There are three species of ptarmigan...Willow, Rock and Whitetail all of which change colors (plumage) depending on the season. All species are excellent flyers however their defense is being able to stay extremely still. The birds are mainly active in the morning and evenings as they feed on willow buds...frozen blueberries from the previous spring and spruce needles only to name a few.
The hunting started off rather quick as we spotted two birds right away on a hill side. Despite three shots from Dad's Winchester they were able to live and fly another day. If you ask, he'll say he was too close using a full choke but I'll leave that up to yall to decide...haha. A little bit later into the day Dad was able to get the goose egg off his back as he bagged his first rock ptarmigan! We continued to walk up, down, through snow drifts, around the mountains looking for these birds but came up empty handed. We decided to walk one more part of the mountain and it paid off as we flushed six birds holding tight under a cluster of spruce trees. With extremely sore legs we packed up the truck and headed back to town for some dry clothes and a hot meal. As we were leaving the ptarmigan God's must have been smiling upon us because we spotted a covey of 30 birds feeding along the hill side. We were lucky enough to bag several birds out of this covey and ended the hunt on a high note!
Sunday was a day of shopping around town and cutting up some fire wood. Even though the temps are starting to warm up it's still nice to relax at night next to a fire in the wood stove. All in all it was an action packed weekend and we were able to accomplish a lot! I'm almost certain its safe to say that out of all the big game hunting dad and I have done, hunting for ptarmigan ranks up there in one of the toughest hunts.
enjoy the pictures
This Place is awesome!
Rock Ptarmigan
1 comment:
Awesome pics and stories. Thanks for sharing. Looks like ya'll had a blast. I still feel badly for the birds. Poor little birds.
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