Geography has a lot to do with it. Genetics, too.
So rivalries naturally occur. Oilers/Flames, Stamps/Eskimos, Canadian National Finals Rodeo/Calgary Stampede.
The divergence spills over into other areas of disagreement. A southerner can get pretty possessive about Bow River rainbow and brown trout. But when have you ever heard of Calgarians getting misty-eyed about working their way up a little brown-water stream in the Boreal, angling for Arctic grayling?
See what I’m saying?
The same can be said for moose and elk or mule deer versus whitetails.
But probably the biggest point of departure between north and south comes down to upland.
Pheasants — and their kindred spirits, sharptail grouse and Hungarian partridge — are forever in the part of the province where trees don’t grow.
While in the mixed forests of the north, the king of game birds is the ruffed grouse. At least, that’s what northern Albertans think.
It’s something that us northerners can feel pretty smug about, too.
While ruffie numbers do fluctuate for reasons biologists aren’t really sure of, as long as there is habitat they will survive in good enough numbers to provide reasonable hunting, even in lean years.
And one in every eight years or so, unbelievably good shotgunning is available during the rugged grouse’s legendary population spikes.
Pheasants haven’t fared so well. Thanks to the dismal and demoralized state of the Sustainable Resource Development Department these days, after years of budget cuts and morale-sapping reorganizations, bird game assessments are largely based on hunter anecdotes.
From the chat room chatter it appears that ruffie numbers — except in the extreme northwest where there appears to be a population bump — are fairly low.
But apparently they’re good compared to the hammering that pheasants took last winter and spring, with some bloggers vowing to lay off hunting this year.
Or they’re going to Montana, where something magic seems to happen once Albertans cross the Medicine Line. Even in a slow year, as 2009 apparently was, an incredible 110,000 ring necks were harvested. Little wonder that 35,000 upland bird licenses were sold.
Despite the similar spring weather that is being blamed for the latest chapter in Alberta’s pheasant woes, state biologists in northeastern Montana predicted “pheasant numbers are expected to be about average.”
No talk of a wipeout in the Big Sky state.
Pheasants Forever’s North Dakota population update predicted that hunters have “plenty of optimism,” with the border-hugging northwest quadrant ranked among the state’s “perennial pheasant powers.”
So what gives?
In Montana and North Dakota governments get it. Pheasant hunters bring big income into little prairie towns that are on the brink of getting blown away by the next Chinook.
So Montana has a game bird enhancement program that makes a million acres of private land available for pheasant hunting, plus another 32 million acres of federal and Indian land.
North Dakota has a similar program called PLOTS, which also negotiates with land owners to allow hunter access on private land and preserves, and enhances habitat.
North of the 49th we look over the border with envy and try to make do in a year when grouse numbers remain down and pheasants are reportedly even worse.
It was under these conditions that I headed out on back-to-back hunts for Alberta’s two game-bird solitudes.
The community pasture alley with its cloak of lush clover that borders a natural area looked like a ruffed grouse magnet.
But it wasn’t until we had hunted all the way out and were circling back on a trail through the bush that my bird-dog-in-training Penny finally made game, eventually putting up a ruffie with a right-to-left shot I couldn’t catch up to with both barrels.
The second bird, which flushed too close to the dog, was a pass.
The sun was well on its way down and we were almost back to the Jeep when the dog found another hot scent.
The bird swung to the left and I had to wait until it cleared a fence rail to get a clear shot ... which I missed.
Flush number four came when Penny picked up a scent at the edge of some timber in a pasture.
The last bird of the evening got up at the side of an oil road when the last rays of legal light was rapidly fading away.
Two shots.
Two misses.
Then it was early to bed for the long drive down to Buffalo Lake for a pheasant hunt the next morning.
Buffalo Lake is one of several fake pheasant hunting sites where birds raised by the private sector operator of the government’s state of the art pheasant hatchery at Brooks are released most days throughout the season.
In many ways it’s not an ideal hunt and despite being three-quarter sections it can get too crowded for comfort at times.
Even with its many disadvantages it’s a beautiful piece of rolling moraine habitat.
If you get lost in the moment you can imagine you’re hunting the real thing: cunning, wild roosters, rather than pen-raised domestics that hold nice and tight and flush cacophonically.
Which is what happened when Penny picked up a scent when we hit the first caragana hedgerow and the big bird flushed between us.
It fell in the long grass when the string of No. 6 shot caught up with it.
It was the only flush the Lab produced for the rest of the day.
So this battle of Alberta will go down as a tie.
Newfoundland is outta this world
