In the first blush of a fine spring morning, Linda Baker, director of the Upper Green River Alliance, and I disembarked from her truck in Wyoming’s 7-million-acre Upper Green River Valley. “Hey, grouse droppings,” she said.

“Neat,” I said, not sarcastically. They looked like the scat of my Yankee ruffed grouse, only white instead of gray-brown.

“Wait,” she said. “There aren’t enough; this can’t be the lek.” The lek was farther west—toward the snow-streaked, moonlightwashed Wyoming Range. To our north rose the Hobacks and Gros Ventres, darker in their coats of lodgepole pine and subalpine _fir. We’d gotten lost in the maze of dirt roads recently cut through this rolling, sagebrush steppe to accommodate the gas industry. The year was 2004.

Lights on gas drilling rigs imparted a New York City ambience to what had recently been de facto wilderness. Ulcerating the surrounding flatlands were 8-acre rectangular well pads next to plastic-lined ponds that held scum-encrusted, hydrocarbon-fouled fracking water. It was oozing onto this parched landscape, killing wildlife forage and damaging the habitat of some the last pure strains of Colorado River cutthroat trout.

Legendary coach Bear Bryant hunted here. For serious football fans–and in Alabama it’s hard to find any other kind–those words make Five Star Plantation hallowed ground. But this storied land’s history starts well before the Bear and features equally distinguished men, all drawn to the land’s beauty and bounty. Acting as stewards of one of the South’s premiere hunting preserves, they also gave it amenities to match. The result is a model hunt club, one that provides all the amenities the well-heeled sportsman could want.

Say “sharp-tailed grouse” to an old sodbuster and he’ll tip back his wear-stained, weathered, wide-brim Stetson, spit out a chew of Copenhagen, look you in the eye and then to the hills and ask if you mean “wild chickens.” The name “wild chickens” was a generational hand-me-down to describe the three species of prairie grouse that were once numerous across the high plains of North America. For old-timers, chickens were not considered a hunter’s sport, but a meal on the table to break the monotony of salt pork and beans.