So it begins Part 2
 

Tommorow is the opener for Quail, dove, blue and ruffed grouse here in western Oregon. I am have loaded my camping equipment, and will depart tonight. My Springer and Lab know its time, and are chomping at the bit. I thought I might spend less time this year upland bird hunting in Sep. because I have an Elk bow tag good through the month. Yesterday was the first time I ever bow hunted anything, and I just took up shooting bows about 6 weeks ago. At 11am yesterday morning I pulled my Bowtech Blackhawk back and sent a 100 grain thunderhead into the lungs of a 5 by 5 bull. So I guess the only other thing to do is go bird hunting. Good luck to you all. I will report my sucess on Tues. Feel free to chime in with your own hunts.

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Tomorrow is the opener for dove here in PA. This will be my second year hunting, and my first year for dove. Good luck hunting!

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tomorrow is the opener for doves in kansas (as well as most of the u.s.). it' s been raining the last 3 days, about 8inches and rising. oh well, i don' t have to worry about getting hot or carrying in water for the dogs.

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tomorrow is the dove opener here in ILL also big lead sounds like your season is of to a good start sorry to hear your out of an elk tag :D congrats

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Tomorrow Grouse season opens here in Idaho. Dog and I are ready. Heck, we were born ready.
Good luck and happy hunting to all,

Michael

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Had a good day today. I limited on grouse. The quail are still a little small so I will not hunt them unless I find a covey of mature birds. My Springer really showed her stuff. She flushed all kinds of grouse and quail. To bad I could not shoot as well on the bigger quail. We limited by 9 this morning on Grouse and I spent the rest of the day trying to find some quail that wern' t so small.

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2 1/2 hrs. 3 grouse. One short of a limit but it got too hot too soon. It' s a long season here, no big rush.
Good hunting,

Michael

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Congrats on the bull Ryan .
We hunted the Cascades today and did pretty good on Ruff grouse ,one short of three limits . Most of the birds were in the heavy timber .

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I went out yesterday afternoon and got 5 grouse, and 3 mountain quail. The dogs got a couple of good cripples that almost gave us the slip. Got a couple more quail today.

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We got out today and limited on ruff ' s again , but as BL said the mountain quail are to small to shoot . We did get into about six coveys of quail so later in the season we will be back.

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I went this weekend (2 days) and got 6 Ruffed and 4 quail. I too have noticed that most of the quail are still too small, but these were plenty big!:)

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Went out today and got 3 blues, and one quail. I saw a couple more coveys, but they were still kinda small. I had an interesting thing happen with one of the coveys. I saw them dissapear around a corner of an old landing. I got the dogs after them, and flushed a couple out. My Lab started acting real birdy, and I got into position. She jumped into a ditch and out came a rooster. Not a pheasant, but a cocka doodle doo type. I was 5 miles fromt he nearest farm and out comes one of those feathery legged banty chickens. It flew right past me. Then I heard a squaking and see my Springer snatch a hen out of the air. I called her over to me, and took the chicken away. I checked it over, and all it had was its feathers ruffled. I tossed it up into a 15' tall doug fir tree and it landed on the limb. The dogs gave me a weird look like, " why did you throw him back" " You never do that" .

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Congrats on the birds hntngirl .

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Thanks, halcon! And on yours too! I' m heading back out tonight and won' t be coming home till Sunday night. The grouse are sure great this year! Can' t wait for most of the quail to get a little bigger. And now that we' re getting some rain, it shouldn' t be too long before there are plenty of chantrelles to go with them! YUM!!!:)

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What kind of quail are we talking about? Mountain one Bobwhites? Or what. I' m confused on this one lol

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Well, in Oregon we' re talking about Mountain Quail. We can hunt California Quail too, but the season just opened on them yesterday in parts of the state, and doesn' t open till the 18th in other parts. To be honest, I' m not sure what a Bobwhite quail is. Is it like a California at all? They' re smaller than Mountains and look a bit different.

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Yesterday Upland Chessies arrived from Kentucky to try his hand at some blue grouse, mountain quail, and bandtail pigeon hunting. We got a couple of bandtails and a quail last night, and today we got 7 mountain quail and 4 blue grouse. It was a pretty good day. We should have had a few more quail and grouse, but I missed a nice one. We' ve got his 2 Chessies my lab and my Springer. It is quite the truckload of dogs. All the dogs have gotten action, and all are proving there worth. We plan on hunting every day until Tuesday the 23rd. We are going to have a lot of fun. I am sure we will have some stories to tell after this is over.

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Upland Chessies and I finished up a week of hunting Mountain quail, blue grouse, ruffed grouse, and Bandtail Pigeons. We had a good week overall, and it was fun hunting with him. He came out from Kentucky to Oregon to experience some of our wingshooting oppurtunities. We witnessed some excellent dog work, and were able to harvest several of each species we hunted for. The total is as follows. 22 Mountain quail, 15 ruffed grouse, 8 blue grouse, and 5 bandtailed pigeons. We did not lose any cripples, and recovered every bird that was shot. I look forward to hunting with him in the future.

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Went out a couple days this week and got 4 ruffs, 3 blues, 2 pheasants, and one Mountain quail. The weather has turned hot and dry, and I fear the timber companys may shut there lands back down.

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I just got home from a weekend up in the hills. I got 4 ruffed grouse, 2 mountain quail, and picked a whole lot of chantrelles!:D

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Well, I am now home from my trips from Oregon and Michigan and must say I had I great time on both. Thanks to Biglead' s knowledge of the birds in Oregon I was able to harvest several band-tails, blue and ruffed grouse and mountain quail -- all first, while at the same time witness great dog work. I could write a book on the entire trip. In addition to the great bird hunting, I also saw bears (adult and cubs), black-tailed deer, trophy bull elk and a behemoth of a bobcat. All of this was concluded with great hospitality, fine food (bear, birds and fish), beautiful country and a new friendship. I will return to Oregon.

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I live in the Portland area and am looking for some good places to hunt grouse or mountain quail within a few hours drive. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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I was able to get 4 Mountain Quail and 2 ruffed grouse today. The quail were holding tight because of the rainy windy conditions. I have gotten a few birds in the past week.

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I have not been posting much about my hunts lately. It seems like I always get a few birds every time I go out, but I have not been having any of those days when it seems like you have more birds than you know what to do with. I decided that even though I am not getting a ton of birds, some folks would want to hear about even the mediocre days. I am going to try and post a couple of pics. Friday I got 2 mountain quail a ruffed grouse, and a mallard. Saturday we got 2 valley quail and a mallard, and today I got 2 ruffed grouse. The pic I will try to post is of Fridays hunt.

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Can' t quite figure out how to do these pics. I wanted to show my elk as well, but I guess I need to have a 6 year old show me how.

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I' m not stalking you Big Lead,,,just trying to get your pic' s loaded for you heres your elk, working on the bird pic' s hope you see this elk pic again and hope to have the birds pics which you mention above loaded soon

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lets see if the bird pic loads

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Thanks Brush Buster. I appreciate having a fellow hunter that knows something about these crazy machines. I hope to go on a bird hunt with you some time. Good luck in your ventures.

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Right on and" HUNT ON " I like this site cuz it let' s you put your pic' s right into the post I' m always looking for more info and new sites to check out. Maybe we could exchange phone numbers via private email and hook up and set a date to go hunting. I see by your pic' s you are a veteran bird hunter. I will wait to hear from you to see what we can work out...TONY B

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Went out yesterday in the snow. The snow level dropped down to the foothills here and the birds have been pushed down low. We did not see any quail, but managed to find 6 ruffies. We got 5 of the 6. I am going chuckar hunting next week. I will probably try for some ducks and upland this weekend. Good Luck.

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" HUNT ON" did you get the pic' s i sent??

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I just got back last night from a chuckar and quail hunt in eastern Oregon. We had a good time. It was a little hard to find birds, but we found more than most of the other hunters there. We had a few adventures, like the wall tent catching on fire the first night. It was 15 degrees out and we fired up the wood stove. The waxed canvas wall tent was touching the stove pipe. When I noticed it was touching, I went over to move the canvas away. It flamed and the flames climbed to the top of the tent. All the water we had was frozen, but we were able to break the ice and put some water in a dog bowl to extinguish the flames. We decided to skip having a fire that night and nearly froze. The next night we where able to set up a more safe heating system. We ended up getting 11 chuckars and 7 quail. I lost 5 pounds pounding the hills chasing hunting dogs. I will get back to hunting my local birds this week, and probably go back over east before Christmas.

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Big Lead - Sounds like high adventure down there...glad everyone was safe!

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Thanks Seattle. I was a few seconds from opening the other end of the tent and pitching stuff out the other door. Makes for a good hunting story.
We went out yesterday in the local hills and managed to find a couple coveys of Mountain quail. They were very skittish, but with Raven and Ivy on the case we managed to cut them off and take 3 of them. That is pretty hard to do this late in the year. We also got one ruffed grouse. We plan on going out this afternoon before they shut up the Weyerhaeuser land for the year.

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Well its been a while since I last posted. I went out on the afternoon of Dec. 7 and got a limit of ruffies before the good Private timberland hunting was over. I have'nt been able to find anymore birds on the public land near here. I am thinking about heading over toward the coast and giving it a go for Mountain quail and ruffed grouse. Everything is snowed in pretty good so I hope there is still a few birds around. We rarely get snow around here so its got to be kinda rough on them. I have been over to eastern Oregon for Chuckars and Quail a few more times. I get a few every time I go, but when you are by yourself hunting is quite a bit harder for Chuckars in my expeirience. I met some very nice fellows over there. We both showed up at the same hunting spot, and I offered to go down the road. They said, why don't you just hunt with us. They had a Griffon and a shorthair. I got my 2 dogs out and I hunted below the rimrock and they hunted above. After the hunt was over I got my cookstove out and made fried potatoes and bear finger steaks. They got a portable barbeque out and put some scallops, shrimp, baby tomatoes, onions, and elk backstrap on some skewers. We shared food and visited for a couple hours. All this 70 miles from the nearest resteraunt, gas station, or grocery store. It made the trip worth while. In a couple hours we got 6 birds between us. I went over just after Christmas and got a few more birds. I came home and spent a couple days then took off to eastern Oregon again for a couple of days. We got 14 chuckars and 5 quail on that trip. My heart longs to go back over. The roads are terrible right now, but its just a matter of time, I will say to heck with it, pack my guns and clothes, and just go on over. When the roads are like they are it takes me 8 hours to get to the nearest hunting spot, but who cares when you've got the fever.

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I just did a farm hunt for pheasant/chukar since the normal season is over in Utah and Idaho. paid for 10 pheasants shot 8- saw 60 at least but they were running way out 200-300yds. paid for 5 chukars-shot 6 as he let us since we were short on pheasants and alot of hunters don't get all their birds. and we had a bonus of cottontail rabbits. shot 12 between my dad and I in the last 20 minutes of the hunt!:D

This was my first farm hunt and I was pleased that I had to work about the same amount as I have had to on wild birds (Probably since he insisted on us using his dog which wasn't trained very well!)

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This is my last report for the 2003-04 bird season. I went over to eastern oregon about 2 weeks ago and we got 9 quail and 5 chuckars. Hunting was pretty good. We were picking up a new puppy for my friend, so our time was limited. My Lab was injured by a broken bottle hidden in the snow the first day we were there. She had to have numerous stiches in her pad.

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Hit the post button a little soon. Sorry. Well anyway I went back over hunting for one last time this season. I went over on Tues. and came back on Thurs. I managed to harvest 6 chuckars on Tuesday afternoon. I went out on Wend. and got 5 more. My lab reinjured her paw on Wend afternoon. It seems the wound was not completely healed and it reopened. It must have been divine intervention or something, because I met a Veteranarian a couple hours before. We saw that he was not having much luck finding birds so we invited him to hunt with us. As luck would have it he had his kit with him. We were able to sew her pad back up that night in the motel room. I think the pads are about the most sensitive place to stick a needle. Well needless to say I owe him one. He hunted with us the next day and we took a few more birds apiece. Overall I got 13 chuckars. The fellow who went with me got 4. This was the best chuckar season for me so far. Altogether I think the totals were around 69 grouse, 50 mountain quail, 5 bandtailed pigeons, 5 pheasants, 3 geese, 7 ducks, 20 or so valley quail, and 43 chuckars. So it ends until Sep. 1st. then Part 3 will begin.