How’s your hunting season going? Has it met your pre-season expectations? Exceeded your wildest dreams?
With nut-cutting time around the corner in most states, what is still on your hunting to-do list, gnawing at your psyche, nibbling at the toes of your subconscious? Is it one more 20-inch rooster? Elusive Arizona scaled quail? Or a final, lung-bursting climb to a favorite chukar spot?
Hoping to chase valley quail here, one more time this season. What's still uncrossed on your to-do list?
What about your dog? Had enough bird contact? Of the right kind? I need to work on Manny’s backing Buddy. He’s been sneaking up on his uncle and that needs some attention before it becomes a habit. Buddy could use some encouragement when Manny sticks the bird first – he’s a notorious point-stealer.
As we get down to the dregs of this season, don’t we focus most often, laser-like, on the places we’ve neglected? There’s a sparkling ribbon of stream breaching a rock face I’d like to walk at least once … dancing redband trout under a canopy of venerable alders, massive basalt blocks looming, it’s right out of a Lord of the Rings movie. Manny needs exposure to the diminutive valley quail that dazzle us in the draws tributary to a legendary steelhead stream. And there is a café I’d like to visit way south and east where my arrival changes the population from nine to ten and I’m treated like family, and expected to make the coffee if I take the last mug full.
Do you have places like that on your Blackberry calendar? Where are the red dots on your mental map?
Scott Linden Outdoors 
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