Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Hunting on the HiLine 2014, Volume 4: A Nice, Big Rooster!

Today I bring you a belated post of our last hunting excursion of the season. 
While my family was here, we took them up to the Lost River WMA for some game bird hunting. The day was pretty nice, with the temperature right around 30 degrees, minimal wind, and sunshine. The hunt was lead by Harvey, who stomped, sniffed, and pointed his way through the brush along the riverbank.  Jeff was right behind him, then the rest of us followed along behind. 
Right way, Harvey got on scent. Jeff was the only one carrying a gun, so he stayed right with the dog while the rest of us were occupied with the task of crossing a barbed wire fence. Of course, that's right when Harvey pointed and flushed the bird. I looked up just in time to see the bird fly up and Jeff take his shot and nail him cleanly. A nice, big rooster pheasant! 
Harvey shot over to where the bird landed. By now, I was over the fence but my family members were still in progress. Not to say they take a long time, but just that pointing, flushing, and shooting a bird only takes flashes of seconds. So, we missed Harvey's retrieval process, but Jeff tells me we still need to work on Harvey's soft mouth. If we were really serious about hunting him more often, we also probably would never play tug-of-war with him with his dog toys as that only reinforces the same behavior with game birds... and no one wants to eat pheasant that's been the "rope" in a tug-of-war match. 
Harvey did relinquish the bird fairly quickly to Jeff and I placed it in the backpack. We spent another hour or so hiking around looking for birds, but never did find any more. 
Later in the weekend, we enjoyed the meat in one of our favorite preparation styles, something I call Pheasant Poppers. Unfortunately, I have no pictures, but I'm sure you can imagine. You cut the usable meat off the carcass, then cut into small bite size pieces. Place a jalapeno slice on top a piece of meat, then wrap the whole thing with bacon and put on a skewer. Repeat until all meat is used. Then grill until done! So simple and delicious! If you're averse to pheasant, or don't have a hunter in the household, or bird season is over (which it IS in Montana), then you can use chicken or any other type of poultry you'd like. There's just something about bacon on the barbecue, too... YUM!
So, that's a wrap for Hunting on the HiLine 2014! We'll be back again next fall with more hunting adventures! Until then, hopefully there's something on PrairiePonderingsMT that will keep you hooked. Stay tuned for tomorrow when I'll be launching a new weekly series on the blog! Can't wait for you all to see what it is all about! 

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