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As a kid in Louisiana (state motto = "the sportsman's paradise"), I grew up duck hunting with friends and family, but I never caught the bug like a lot of my buddies did. I pretty much stopped hunting by the time I was 16 or so and didn't pick up a shotgun again until a few years ago when I moved back South to Texas. A couple of years ago, I went on a dove hunt in West Texas and had a blast, but it wasn't until this past week in Idaho that I caught the bug (and the birds) in a real bad (meaning good) way.

My dad had booked a steelhead trout fishing trip to the Flying B Ranch in Kamiah, Idaho, and it was our plan to fish a couple days on the Clearwater River - home to massive steelheads (and onetime home of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce nation). After a day freezing our asses off on the river and only catching a couple of steelheads (it sometimes takes days to catch one so we didn't do so bad), I thought it'd be nice to explore the mountains with guns in hand and see what we could track down. With bird dogs criss-crossing the hills in a feat of cardiac endurance that would quickly put a man in his grave, we hiked for miles on end firing away at pheasant, grouse, chuckers, and huns. I've never had anywhere close to that much fun hunting. I'm hooked.