Ben shows Sam a Big Sky Hun.

The following morning Ben backed his pickup truck out of the garage and opened the doors to all 10 of its dog compartments. Suddenly, from the kennel came a great flush of Brittanies and a pointer arriving in a hairy avalanche. I counted a dozen dogs going by, but missed a few. Then the amazing happened. Ben took a plank about eight feet long from the roof of the truck to make a ramp from the ground to the dog compartments. Then he methodically moved the ramp and loaded each dog by sending him running up the ramp and into his own compartment. The entire operation only a few minutes. We drove a few miles out of town and into a giant ranch and farm of 40,000 acres complete with snow-capped mountain and many mini-mountains, which he called "hills." As we drove, Ben pointed out, "There was a covey over there. Last week we saw two coveys here." Within half an hour we were deluged with covey reports. "Okay, Mr. Williams, show us some of these Huns in the feather," I said. He pulled to an abrupt stop, stomped on the emergency brake to keep the truck from running away and began letting dogs loose. I had never hunted over a pack of 12 pointing dogs, but after I got over my shock at the length of this landscape, I realized there was room for everyone.

This was vastly different country than what we had hunted in the north-central part of the state. There was excellent bird cover, and Ben's army of dogs spread out and appeared to cover 10 acres of countryside in a combined cast. When a dog pointed, the dog which saw the point then backed. To me this was the high point of the trip. The trick now was to get to the pointing dogs as quietly and quickly as possible, and then follow Ben's instructions as to exactly where to stand when he flushed the birds. From past experience, he knew what each covey would do. He was right most of the time. Being a New Jersey flatlander who lives on Barnegat Bay where the elevation is about five feet, the 4,500-foot altitude was a physiological shock to my respiratory system. To further complicate things, somehow I had reached 73 years of age, which made me something less than a spring chicken. Then, to add insult to misery, my son, who is in his 30s and in top physical condition, and Ben Williams, an ex-wrestler who hunts more than 200 days a year, tended to leave me huffing and puffing a dozen yards behind them as they climbed the so-called hills.

Did we find birds? It seemed like the Huns ran out of the cover, threw their wings in the air and said, "We quit." But not quite. I would estimate that the dogs found and pointed about three coveys per hour. However, these were hard-earned birds, more difficult than the wild bobwhites we enjoyed before the quail depression on the east coast.

Once in a while Huns or sharptails would fly into a distant coulee where the brush was thick and they were simply absorbed into this vast greenery. Following these birds into a coulee with 40-degree sides, stumbling over rocks the size of your head, looking out for an occasional rattlesnake, and at times crawling on all fours in a particularly rough spot was a feat to be included in the next Olympics.

My outstanding memory of this event was a sharptail flushed by Sam that came boring directly at me about 30 yards overhead. I let him pass, stepped back to shoot and found the coulee had dropped a foot below where my size 10 boot should have been placed. I made a turn in the air, landed on my gun, broke the gun's forearm and then slid face down in the coulee. When I sat up, I looked like I had lost a duel, with cactus spines sprouting from all appendages. I stayed on the ground until Sam came up and asked, "Are you all right?" I said, "No, just call the doctor." He replied, "You had better get up or we will have to gut you to get you out of here." At that point I gathered up what was left of me and stumbled on like a member of the Bataan death march.

Hunting the flood plain resulted in five coveys of Huns in four hours with excellent dog work.

We hunted with Ben for three days, and he spent most of the time with his camera shooting pictures. He is probably the best bird hunting photographer in the business. Not because he has the best equipment, but because he spends hours and days shooting those wonderful action pictures you see in many of the outdoor publications.

At one point the fine young pointer, which I would have given my soul to own, pointed at the base of a small bush. Sam walked in, saw the bird and didn't know what it was. Ben said it was probably a spruce grouse, and he wanted a picture of me shooting at it. To make a long story short, the grouse came out of the brush, flew within 30 yards of me and I missed with both barrels. I used the excuse that I was too busy admiring the bird and didn't swing through it. Not a bad excuse, but no one believed me.

On the last day of the Williams' forced march, Ben brought out a little 20 gauge Browning over-under, which he loaded with three-inch 6s. I must report that Ben is as good a wingshot as he is a photographer. He picked his bird on the covey rise, dropped it with a single shot and that was that. On two coveys he took a single shot and downed a bird. I asked him if his second barrel was broken, and he just smiled.

Hunting with my friend Ben Williams and my son was one of those hunts you remember, for the birds you killed, and the ones that got away, for your dog's behavior and misbehavior, and for the hunting conditions. But it was also memorable for the sheer enjoyment of being there with good friends and doing it. This is what the anti-hunting people can never comprehend.

Aside from being a great photographer and writer, he and his wife Bobbi are wonderful hosts and superb cooks. I would say that both are as good with frying pans as Ben is with a camera. The suppers we enjoyed and the lies we told may never be equaled. All agreed on one thing--bird hunting in Montana is superb, even though it is often an uphill battle.