Well, my trip out to WA was yet another fun filled adventure. I had a lot of fun with great folk, got to see gorgeous countryside, got into a bunch of birds, ate great food, drank great drink. I sure wasn’t ready to come home. It was warmer there than I expected, at least early in the trip. By the end of the trip it was quite chilly, but was great weather for walking up ravines without sweating to death.
We started out the trip with Don and Aspen over near Pullman for pheasants on opening day. Steve quickly had his limit of pheasants. I had some most SPECTACULAR misses on a bunch of gimme pheasants. Although I did redeem myself slightly with my quail shooting. Don was more than happy to rub in my SPECTACULAR missing I was doing as he was getting his birds. Eventually I did manage to bring down one rooster.
With Steve limited out on roosters, he hung back and followed us a lot more slowly while Mike and Aspen worked up another draw.
Aspen sure is a sweet girl, and has a great nose on her.
On the way to one of Don’s quail spots that afternoon we drove past a really neat barn that had a really cool idea for a fence.
It started out pretty wet that morning, but thankfully dried out a bit.
The second day found us at a pretty place that Don likes, back up in some CRP.
We flushed pheasants, a good number of them hens with the cocks most often flushing wild, but there was one that flushed right between Don and Steve (who were on opposite sides of the creek).
Aspen made a great retrieve on that bird.
After hunting that piece of land, we drove to a little place to confer about where to go from there. Seems Steve has his own town, or at least spot on the map.
Thanks a ton Don for hosting us again!
After leaving Don’s we headed south towards the grouse woods and from there over towards the Blue Mountains. We did some sightseeing along the way. It was mind boggling to me the amount of grain there was outside of some of the silos. Just sitting on the ground.
And since it was along the way, we stopped at one of my favorite places to stop. I never get tired of going to Palouse Falls. It’s so pretty. I love that scabland area of WA. It’s just amazing to me how much water it took to form that part of WA.
It was quite windy there, as it often is in that part of WA this time of year.
A down stream look. You can actually walk down to the bottom of the canyon to the river but you gotta have at least half a day to spend there and we just didn’t have the time this trip. Perhaps next trip we’ll schedule some time for walking down to the bottom.
Eventually we meandered our way to our next hunting area and found that the mountains getting covered in snow. But that day we did have some excellent hun shooting. I got my first limit of huns that day.
Driving up to the hun country was pretty. Foggy and as we moved further up it got snowy.
This is what the hun country “normally” looks like when not all foggy and snowy, and as the day warmed up most of the snow melted away.
But the snow and spitting freezing rain didn’t stop us from hunting those gorgeous Hungarian partridge.
Eventually we made it up over the mountain, heading down into the canyon to go find us some quail and pheasants.
First we had to stop and harvest some of the most delicious wild apples I’ve ever had. MMMM they were outstanding. Steve’s making apple butter and preserves out of the gallons and gallons of apples that we picked. We did stop to check to see if the grouse were enjoying some apples as well, but I don’t think they were.
And we did find us some quail pretty quickly at the first stop we made for quail. Though those sneaky buggers would fly into the thick stuff and not want to come out. But it was a good start to our quail hunting.
Mike did a great job with them, I thought.
Rain and snow are not conducive to keeping the truck clean. Good thing Steve’s not as anal about the outside of the truck as he is the inside of the truck or he’dve spent the whole trip washing the truck and not hunting.
Our next stop we spent a lot more time walking. We busted a really large covey of quail and they obliged us by flying up the ravine, so we had a great hunt a couple different days. What’s fun about that place is that you can have pheasants and huns in there as well. There were no huns in there this trip but the quail and Mikes most excellent work on the pheasants more than made up for that.
I got my first limit up of quail up that ravine.
There were turkeys out there EVERYWHERE. I would guess that in one day we saw easily 200 turkeys. Great hatch this year. Hopefully even half of them survive the winter
Though the morning started out wet, the evening ended up very nice. Sadly that was not to be the pattern for the rest of the trip. The weather gods were nice enough though to hold the rain until early afternoon so we could at least hunt the mornings without ending up soaked.
But you could see the storm coming.
It is definitely gorgeous country out there
With neat critters to watch
And neat things to see, even in the wheat
I’ve got more pictures, but that’s a good start into my trip….
Dani
We started out the trip with Don and Aspen over near Pullman for pheasants on opening day. Steve quickly had his limit of pheasants. I had some most SPECTACULAR misses on a bunch of gimme pheasants. Although I did redeem myself slightly with my quail shooting. Don was more than happy to rub in my SPECTACULAR missing I was doing as he was getting his birds. Eventually I did manage to bring down one rooster.
With Steve limited out on roosters, he hung back and followed us a lot more slowly while Mike and Aspen worked up another draw.
Aspen sure is a sweet girl, and has a great nose on her.
On the way to one of Don’s quail spots that afternoon we drove past a really neat barn that had a really cool idea for a fence.
It started out pretty wet that morning, but thankfully dried out a bit.
The second day found us at a pretty place that Don likes, back up in some CRP.
We flushed pheasants, a good number of them hens with the cocks most often flushing wild, but there was one that flushed right between Don and Steve (who were on opposite sides of the creek).
Aspen made a great retrieve on that bird.
After hunting that piece of land, we drove to a little place to confer about where to go from there. Seems Steve has his own town, or at least spot on the map.
Thanks a ton Don for hosting us again!
After leaving Don’s we headed south towards the grouse woods and from there over towards the Blue Mountains. We did some sightseeing along the way. It was mind boggling to me the amount of grain there was outside of some of the silos. Just sitting on the ground.
And since it was along the way, we stopped at one of my favorite places to stop. I never get tired of going to Palouse Falls. It’s so pretty. I love that scabland area of WA. It’s just amazing to me how much water it took to form that part of WA.
It was quite windy there, as it often is in that part of WA this time of year.
A down stream look. You can actually walk down to the bottom of the canyon to the river but you gotta have at least half a day to spend there and we just didn’t have the time this trip. Perhaps next trip we’ll schedule some time for walking down to the bottom.
Eventually we meandered our way to our next hunting area and found that the mountains getting covered in snow. But that day we did have some excellent hun shooting. I got my first limit of huns that day.
Driving up to the hun country was pretty. Foggy and as we moved further up it got snowy.
This is what the hun country “normally” looks like when not all foggy and snowy, and as the day warmed up most of the snow melted away.
But the snow and spitting freezing rain didn’t stop us from hunting those gorgeous Hungarian partridge.
Eventually we made it up over the mountain, heading down into the canyon to go find us some quail and pheasants.
First we had to stop and harvest some of the most delicious wild apples I’ve ever had. MMMM they were outstanding. Steve’s making apple butter and preserves out of the gallons and gallons of apples that we picked. We did stop to check to see if the grouse were enjoying some apples as well, but I don’t think they were.
And we did find us some quail pretty quickly at the first stop we made for quail. Though those sneaky buggers would fly into the thick stuff and not want to come out. But it was a good start to our quail hunting.
Mike did a great job with them, I thought.
Rain and snow are not conducive to keeping the truck clean. Good thing Steve’s not as anal about the outside of the truck as he is the inside of the truck or he’dve spent the whole trip washing the truck and not hunting.
Our next stop we spent a lot more time walking. We busted a really large covey of quail and they obliged us by flying up the ravine, so we had a great hunt a couple different days. What’s fun about that place is that you can have pheasants and huns in there as well. There were no huns in there this trip but the quail and Mikes most excellent work on the pheasants more than made up for that.
I got my first limit up of quail up that ravine.
There were turkeys out there EVERYWHERE. I would guess that in one day we saw easily 200 turkeys. Great hatch this year. Hopefully even half of them survive the winter
Though the morning started out wet, the evening ended up very nice. Sadly that was not to be the pattern for the rest of the trip. The weather gods were nice enough though to hold the rain until early afternoon so we could at least hunt the mornings without ending up soaked.
But you could see the storm coming.
It is definitely gorgeous country out there
With neat critters to watch
And neat things to see, even in the wheat
I’ve got more pictures, but that’s a good start into my trip….
Dani
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