Move over, Thanksgiving turkey. This holiday pheasant hunt is a treasured family tradition

Hunting pheasants on Thanksgiving morning is as much a part of my family tradition as watching the Lions and the Cowboys play and snoozing after overeating a turkey feast.

It began on the farm where I grew up in Illinois as I chased my father and grandfather through the still-standing corn stalks and the multi-flora rose hedge rows. Later it was just me and our Vizsla pointer, Susie, returning with a rooster I bagged and proudly showed off for my grandfather to see on his last Thanksgiving, 50 years ago.

Since I moved to Boise in 1996, our Thanksgiving Day hunt has been on one of the four Wildlife Management Areas the Idaho Department of Fish and Game stocks with pheasants. Usually for us it has been the Payette River WMA near New Plymouth. But we also have hunted Montour between Emmett and Horseshoe Bend, Fort Boise WMA near Parma and C.J. Strike WMA near Bruneau.

You need a special permit and hunting doesn’t open until 10 a.m.

We aren’t alone. These days, you can check how many birds are stocked and when, and Thanksgiving week is the peak.

“We know it’s one of the big weekends so we make sure there are plenty of birds out there,” said Roger Phillips, an Idaho Department of Fish and Game spokesman.

My twin sons, Dan and David, and Dan’s son, Linkon, have been hunting on wildlife management areas this year ever since opening day when we walked through snow at C.J. Strike. We saw a few birds and took a few shots, but we didn’t have any success until Dan and Linkon scored on a late Sunday afternoon hunt.

A couple of birds got up and Dan shot a rooster, which landed deep in the brambles. His black Labrador retriever, Ally, couldn’t find it but luckily 10-year-old Linkon scrambled through the sticks to retrieve the prize.

Linkon couldn’t have been prouder than if he shot it himself. He can’t wait to take hunter education so that next year he too can carry a gun.

The excitement continued for the pair when Dan’s wife, Alycia, cooked pheasant and mushrooms in wine sauce for dinner.

As we grow older, the bloodlust instinct left over from our hunter-gatherer past subsides. Taking game becomes secondary to the chase. This stage in the hunter’s life journey also has several stages of its own. Tradition, that cultural link with our own ancestors, grows in value.

Handing down hunting tradition to a new generation becomes even more enjoyable than hunting itself. I remember a day with Dan similar to the one Dan and Linkon shared.

We lived in Idaho Falls at the time. Susie, our boisterous year-old Brittany spaniel, had run Dan and I up and down the fields of Tex Creek, an eastern Idaho WMA. We were seeking sharptail grouse since it was opening day but the dog, my daughter Nikki’s birthday present from the year before, had other ideas.

Grasshoppers and butterflies were flying everywhere. As far as Susie was concerned, they were birds and she was pointing and chasing them with the excitement of Mike Trout chasing a fly ball.

We had yelled and scolded our way through two fields without seeing a single sharptail. Dan suggested we go up into the nearby Big Holes after forest grouse. We drove to a spot where Dan had found a covey of ruffed grouse the week before.

This was his spot, and he was now the guide. Susie had run most of the foolishness out of her. The instincts bred into her over countless generations took over.

She trotted back and forth in front of us, her nose to the ground, as we climbed up the hill through the thick forest of Douglas fir, lodgepole pine and wild berry bushes. As she stuck her head into the bushes, we heard a bird flush.

Susie locked on point; her eyes filled with the fire previously reserved for cats. There was a second bird hoping to sit us out.

Dan was ready when it flushed. He and Susie had bagged their first game. Later we shared a meal of marinated grouse and turkey breasts, completing the circle of a ritual as old as human existence.

This Thanksgiving, Dan and David are spending Thanksgiving with their in-laws. David and I will hunt with his son, Jakson, at C.J. Strike. Dan and Linkon will be hunting in eastern Idaho near the spot where Dan shot his first bird with Susie.

Susie lived until she was 13, hunting many Thanksgivings. She wasn’t getting around very well when we went to the Payette River WMA for her last Thanksgiving hunt. But just like that first hunt, she got all excited when she jumped out of the car and headed into the field.

She worked hard, chasing up a rooster, but we failed her that day and missed. By the end of the hunt I had to carry her back to the car. She hardly got up the next three days.

I hope I can muster the same energy for my last Thanksgiving hunt — and I hope it’s years from now. Most of all, I hope I’m hunting with my boys and girls and their children.

Rocky Barker co-wrote the Wingshooter’s Guide to Idaho with Ken Retallic.