The Seasons Wrapped up on February 14. . .

Valentine's Day.  And who doesn't take a break from singing the praises of their sweetie in order to go out one last time?

I can't say that this was a great hunting season.

For one thing, I can say that its gotten difficult to draw antelope and deer tags, something I used to do routinely.  I was going to start a post on this way back when, and didn't.  Commenting on it now, what I'll note is that I used to expect to draw my first choice on antelope and that I had a relatively good chance of drawing a limited area deer tag every few years.  Elk tags were the ones that were difficult to regularly get.  Not anymore.

Starting a few years ago, for some reason, it started getting hard to draw antelope tags, and not just in the area that I put in for.  Lots of locals I know have shared this same experience.  I don't know what's up with this, as there are as many antelope as ever.  I've heard it claimed that this is because tags are going to out of staters, but I don't know if that's true or simply claimed.

This year the Coronavirus Pandemic may have influenced this as we're now a year into it and its undoubtedly the case that more people are out and about than normally, and I do regard that as a good thing . . . but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The 2020 season started in spring for me with turkey, if we discount that the 2019 waterfowl season ran into 2020, just as the 2020 waterfowl season ran into 2021.  I got a general turkey license, as did my son.  He got the turkey this year rather than me, so that season was as success.  After he returned to school I went out quite a few more times, but without any luck.  That's basically what I expect with turkey, however, so no big deal.

Turkey season was followed by "fishing season", which isn't an established season of any kind, but which is that time of the year that runs between the close of turkey season and the start of bird season.  I tend to only fish in the mountains, for whatever reason, and this year the fishing was good.  I even got in some fishing in streams I'd never fished before, and saw some areas I intend to go back to.

Fishing season closes with the opening of the early grouse seasons.  I went up for blue grouse as I usually do, and ran into the same problem I've run into the base few years.

The area that I go blue grouse hunting is in an area that has been dedicated to an elk hunting hunter's management area.  I support that program.  However, what it means is that the rancher whose land is in the area doesn't feel that he can let anyone cross it now for other hunting purposes.  

I have no desire to hunt on his land, and indeed, blue grouse aren't in it.  I only require transit.

Anyhow, once access across topped I realized that it wasn't a problem, as I have a Jeep, and I know the back roads in.  The first time I did this I received a call from the game warden and he was super enthusiastic about it probably as he's a hunter himself and he was excited to find somebody willing to dedicate such an effort to this.  

That warden was transferred and the year before last I ran into a new one, who flat out refused to believe that it was possible that I hadn't crossed private land to get where I was.  I invited him to follow me out, and he did.  At one point I had to warn him that I thought he had a risk of rolling his pickup in one area, but he followed me anywhere.  He basically called me a liar just prior to that, but when he had followed me all the way out he sheepishly admitted that he'd been wrong and that he just didn't think anyone would devote so much effort to bird hunting.

This past year, yet another new warden.  This one was hyper aggressive and when he what roads I'd taken in to get where I was, he informed they weren't roads.  They were there, but they weren't "official roads".  

It's difficult to tell somebody who is a native to this place that a road isn't official when I've been driving them longer than he's been alive, but he was insistent.  Eventually he calmed down.

Next year I'm thinking of riding in with a horse or mule.  I'm just one of those people. 

This takes me, however, to my next topic.

Both of these wardens were new when I encountered them and the last one was from urban California.  Neither are native to the state.

At one time game wardens here were a lot like lawyers.  They tended to come from ranching families and there was no place for them on the ranch, or they were local outdoorsmen who wanted to work outdoors. That's really changed.

It started to change when the state brought in a test system to qualify people to be game wardens. At some point, it really tightened this up in keeping our our certification culture, which basically holds that if you have a certification, you are qualified to do a job.  Now game wardens are almost all out of state imports.

This has tended, in my view, to convert them from game wardens into cops.  The last friendly warden this area has visited with me a lot about the shotgun he used for hunting.  The one prior to that had helped me drag an antelope in over a very long distance, just as he saw me doing it.  Now, getting stopped by some of them is like being a black man getting stopped in a big city. . . you're going to get grilled.

Indeed, the last one was hostile right off the bat.  Not only that, he didn't know that shotguns have to be plugged back in the state to be legal for hunting.  I know this, as I asked him if he wanted to check mine and he told me they didn't have to be plugged.  He was a lot more interested in harassing me, which is what he was doing, and telling me what amounts to a fiction about roads, than being a game warden.

Indeed, I'll note that this cop attitude has really caused the state a problem now, and one that has spread into the neighboring state to the north as well.  Back a few years ago a game warden up north found a pile of cartridge cases on the ground and realized that some elk had been taken out of season, and that the tracks lead back to the Crow Reservation in Montana.  This was evidence of poaching, but a sensible warden, and for that matter a sensible policeman, knows that there are times you pass on following up on something, and this was one of them.  He didn't, and zealously tracked it to the end, ending up in a United States Supreme Court case the successor of which is being litigated out here now, by necessity.

Well, anyway. . . 

We did get some blue grouse.

Then came sage chicken season.  We did okay, but not great.

Following that came the license draw disappointment, or rather its impact as the failure to draw anything was known well before that.  I, of course, obtained a general deer permit, but I do feel that something needs to be done about the difficulty to draw, and what I feel that is would be to consider subsistence hunting permits for subsistence hunters, of which I'm one.

I'll get into this some other time, but there are quite a few of us around in the state who are "pot hunters" or "meat hunters".  When I was a kid, most of us from here fit that category.  Being a "head hunter" was somewhat of a slam against you.  I don't think I met a real head hunter until I was in university, actually, in the 1980s.

Anyhow, I think some consideration needs to be given to a subsistence hunter category of license.  It'd still have to be controlled in some fashion but for those of us who are dedicated hunters, but in the killetarian category, something should be considered.  Indeed, I know that head hunters fear guys like me as we'll take a buck in an area that they feel we should let go for a couple of additional years until it has a more prominent display.  So let us have a sort of reserved doe permit then.  Anyhow, as noted, more on that later.

This also gets to the fact that since the game and fish's site has become computerized and has new categories, I'm not as good at putting in for things as I used to be.  I still put in for the main things I want to hunt, but I'm a failure at building points and Super Tags and the like.  Nobody to blame for that but myself.

So, anyhow, I didn't draw an antelope tag.  

I did purchase a general deer tag and my son and I went out in the short season in an area that we go into and did get up on some nice deer, including legal bucks for the area we were in. But we only saw them the one time and we didn't do the approach correctly.  Again, nobody to blame but myself, but getting them out would have been an epic, and probably nighttime, endeavor.

I completed the season in a completely different area and I did get a small buck, by myself  I didn't think that remarkable but when I later went to the game biologist to have it checked for CWD he was stunned how far I'd gone.  Says something about me, I suppose.

By that time, waterfowl season had started, which starts the saga of the chukars.  I recently posted on that on another site, so I'll just copy and repeat my comments here, from there:

I’ve been a bird hunter since I was five years old, which now means that I’ve occupied that vocation longer than any other. Indeed, over half a century now. But in that time, I’ve taken chukars once.

That occasion was some time in the very late 1970s or the very early 1980s. It was very late in the season and I was goose hunting. I saw some chukars, knew that it was open and got one or two, I don’t quite recall. What I do recall is that I was with my father and I crossed the frozen North Platte to retrieve my birds.

That says something, whether we are to admit it or not, as there’s no way on earth I’d cross the North Platte if it had ice on it now and there’s no earthly way I’d let my kids do it. But my father did, and I didn’t worry about doing it. I knew it was frozen solid.

Last weekend I was out by the Platte and it was completely open.

Anyhow, I’ve seen chukars from time to time since then but I didn’t go out and make a dedicated effort to hunt them. . . until this season.

And that intent formed the season before last.

The season before last I was hunting deer late in the season, in a snowstorm, and ran into a big bunch of chukars in the mountains in territory much like that you have recently depicted in another post. I had a shotgun with me, but I was carrying a rifle. I didn’t see any deer, and I didn’t try for the chukars, but it stayed on my mind.

This year I ran into chukars again while deer hunting, but out in a sage brush covered area where I’ve never encountered them before in my life. And it was a lot of them. Again, as I was deer hunting, I passed on.

I didn’t get a deer, however, I went back into the aforementioned mountainous area and encountered them walking down a road. I got a deer later in the day, and looked for the chukars on the way back, but I didn’t run into them again. Opportunity lost.

About a week later I was out duck hunting and walked for a couple of miles across the plains to get to a water hole with ducks on it. Walking down a draw I ran into a big bunch of chukars. I was completely unprepared to shoot, or even encounter, chukars. On my way back out, I looked for them again to no avail.

I mentioned to a game biologist at that point that I’d run into chukars three times that year. He was checking my deer for CWD. I noted how surprised I was by the last encounter I just noted. “Big hatch this year” was his reply.

Later, hunting ducks on the river, I paused on a bluff just to observe the river. I then noticed the dog was nowhere to be found. Looking around, I saw him working the area behind me, nose to the ground. He was on to. . .chukars.

I figured they were gone but sent him down a draw to work it. He found them again, and I got a long shot. Missed.

Of course steel shot waterfowl ammo isn’t ideal for chukars either.

About a week later, I was hunting the same area and crossing from one spot to another, not seeing any ducks, and not prepared for anything else, when the dog got them up again. Another long shot and another miss.

The next week, walking to the river from a different spot, yep, once again. I wasn’t prepared to shoot at all, and when I did, I missed. I saw where they’d gone and we worked them again, and one more long shot, with the same results.

After this, it was game on. I went back three more times just looking for them. We walked for miles.

Never saw them.

All of which is probably some sort of a lesson. . . but I’m not sure what it is.

This takes us back to waterfowl.

I didn't have a great waterfowl season, success wise.  I went out a lot, but without much success.  I only took a couple of ducks the entire season and didn't get a single goose for the freezer or dinner.  Not one.  I did get some shots, but nothing really worked out well, in spite of being out a lot.

I did hike for miles and miles, mostly by myself, or rather just with the dog.  So all in all, it was good that way.  I can't complain.

My last trip out was yesterday.  It's been absolutely artic here, but it warmed up enough to go out, and I figured that the general conditions would mean that it was likely nobody else would be out, which was at least partially true. As per the general nature of the year, I got up on a lot of geese, but I didn't get any.  I didn't even get a shot.

I'll have to see if rabbit is still on. . . .