Changing the Way Westerners Hunt “Out East”
Caleb Seeton
07/16/2024
The American bird hunter will often choose between two options. He will kick up planted birds at a hunting club, or he will put on some long miles looking for public land roosters. He will likely shoot too few birds – or perhaps too many birds – to feel completely satisfied. But choosing between an overpriced hunting club and over-hunted public land might not be the best two options.
A weekend spent “out East” – which, I guess, is considered the Midwest – is as much about escaping to some nostalgic space as it is about hunting. The small towns of Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Kansas are like stepping back in time. The feeling of homecoming and soda fountains, fall football, and probably a dose of the nuclear family, or any book by Kent Haruf, will make a bird hunter feel at home here – even if it never was home. Most of us have contemplated, at least for a moment, what it would be like to move east. That is, before we remember that the towns of Holyoke or Bridgeport are probably just a bit too far away from elk herds or trout rivers, Costco, or other people for that matter.
The world we choose to live in, though, no matter what, catches up with us. We long to go back to some forgotten world, some Edenic paradise of birds and dogs and fields, that we talk up in our minds. To preserve that vision, we drive out east, into some nostalgic space, to hunt birds behind a dog.
Growing up in the Front Range, my family’s annual bird hunting retreat, with my father and brother and our overweight yellow lab, often took us to Eastern Colorado. If we were really lucky we might go somewhere less finicky, one state over, where we would reminisce on a time when Nebraska football was good.
Our typical destination in Eastern Colorado found us only a few hours away from our home in suburbia. Destinations like Sterling or Stratton led us through countless other small towns, each with their own story, their one water tower, and their one occupied bar. We speculated over their mystery and their small stories as we drove through the twilight of some short fall day, moving in stride with a snowstorm that would cover the plains by morning. We knew that if we timed our hunt just right, pheasants would hunker down after the snow, preferring the comfort of high hay or dense brush over a cold dash through the corn fields.
Sometimes we got lucky. A public land hunter knows, like a Nebraska football fan, that he has to pray for any luck he can get.
Every year our bird hunts followed a ritual in spontaneity. Often leaving just as a storm started moving over the Rockies, we watched as the sky became swallowed by a monocloud. We then started throwing our gear in the back of an uncovered truck bed. My brother and I both operated under a common sense that we were being called to a mission. And, as such, we quickly gathered up any loose shells and gloves we could find, grabbed our Carhartt jackets, and neglected – as men do in a bachelor house do – to bring any food for the next day.
We arrived at a Best Western in a small town after a nap and a few listens to one of our three CDs. We could assure ourselves of a predictably poor night’s sleep before a predictably poor morning’s continental breakfast, the likes of which hunters, blue-collar workers, and rural-state athletes long ago dropped their expectations for. The delicacies, we all know, are dried eggs and pale sausages and cereal to be eaten out of styrofoam bowls. Yet would eat whatever food we could stomach, knowing it would be the last meal until that night.
In the morning, feeling at least mostly dissatisfied, we would make a hasty retreat in a cold truck. We stuffed our orange vests with mismatched shells as a nautical sunrise presented the first light of day. By habit, I arranged my shells from best to worst, the old ones and dove loads shoved deep into my pockets as we drove even further east. Flipping on a light in the cab, we would look over a paper copy of the public land sections and identify which county road we would need to turn down and where our backup spots would be. Most spots, of course, were already occupied by a truck sporting a Pheasants Forever sticker with a dog crate or two in the back.
So we just drove on.
Even if there was only a single car parked by the side of the road, we would keep driving. Yes, at one point there existed an ethic in Colorado not to crowd another outdoorsman’s space. This idea has become antiquated, as anyone who has driven past a Colorado river knows. It is not uncommon now to see six strangers fighting for elbow room in a twenty-yard stretch of water.
Eventually, which was almost always a few minutes too late, we would find an empty spot that did not have a truck already parked. In sync, we would slip out of the truck and quietly close the doors. But soon the tailgate would have to open for our trembling labrador retriever to come barreling out, disturbing any surprise we had over the unsuspecting ditch chickens.
The beginning of a bird hunt is something like a redemptive moment. The half-arc of the sun comes over the corn fields like a halo emerging from deep below the earth. In these moments we are offered a reset on life – or at least an opportunity to transcend whatever life we knew during the work week. And with the right people, which is the only company a bird hunter should bring, everything becomes possible and beautiful in the morning light. No less is watching a bird dog try to fulfill his purpose in the fields. I can remember how our dog, Ute – who seemed to be in the late stages of his life for most of his life – would expend half his energy in the first few minutes of the hunt. A couple birds would scare almost immediately, too, setting up our first mission: finding those birds again. From there it would begin, two boys and their dad trying their best to hunt in a straight line while not getting too lost in their dreams.
With some luck, we would drop a bird in the first few hours. Then, with tired legs and the weight of a rooster in one of our vests, we could finally lay down, with the sun above us, for a short rest. I would always sink into the just-dry-enough CRP grass like a pile of leaves, swooned to sleep by the rhythm of wind blowing iambicly as the ocean.
Looking back, hunting Eastern Colorado was never productive by the numbers. We went to get out of town, to let the dog run, and to find a different head space. Dad could forget being a doctor for a moment, and my brother and I could forget the chaos of adolescence. But hunting on public land was nothing to brag about. We were proud of our public land, sure, but we each year we had a few less roosters on the back of our tailgate after each hunt. Each morning included a few more trucks at the already few hunting spots, but the Pheasants Forever conservation stickers began to lessen over the years.
After I left college and began my own career, I began to rethink my plans out east.
For all that I love about the high plains of Colorado, it was no longer what it was; and what it was maybe never as good as it could have been. I never got used to waking up in a small hotel room with top sheets that had never been cleaned. And I never loved the feeling of having to race other hunters just to walk fields that had been combed over a dozen times that week. But what I did love were the sunsets, the isolation, the breeze at midday, the towns, and the people, who were – and are – the salt of the earth.
I never had to pay for hotels growing up, but I know they have grown expensive since I was a boy. Since 2019, the average hotel now costs 20% more, which matches a similar level of total inflation since then. For a teacher and a part-time writer, this is enough to discourage me from booking an increasingly undesirable hotel stay.
Nowadays I would almost pay just to camp outdoors. Camping – at least with good camping gear – makes a night’s sleep more comfortable than any hotel I have found in a small town.
I will admit that camping did not seem like an option as a kid. I never even considered that I could be warm camping. I did not know the importance of a good sleeping pad or merino wool layers, how to pick a sleeping bag, or how to keep out the cold air. Before digital mapping I had not known the wealth of public land available for camping either.
For many of us, staying in a hotel had simply become habit. But I can still remember the day that I realized that the price I paid for camping gear is about what I would spend in just one or two nights in a hotel room. From there I began to deconstruct the future of my hunts out East. I started prioritizing my time outside when I realized I could actually be comfortable there. And were not not the outdoors the reason I was out east in the first place?
My priority shift has helped me see every sunrise and sunset on the plains. It has given me the joy of seeing the stars at night and being closer to my actual hunting spots. And, of course, when I am desperate for some smalltown nostalgia, I can still enjoy a burger under $10 in whatever bar I can find.
I must confess that I no longer call Colorado home, but the East still calls my name each fall. Only now it is in a different state, with different small towns, more Hutterites, and a hell of a lot more cold. But it is still, for all intents and purposes, the East.
In a world of rapid inflation and increasing hunter numbers, I made another important paradigm shift to make my hunts out east a reality. I decided: If I am going to pay to make a hunt several hours away, my money might as well go toward the actual hunt, rather than the lodging. A few hundred dollars – the amount I would have spent anyway on lodging – could go toward actually getting some roosters or waterfowl or a deer. That sounded much better than competing with other hunters on inferior land.
When I am ready for my annual hunt, I can find myself a place out east with Infinite Outdoors in a matter of minutes. And I can find public land for free to camp on using the same app, allowing me to avoid hotels altogether and the cost of a mapping subscription.
For years, I spent money in the wrong places for a weekend hunting, and I still had to drive forty-five minutes to my actual hunting spot, on public land, where I was disappointed to see someone had already beat me to it. My money now goes to the landowners who keep these rural places alive. I am supporting conservation and a way of life that is worthy of preservation. People will always need hotels. But they are not necessary to make my weekend hunting trip a reality.
I am now less rushed. I get up no earlier than I need to and get to enjoy the beauty of the East with my dog and, whenever I can, my family. I stay on public land and hunt private land. I get more birds, I worry less, and I enjoy the best of the small towns without losing my spot out in the field. Best of all, I feel more optimistic than ever that I can keep up my tradition of chasing birds out east in the beauty of the plains.