Day 4.

We decided not to get up really early on opening day.  Instead we met at Dan's place at 7:45.  We loaded up everything in my truck and Dan's Lexus and went down Snake River Road to Fosse's place.  It's posted, but Dan had permission.  We climbed up the road behind his place almost to the top of the canyon.  We probably went up 1,500 feet. 

Along the way we saw four coveys, and got shots at birds in three.  The other one flushed too far away.  We didn't get any birds out of the first one, and got two out of each of the next two.  We also got a grouse.  It flew in front of us while we were standing in a line on the road.  We all shot, I'm not sure who hit it.

At that point we were about 1/2 way to our goal which was Bud's place.  We also had at least 200 - 300 feet more to climb.  Dan gave us the choice of turning back or going forward.  We should have turned back.  We never saw another bird. 

However, we did get near exhausted getting to the top of the ridge above Bud's place.  By above I mean a mile and a half in from his place and probably 1,500 feet above it.  And we were really tired.  We started to follow a road that we thought would take us down to his place.  It had a couple of serious "go down to go ups" in it.  I almost didn't make it up the second up.  Then it finally started to go down.  Of course down up there is as much work as up.

Unfortunately the road wasn't the one we thought it was.  It ended in a short distance.  That left walking the side hill.  I didn't think I was going to make it.  Dan took my gun, I just couldn't carry it.  Dan was really worried I was going to collapse (so was I).  So he forged ahead.  We followed as best we could.  I had to stop every 50 yds (or less) to rest.

Eventually we got to a place where we overlooked the road to Bud's place.  By that time Dan was down on the road and a couple of hundred yards down it.  We had to go a couple of hundred feet straight down to get to where the road ended.  It took us half an hour with several rest stops along the way.

By the time we got to the road we and the dogs were dehydrated.  We had run out of water an hour and a half ago.  We walked slowly down the road, stopping often.  We knew Dan was driving the Lexus up, but we still decided to walk to a place where he would be able to turn around.

Finally he showed up and we rode the rest of the way down.  The dog's were exhausted.  They had been hunting the whole way, about 8 hours.  When we got home Lucy wanted help down from the couch to eat her dinner.  That's a tired dog.

I was tired, too.  I went home, took a shower, fixed a little leftovers for dinner, and crawled into bed.