We had an old Rhode Island Red hen that was a good setter.
Dad got a call from the Game bird hatchery to come and get the pheasant eggs that he put his name on the list for.
That night, we went out and snuck those eggs in under her.
Couple of days later, they hatched, and that hen was just happy as could be.
Lasted about two weeks... those pheasant chicks were a wild bunch and on the run from the get-go. By the end of the month, they had all headed off to parts unknown.
She did better with mallard duck eggs, until the ducklings got old enough and found the pond. That old saying about "madder than a wet hen" is true.   

There's rock chucks up in the Okanogan north of Wenatchee, but the locals call them "greasers".

Bob,
Back in my younger days in the midwest, hunting didn't start until there was snow on the ground.
You'd look for tracks and the tail skid in the snow and follow them up to a tall grass patch, then flush them out.
They didn't hibernate, but now and then when a snowstorm was brewin', you could see where they would intentionally fly straight into a snowbank, part of which would collapse in behind them mostly sealing up the hole in the snowbank, and leaving them snug and relatively warm in their snow cave.
If you watched for it, sometimes you could see the tips of their tails sticking out of the snowbank, so you'd set your shotgun down, and do a belly flop on top of the hole, stick your arms in the snow and start grabbing to get ahold of some part of them, then just ring their neck, and you saved a shotshell for the next bird to fly.
China roosters were fun!

westerner wrote on Jun 17^th, 2018 at 2:34am:

So that is what started global warming.  Those circles!

BP wrote on Jun 17^th, 2018 at 2:04am:


Where they haven't been torn down to make way for subdivisions (in which case, the stones are sold to landscapers to create "instant" 200 yr old fences for the rich who come up from the city to build million-dollar "2nd homes"--or 3rd or 4th), they're highways for all the small mammals in the vicinity, which either run on top of them, or like foxes & coyotes, trot along beside them.  Where they border open pastures, the brush wood that grows up beside them provides the only shade & cover around for someone hunting woodchucks, as I once did.  Any chuck I killed was always placed on top of the nearest wall, or preferably at an intersection of two, and would usually have been carried off by the next day.

Isn't that a bear gun? Good job on the 'chucks, anyway.

JS47 wrote on Jun 17^th, 2018 at 6:21pm:


Excellent! I've eaten the meat, though some one else did the cooking, so I can't explain the preparation.  And why would woodchuck be any less palatable than squirrel, another rodent?

Redsetter wrote on Jun 17^th, 2018 at 6:31pm:


Maybe because they're 15 times tougher.