No turkey is safe when Lee goes hunting with Lady Luck.
Lee Harwell has a golden horseshoe tucked away where the sun never shines. Always has and always will. We’ve hunted together for nearly 40 years and regardless of the game, Lee has always returned from a day in the field with his quarry, or a good story. Most often, he drags home both.
It was 7 am Monday morning in Spokane when I picked up Mark and Puck to begin the three hour drive to the portion of the Columbia we would hunt for the next two days. After loading Mark’s gear including Puck, my Tahoe was packed to the ceiling with all of the gear required to hunt ducks. Most of the gear was designed to keep our bodies as warm as possible, but as all duck hunters know, the reels of decoy lines, decoys, stools, camo, dog food, water, waders, boots and the list goes on, all just to bag a few ducks is necessary as I was to beginning to understand.
Dale Spartas might be the luckiest guy I know, for I’m very envious of the fine double guns he owns – as well of his Camp Swampy. On second thought Spartas has no doubt simply worked harder than I have – acquiring all those wonderful shotguns – as well as Camp Swampy. Dale and I were staying at Camp Swampy recently, using it as our base camp for hunting Hungarian partridge.
One of the most talked-about items in our new book Serious Grouse Hunting, Book 1 is how to use Google Earth to find bird cover – specifically ruffed grouse and woodcock cover. Here’s a quick primer (some of this material is in the book), followed by a story about our experience using Google Earth while hunting in Maine the first week of October.
Most fantasies are better than the actual experience. Occasionally the opposite is true, a well known fact of hunters around Maryland.
I know that if you want to hunt wild and hard to find pheasants in Montana you have one of two choices, either cold weather or very cold weather, and lots of hard hunting which means a bunch of miles on foot.
The ruffed grouse is to the forest what pheasants are to the grasslands. But unlike the flashier, bigger plains bird, you can’t bully a grouse around. The “we-got-’em-surrounded” mentality that often works with pheasants – big crowds pushing a section of real estate to pinch birds and force them to flight – won’t get you anywhere in the grouse woods. No, this is one bird that requires finesse.
If you own a dog, then the following story will be familiar to you. If not, then perhaps it will inspire you, or at the very least make you chuckle a bit.
Okay, so I’m an outfitter, and yes, I have a business in Argentina. This article isn’t about any of that. It is about what you need to know if you want to go, and how to figure the cost of going. For 15 of the last 20 years, I was a consumer. I did my research, booked my own flights, paid my money, and went hunting. That changed five years ago, but I believe that, now as an outfitter, with a lot of real world experience, I have a moral and ethical obligation to educate and explain to potential Argentina wing shooting hunters how to put together this hunt of a lifetime and what it really, really costs.
It was September 9th, eight days after the West Virginia season opener for mourning doves. At the Shenandoah Valley Sportsmen Club, opening-day hunters had maxed out their limit within hours – arriving home in plenty of time for lunch and chores.
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