To the Point: Chicken Delight

If you had told me I would go to Kansas—that fabulous bird hunting state—for three days and not kill a pheasant or quail, I would have said it was impossible. But a few years back it happened to a friend and me on a late-season hunt when the birds were as jumpy as hawk-hunted barn pigeons. Luckily, prairie chickens that had been feeding in a winter-wheat field saved the hunt for us late one afternoon while we hid behind a round hay bale that looked like a huge roll of shredded wheat. The birds came in silently against a darkening sky. We rose together and each killed one, and then I took another as neat and fast as lunch pie at a neighborhood café had disappeared.

That was fun, but walking up prairie chickens with a bird dog is even better. The best time is in September during the early seasons in Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota when young birds are not yet in flocks and still in family units.

I well remember such a hunt, also in Kansas, with another friend on a morning when summer was still in full play. Gerald, our guide, had been seeing chickens on one of his leased properties where he trained his pointers and setters. Upon arriving, he unloaded a pair of dogs, and we waded into the bluestem grass, yet untouched by frost, while grasshoppers bounced off our trousers to briefly flare yellow and sail away. Minutes later Gerald’s dogs locked up. Before we could maneuver into shooting position, a half-dozen birds thundered up from the cover. My friend shot one, and the rest of those square-tailed, rudderless birds flew off untouched.

Alternately pumping their wings and gliding, they veered toward low hills a half-mile away. An hour later we found them and shot two more.

Stopping at a stock pond to rest and water the dogs, we cleaned our birds. By now it was midmorning, and the heat was coming hard. Stripping down to T-shirts, we circled back to the vehicles and finished our limits along the way. Five of the six birds were juveniles. I remember shooting my 28-gauge Winchester 101 that day.

I love to walk the prairies in late fall and winter, too, with the clean, sharp wind in my face. By now, though, these plains grouse are so wary—and in such large groups with so many watchful eyes—that you’ll have a better chance of shooting one if you carry a 12-gauge with Full chokes. I have done this in South Dakota, where the season runs through December 31 (January 31 in Nebraska and Kansas), sometimes walking a dozen miles with nothing but short-eared owls getting up within range.

Then I’m ready for a hay bale to rest behind and let these historic birds that fed many a pioneer family come to me. Chicken delight, indeed!

Tom Huggler’s Grouse of North America and A Fall of Woodcock won national acclaim and are now collectible. His Quail Hunting in America (Stackpole) is still in print. A Fall of Woodcock was reprinted recently by Skyhorse Publishing.