My buddy Ron Spomer bought the Dancing Springs ranch in July, which is south of Pocatello. He has been after me to come visit ever since he bought it. He kept telling me about all of the pheasants, sharp-tailed grouse and huns that he’s been seeing — and on top of that, deer, elk and even a moose.
The season for sharp-tails and huns was about to close so it was time to go. Katy had to run over to Nebraska last weekend so it turned out to be the perfect time to go. After I got off work Friday, I jumped in the truck and ran rover to see Ron and Betsy.
It turns out that when I got there Ron and a photographer were taking out to film a deer hunt for the Winchester World of Whitetail. I unloaded and Betsy showed me around. Wow, we didn’t walk 200 yards down the pasture road heading to their house before we had already jumped two sharp-tails.
He ended up bagging a nice buck. I don’t want to spoil the upcoming TV show so I won’t say anything more. It was now time to go sharp-tailed grouse and hun hunting so the next afternoon we took off. We walked up and down the many draws covering the lower part of his ranch. Later that afternoon, it had started spitting a little rain and snow. Near the end of the hunt, it was getting a little nasty.
At the bottom of his place, there are pastures and the drainages that run through them are choked with hawthorns and choke cherries. Little did I know how thick they were. The weather was getting bad as we walked down one last draw that Ron seemed pretty optimistic about.
Everything was holed up pretty tight with the bad weather and so were people if they had any good sense. I was walking along day dreaming and suddenly a couple of sharp-tails came blowing out. Ron dropped one right over the brushy draw and I dropped one that fell right in top of the highest bush.
Suddenly sharp-tails started blowing out like a roman candle. Three or four came up my way and I dropped another one. The limit is two, so I was done. Ron is training a new bird dog — an English Setter named Covey — and it took off up the hill to get my second bird.
It looked like it was onto it but because of the tall grass I couldn’t be for sure. Then one busted about 20 feet further up hill. I figured it was my bird and had run uphill but suddenly Covey came up with my bird.
Now to find the tough ones. Ron had told me that the draws were thick but, gee, they were impossible to get through. At times I’d get locked in one spot, just like I was hung in a spider web.
Finally I saw the bird. He had miraculously fallen through the brush and hit the ground. It was so thick that I didn’t think that I was going to even be able to get to him. By now I was crawling, which is not fun in that thorny thicket. But after another five minutes I made it and had retrieved him.
What a great afternoon. We hung our birds in his shed to age for a few days and went in to dry off and wait on Betsy to whip out another great, hot meal.
If you want to read some about Ron and Betsy’s adventures on their new ranch, check out their blog at https://bit.ly/2q0gtaY. He writes updates fairly regularly. It is lighthearted, fun reading.
Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana. He also writes for various outdoors magazines and teaches outdoors seminars at stores like Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Bass Pro Shop.
