After a night of epic thunder and lightning and an epic example of restaurant arrogance (Grand Hotel, Big Timber, Montana), we were ready for a return to adrenaline rush and scenic beauty. Do you know that feeling? Let’s get on with it!
Instead, we were greeted by low-lying, dank fog. The moisture lingered, soaking pants, socks and dogs but keeping temperatures cooler, longer,until the sun broke through and remained the rest of the day.
[Man, nor hunters, do not live by bread alone. But we broke bread in some spectacular places, including this one. Did it bring us luck?]
The Montana icons had been summoned, either by Hollywood or pure unadulterated luck: Cattle framed by rugged mountains, buckaroo (actually, buckarette) and border collie performing as if to a script. One recalcitrant bull briefly challenged us as we opened then shut (quickly and with furtive backward glances) a wire gate across our road.
Oh yeah, the hunting: big sky? Sure. Big fields, absolutely! This was the Hun-rich shorter cover we’d not gotten to earlier. But it was lunchtime before we saw a bird. Not for lack of trying. We ran most dogs through square miles of territory, hope piled on hope as Buddy, Biscuit and Ellie all promising partridge while delivering meadowlarks.
Another drive, more gates, and the slot machine called Montana started paying out. A small covey here, pair there, and every once in a while a sharptail adding spice to the prairie stew.
Manny’s moment: After enough birds to make a TV show interesting, guide Al Gadoury offered a return to a familiar patch to showcase 23-week-old Manny’s budding instincts. A sharpie passed overhead as we geared up … a portent? Manny ambled and streaked alternately through known sharptail habitat, locking into a beautiful, leg-up point. As we neared, we saw his little puppy head threaded between the bottom two strands of a barbed-wire fence along the county road.
Trepidation soon absented itself, as we decided nothing good could come of a shot across the road, or unidentified critter that might spray or inject nasty quills.
But by the time we turned for the trucks, the pup had bumped, pointed, stopped-to-flush and otherwise discovered at least a half dozen sharptails, even delivering many of them to (close to) hand. Good boy!
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Scott Linden Outdoors 
