For the Memorial Day holiday we got out and scouted for ruffed grouse. It’s a beautiful time of year to be out, things are greening up and the early spring flowers are coming out. We saw elk everywhere we went. This time of year the ruffed grouse are drumming and a little easier to find. The thumping of their wings against their puffed out chest carries amazingly far. The other thing about it is that it can be deceptively hard to pinpoint. If you are able to locate them, they are sometimes easy to sneak up on to within 20 or 30 yards so you can get a great show as they strut their stuff on a log. They are really awesome birds to watch. I was able to locate six or eight of them in a morning. This fall they won’t be on the exact log, but there is a good chance that there will be some in the area.

 

 

If you are interested in really learning about training pointing dogs, Dave Walker, author of “The Bird Dog Training Manual,” is presenting a pointing dog seminar this Saturday and Sunday in Salt Lake City, UT. I am really excited about this event. I use a lot of Dave’s techniques in my training. Dave has been very helpful with my training and some specific issues with certain dogs I have been working with, so I am looking forward to meeting him in person and seeing him apply some of his techniques.

I believe they still have some room for additional participants, so if you are interested, look up Dave’s website at www.davewalkerdogs.com on the Seminars link on the Training dropdown menu for the contact information. The seminar is being sponsored by the Wasatch Front Brittany Club. The seminar is at the Lee Kay Center and starts at 9:00 each day.

 

If you’re not a Utah upland game hunter, the following probably doesn’t have much interest for you. Utah’s upland game regulations are undergoing a review and are now up for some significant changes. The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources has met with the Upland Game Advisory Council and taken comments from citizens about changes to upland game hunting regulations in the state and are proposing some of the following changes:

1.) Standardize the current split pheasant seasions, Utah County (7-day) vs. the rest of the state (2-week) into one uniform 16-day season statewide. The extended 30-day season on public lands in certain counties will still exist. Further, the opening day shooting hours will start 30 minutes before sunrise rather than the traditional 8:00 am start.

2.) Extend the forest grouse season by one month (mid-September through the end of December).

3.) Unify the current split chukar seasons and lengthen the seasons from late September to mid-February. They are also recommending a two week later opening day for the season to lessen bird’s dependence on water sources, especially guzzlers. This will provide chukar hunters statewide a lot more opportunity to hunt chukars (2 ½ months more in some cases).

4.)  Offer additional/new California quail hunts in Daggett and Sanpete County.

5.) Offer an additional/new sharp-tail grouse hunt in Cache County.

6.) Shift the sharp-tail grouse and the sage-grouse seasons two weeks later in September. Season length would be kept the same, but this change would allow broods to disperse more and provide a lower likelihood of harvesting brood hens (3+ year old), a critical element in grouse production.
One of the current recommendations is to have two different Hungarian partridge seasons in Northern Utah, rather than one uniform season. I oppose this change for two reasons: First, there is no biological basis for this regulation. Second, regulations should be simplified rather than made more complex. And third, the season has always coincided with the chukar season to avoid problems with hunters misidentifying these two species and inadvertently taking a species out of season. I suggest that there should be one statewide Hungarian partridge seasion that matches the chukar season.

Another change I would like to see changed is the pheasant season. I suggest that we go to a statewide 30-day season. Rather than a 16 day season on private lands and a 30 day season on public lands in certain counties.  Habitat is the limiting factor on pheasant populations, rather than a male only harvest strategy. Give hunters more opportunity at the most popular upland game species in the state. 

If you have comments you would like to voice, attend your Regional Advisory Council meeting this week, or contact your local RAC members via email and voice your comments. They are your public voice on wildlife regulations. Information can be found at http://wildlife.utah.gov/news/08-05/upland_game.php .

 

This post doesn’t have anything to do with gun dogs, other than it’s outdoors and it’s a lot of fun to have the dogs along in the field with you when you are mushroom hunting.

     Last year was such a great year for morels, so I was really pumped up for this spring. We had a good wet winter, and some nice showers early this spring, so I hoped that we would have another good morel crop this year. Unfortunately, I think it has been too cool and the timing of moisture just wasn’t right and we weren’t able to find a single morel. On the flip side, the coprinous mushrooms were very abundant. Their fairly tasty, but need to be cooked and eaten shortly after picking, whereas the morels can be dried and used in dishes for months.
     The dogs weren’t particularly helpful finding the morels, but they were fun to have out in the field. While out mushroom hunting we did have the one of the dogs point a nesting turkey. Luckily I was able to see her and pick up the dog and carry him off without bumping the hen off her nest.

 

We’ve had a really cool spring this year. However, I don’t hear the dogs complaining. Yesterday, it snowed just a couple hundred feet above us on the mountain. The dogs didn’t mind a bit. I think they would rather have the cool temps than the summer heat. This weekend for a day or two for the first time the temperature got up around 85 degrees (F) here, and we all thought we were going to cook.

 

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My sister, brother-in-law, my wife and I went turkey hunting in Southern Utah this weekend. As we always do when we get together, we had a ball. There were turkeys around, but they were pretty quiet and they didn’t much to do with our calling; that is, they didn’t want much to do with the guy’s calling. One of the evenings the two ladies went out together to see if they could find a turkey. About an hour before sunset they came driving back into camp. When they drove up we were just about to head out to try to put some turkeys to bed for the night so we would be ready for the morning hunt.

We asked them what was up and they said that they had already put them to bed. “Huh?” Yeah, put one to bed in the back of the truck! Turns out that they just went about a half mile up the road and saw a couple of toms displaying for some hens off in a meadow. When they drove by the hens moved off, but the toms stayed around. The girls drove on up the road and snuck back to the edge of the meadow and started yelping on a slate call. (We showed them how to use it about 10 minute before leaving camp.)

The toms fired right up and came in. At one point the birds got a little nervous, slicked down and started to move off, but a purr and a yelp turned them right around and brought them back in to within gun range. Unfortunately the ladies were sitting about 20 yards apart and there was only one tom within shotgun range, but that tom was a dandy. He had a 10″ beard and spurs over an inch long.

They great thing was that where the guys couldn’t call a tom in to save our souls, the ladies pulled one within range with all the finesse of a coy hen. Congratulations, ladies!
 

I had a funny thing happen the other day. I was talking to a local guy about our mutual love of hunting, especially pheasant hunting. He began railing against the State Division of Wildlife about the fact that they aren’t more active about promoting pheasant populations in the state. “They should do more,” he said.

The funny thing about it was that two days later I saw him and his dad out burning off their fencerows and ditch banks on their property. He saw no connection between his land management and pheasant populations. It was simply something the Division of Wildlife should fix.

Almost without exception, every landowner in our county and the surrounding four counties burns off their fields, ditch banks and fencerows every spring. This has gone on for generations; my dad and grandpa always did it. In fact, burning off the ditch banks was an event that would warrant a visit home from college. I believe that it’s primarily recreational. Let’s face it, it’s fun to play with fire. We can say that we are doing it to maximize water flow, keeping the weeds down, or cleaning the place up, but the fact of the matter is, around us most of the ditches are concrete lined or in pipes now, so surrounding vegetation doesn’t take up water.

The problem is that this type of clean farming, where all the ditch banks and fencerows are slicked off, strips the land of cover for wildlife, namely pheasants. I found it ironic that the farmer that was complaining about the low pheasant numbers was the very person that could make a difference in the county. The Division of Wildlife can shorten seasons and constrain possession limits, but where pheasants are concerned, they require habitat, and that habitat is on private land. Here in the arid west (Utah), the limiting factor for pheasant populations is over winter and early spring cover. Without that, you can’t grow pheasant populations. If you were to calculate the acres of all the ditch banks and fence rows cumulatively that are burned clean just in this county it would add up to a significant amount of pheasant cover. So, this fall, or next spring, when you get ready to burn your ditch banks and fencerows, think about the little piece of pheasant cover you could leave for a few more pheasants.