Montana 2010: The First Day, Hail Mary Edition

I'm much too tired to write this cleverly, but here's the deal.  Jon, Wes, and I (along with six dogs) left Kansas at 5:30pm on Friday evening.  We drove straight through, all night long, to Carbon County, Montana.  We arrived at 10:30am Saturday morning and put down Doc, Dottie, and Sage.

For those in the know, Carbon County is one of the few counties in Montana that hold a population of chukar partridge.  It was a longshot, to say the least -- we called it our "Hail Mary" attempt at punching our Montana card for a new species of bird.  In fact, none of us had ever shot a wild chuck anywhere.  Hell, when Jon called the Montana FWP, they advised him not to waste his time searching for these crafty birds.

That, of course, was taken as a challenge.

So imagine three corn-fed flatlanders, hitting the biggest, ugliest hills we could find.  And we tackled them.  As best as three dog-tired dudes could do, somehow feeding on the deprivation of sleep, energy, and a couple thousand feet in altitude.  Nothing though.  As the sun reached it apex, we headed down a drainage and back to the truck, birdless.

And then, as any bird hunter knows, luck changes on a dime.

Dogs got birdy.  Locked up.  Relocated.  Locked up again.  Solid this time.  Wes went in to flush Doc's find, and all hell erupted.  Ten birds, probably.  Three died.  A fourth fell when Dottie pointed a single, her tenth upland bird species of her ten year career.

Hard to beat today.  But we're gonna do our best to try for the next 14 days.