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rolling Palouse wheat fields trying to keep up with those Labradors. The Shorthair, of course, was
Cotton's dog and she would hold a point long enough for him to casually walk up and flush the bird for a well-timed close-in shot. She might have been a Type-A home wrecker during the off-season, but she made up for it during October and November. That little restaurant, called the Korner Koffee Kup, owned by Mickey Engstrom, kept us in breakfasts and occasionally a hamburger steak dinner with fries. That was a warm, friendly place, with plenty of advice to be had from the locals who seemed to have squatters rights to most of the booths.
We usually rolled out for breakfast about 5:30 and were on the road by 7. The trapline of time-tested hunting spots consisted of place names that Cotton learned from an old hunting partner and local farmer by the name of Willy Davidson. Willy and his good wife Grace, had a spread outside of town of about 160 acres and with the wheat subsidies, had a bank account to match. They
A Pass to Trespass
would drive out and pick up Willy and his Model 12 and then drive to good bird locations and Willy, being a local, would break the ice with the land-owner farmer and we got a pass to trespass. It was a good arrangement and Cotton would return the favor in the off-season by sending over some fresh salmon as a peace-offering. This arrangement went on for a number of years and quite often would include a big harvest lunch put on by Grace that consisted of no less than five courses of food and three varieties of pies. Over time, I discovered that this required some discretion or we would all fall asleep after lunch and the afternoon hunt would be slow in starting.
It was old Willy Davidson who introduced us to the hunting spots and the names to match. Some come to mind yet today, such as Mabel's Place, the Rock Crusher, the Old House, Alabam's, the Prune Orchard, and of course, the icon landmark of the county, Steptoe Butte. We also would often spend a part of the day working the numerous draws that follow drainage patterns down to the Panawawa River. These draws would hold many pheasants and we were constantly shooting at the quail that exploded in your face from small brushy patches. The draws had numerous knarled old crabapple trees that continued to produce almost inedible fruit that was a favorite fare with the local deer.
Our route, when leaving the café in the morning, was to stop and hunt the brushy patches close to town. I never had a neighbor come out and complain but we dropped many pheasants within sight and sound of the downtown activity and out the railroad track a short ways.
As we worked our way out of town and on toward the little community of Steptoe, we stopped at many of the sites that had been productive year after year. Many of these were abandoned farm houses that were surrounded by trees and natural grass that the former occupant had planted and groomed until the time that they either died or rented the surrounding wheat fields and moved to town and to the inevitable assisted living home. These farmsteads, replete with magnificent old Cottonwood trees, supplied the only cover for the birds during the winter months and a place of refuge to roost during the hunting season. The predator of these game birds was not the hunter but the roaming coyotes.
The strategy was to surround the farmstead property with hunters and then send one of us in with a dog to flush out the pheasants. Care must be taken when exiting your vehicle so as to not alarm the pheasant prematurely. We also discovered that each generation of birds seemed to imprint the success of running out of range rather than flying at the first sound of alarm. It may well be that we were witness to the dynamics of evolution. The runners were more apt to survive than the flyers. And as the years went by, we could notice the difference and the difficulty of using the old strategies. As we learned, so did the birds.
During the early years, Bob and I joined the older generation of family hunters on these weekend
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