, Jessica walked the rim while Yuba and I skirted below in the thicket. Rose thorns heckled my hands, depositing their needle-sharp tips into my skin and pants. I was shocked that yuba appeared unperturbed as she poked in and out of the gaps among bushes. My pheasant-sense began to tingle as she made her way toward an intriguing horseshoe of roses. Yuba buried into the roses, halted abruptly, and curled her tail high, sending my heart climbing into my throat.

The hawthorns blocked most of the shooting lanes, and the hill was too steep to have Jessica come down. Instead, I held her up at the top about thirty feet away as I walked behind Yuba for the flush.

As my right foot fell beside Yuba's right rear leg, a rooster rocketed from the thorns as if I had stepped on a launch button. His trajectory was expectedly straight away. We were quickly reminded that a wild rooster could reach Mach speed instantly. His fleeting blue rump and barred tail struck panic as I jerked my double gun to mount.

I have no clue what Jessica saw or must have thought when the bird got up, but the pain in my thighs from the prior days was suddenly dull in comparison to the disappointment of missing the bird. The escape of the clown prince was no laughing matter. He earned it yet, graciously left us with the memory of his kaleidoscope of colors, illuminated by the sun as he glided over the treetops. A beautiful reminder of why we hunt birds and why missing is not so bad.

Our final push sent a handful of birds flushing out one hundred yards ahead and sailing into the amber glow of sunset. With shotguns broken open and shells stowed, we stood at the truck, worn out, scratched, and bloody, laughing at our mishaps, wholly gracious for the opportunity.