“Hunt ‘em up!” and you’re into the field with your favorite hunting buddy: your dog. Only this time, your shout is muted by snow-covered branches and ground. Winter is here, and sometimes, it’s the perfect opportunity to get in one more hunt … if you’re prepared.
Crunchy footfalls on dry leaves are a fond but distant memory. Radical changes in weather require new strategies based on different bird behavior. Otherwise, you’re just some schlub getting cold and wet in a parody of the old Currier & Ives holiday illustrations.
Using Technology to Prepare for a Hunt First, there’s strategic readiness. Enjoy the upcoming hunt by curling up with your laptop for a strategy session. Pore over maps and research weather and ground conditions (online road report videos are invaluable). You may change destinations to take advantage of a hard frost or recent thaw, deep, insulative timber cover, or a field blown clear by recent wind. In winter hunting, knowledge is power … times two.
Knowing your quarry’s tendencies is also critical. Which grouse migrate higher into the mountains? Can Huns scratch through snow for waste grain? Do bobwhites need water, and where can they find it when springs and seeps freeze over? Again, open your laptop and learn.
Some upland birds will seek shelter near rocks during the winter. (Photo courtesy of Scott Linden) How the Winter Affects Game Birds Mother Nature alters the landscape dramatically, and birds cope or die. Environmental changes affect birds’ feeding times, hiding and roosting behavior, their daily routines, and food choices. Plummeting temperatures sap body heat. Snow and ice restrict birds’ ability to find food. Rain soaks soil, lowers temperatures, and evicts some birds from their usual hangouts.
Wind sucks body heat from undernourished game birds teetering on the edge of survival. But it also exposes life-giving food hidden beneath snow. The lesson? If you know what’s happening before you drop the tailgate, you’re a step ahead in a game wrought with strategic challenges.
Luckily, birds still need food, cover, and moisture of some sort, but they often have to find them in a different place than during the glory days of fall. It could simply be deeper into their favorite cover, or an arduous migration to miles away. It’s up to us to figure out.
Chasing Nevada chukar, I’d given up on a golden ocean of waving cheatgrass because not a single seed was hanging, just sad empty husks. But as I bent to tie a bootlace, I saw the inch-high green shoots emerging from the base of the brittle stalks. Opening crops that night, we saw that now the grain was gone, birds were stuffed with salad fixings. Same place, same plant, different part.
Snow depth will change game bird's ability to find food. (Photo courtesy of Scott Linden) How the Weather Changes Upland Feed Your favored game bird has season-dependent quirks and habits, and you’d do well to acquaint yourself with them. Most will alter their diet to cope with scarcity. Forest grouse feast on spruce needles or catkins when berries and forbs wither. Valley quail scratch relentlessly for the tiny seeds of Canada Thistle when bigger grains have vanished. We’ve all seen ringnecks perched on a hay bale—are there bugs still living in it? Find welcoming cover near the new food source and send in the dog.
Many birds are big and strong enough to scratch through the snow to feed. Huns may have to move sooner than pheasants, but until a melt-frost cycle hardens snow into ice, they may hang close to their accustomed food source. You just have to think, and look.
Many birds relocate in search of life-saving thermal cover. Pheasants move into what I call “roofing cover,” shrubs, unharvested milo or cattails where stalks are sturdy enough to hold a snow load, that kind of thing. Underneath, it’s relatively warm and dry, the ground is often bare, and often adjacent to fields with waste grain. Woodcock fly south to soft, moist, worm-bearing ground. And while seeds and grains are still king if available, most game birds can wring nourishment from greens, dry dead fruits and berries, and even mummified insects. Can you find those?
Resourcefulness applies to birds’ daily routine as well. A frigid night can be tempered by a waddle to the south side of a slope to bask in morning sun. Chill winds prompt a move to the lee side of a hill, or a drop into a sheltering gully. Roosting against a boulder gets a degree or two of residual warmth from it. Ask yourself where you’d go or what you’d do in similar conditions—birds will too.
Upside of a Dropping Barometer Besides blanketing our world in a pure cloak of white, snow has another advantage. It reveals game birds’ movements. Ancient history? Recent escape? That’s for you to decide with the help of your furry friend. Moist winter air holds scent, making for joyous bird dogs.
A soaking rain prompts new growth, even in winter, some of which feeds game birds. They really do “flock together,” often forced to more-hospitable habitats such as shelterbelts.
Myth: chukar dwell at the edge of snow, but not in it. Follow the downslope edge of a snowline, and you’ll boost a clucking, kee-keeing covey into the sky.
I believed it until a set of tracks beckoned uphill toward the summit of a mountain in southeast Oregon. I followed like Sherlock Holmes, eyes glued to the ground, until at the top the tracks disappeared under a massive sagebrush. A single bird blinked, then flew. We found bare dry ground under every shrub on that knob, where a bird could lounge comfortably and nibble the groceries growing all around it. You might want to test a keyboard warrior’s theory before you put the fate of your hunt in it.
If you can find the food that birds are feeding on, you will often find the birds. (Photo courtesy of Scott Linden) Find the Food on Winter Hunts It’s not all jingle bells and boughs of holly for birds. Chilling conditions require them to take in more calories—a pheasant needs 30 percent more to remain “thermoneutral” and pile on insulative and nutritive body fat. They feed ravenously, and for longer periods. Find food, especially with nearby escape cover, and you might hit the Mother Lode.
If You Go If “ho-ho-ho” means “let’s go hunting” at your house, here are some practical considerations to give you a better shot at success. “Armor plated” pheasants are likely not growing many extra feathers for insulation. But taking your shot size up will help you reach out on nervous birds that flush farther from you and help penetrate subcutaneous fat.
Knowing more about conditions and bird behavior, your chosen habitat, and making on-the-ground observations will turn your walk into an adventure. At the end of the day, dog snoozing at your feet, your hands cradling a warm mug of hot, buttery, rummy, goodness, you’ll recount a rich, full day afield.
