Doc's Hideout:
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Nebraska sandhills' prairie chickens roost in a tree. |
Doc actually tried to go straight here and established a saloon and gambling joint in town in 1887, but he couldn't escape his outlaw nature and was later convicted on a bootlegging charge. He died in jail, penniless and broken. Now Doc's Hideout is run as a Bed & Breakfast by Lee and Beverly DeGroff, who own a working cattle ranch on the North Loup River just outside town.
My friend Guy de la Valdene had met me here, flying his small private plane up from his farm in northern Florida and landing at a tiny regional airport in the nearby town of Ainsworth. Guy had been astonished at the immensity of open country over which he had flown in central Nebraska, and while I envied him the bird's eye view of the sandhills landscape, I still declined the offer of going up for a ride to look it over myself. I admit to being somewhat of a landlubber when it comes to small aircraft.
Another friend, Doug Stanton, had driven in from Michigan to meet us, and Guy and Doug were staying in a rental cabin on the premises, while I had the Airstream tethered out front.
We had come here to hunt prairie chickens, once America's most prolific game bird, and now perhaps its rarest. The prairie chicken is actually a pinnated grouse -- Tympanuchus cupido -- of which there are three distinct subspecies, the Greater, Lesser and Attwater.
The prairie chicken was once resident from the Prairie Provinces of Canada through the Great Plains' states of America as far south as Texas, as far west as eastern Colorado and New Mexico, and as far east as Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. Its eastern cousin, the Heath hen, which ranged from coastal Massachusetts to Maryland and north central Tennessee, became extinct in 1932.
Currently the prairie chicken occupies a tiny fraction of its historical range, surviving in isolated islands of prairie habitat in a handful of states, only a few of which maintain huntable populations. The reason for the precipitous decline of the species in this century is the old story of habitat loss, in this case due to the intensive plowing of the native prairies for agricultural crops.
As a result of their hilly geography and wafer-thin topsoil, the Nebraska sandhills have largely escaped this fate, and a healthy population of prairie chickens still thrives here. Indeed, the sandhills are among the least altered natural ecosystems in America. In wandering them the hunter can't help but sense the antiquity of the land, the rolling, choppy hills running off to the horizon, the native prairie grasses and wild plum thickets much as they have been for thousands of years.
For dog power on this trip we had Guy's French Brittanies, Carnac and Julip; their sons Obie and Henri; my old yellow Lab, Sweetz; and Doug's English setter, Lilly.
Because he's half French, a Count, a great gourmand and gourmet chef, Guy leaves nothing to chance when it comes to food supplies. He had wisely arranged to have a box of fine meats, breads, and cheeses, as well as a case of good wine, shipped to Doc's prior to our arrival.
Unlike rural France, of course, the Great Plains region of America has never been known for its fine cuisine. As my road-wise travel mentor, the late, great Charles Kuralt observed, once you leave Kansas City, don't expect to find a decent meal until you hit Denver. That is yet another reason why I travel in the Airstream.
Now we settled into an easy routine of a morning prairie chicken hunt in the sandhills, a break for lunch, perhaps a little snooze in the heat of the day, followed by an afternoon hunt, then a visit with the DeGroff's at their ranch. They are fine, hardworking, salt-of-the-earth people who have lived in this country all of their lives and have stories to tell.
On the way home we might stop for a cocktail at Uncle Buck's Lodge, the local watering hole in Brewster, then back up the road to Doc's where we would clean birds, prep dinner, and eat wonderful meals, prepared by our in-house chef assisted by his two sous chefs.
It was relatively physical hunting, up and down the hills, and hard on the dogs, too. If there is one serious drawback to this country, it is the prolific sandspurs, one of the first foreign invaders when the prairie soil is disturbed. These are particularly prevalent along ranch roads and two-tracks and can make hunting all but impossible for the dogs--unless they are booted. Once you get away from the roads and into the hills themselves, however, sandspurs are far less of a problem, although prickly pear cacti can still cause troubles, and dog boots are highly recommended.
Often Guy, who has shot more birds in his lifetime than Doug and I combined have ever seen, would opt to leave his shotgun at home for the afternoon hunt, carrying instead a walking stick and serving as dog handler and master of the hunt. If a bird got up and both Doug and I shot at it, he would say, "The Scottish gun killed the bird," which made my old beater Alex Martin double shotgun seem far grander than it is, or the "The Belgium gun killed the bird," referring to Doug's Browning over-and-under.
It was a good bird year and those were fine days, the three of us wandering the sandhills, watching as the dogs ranged the hills, then locked up on point, silhouetted against the sky, the other dogs backing keenly. When the birds got up with a frantic cackling noise and a flurry of wingbeats; set their short, curved wings and sailed over the sandhills -- following the contours of the land until they were mere specks on the horizon -- we knew for sure that we were hunting native birds in their native habitat. We had a sense once again of the timelessness of the land, and of how lucky we were to be here.
Copyright © 1999 Jim Fergus. All
rights reserved.
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