Over my shoulder, I’m carrying a Browning over-and-under 2-gauge shotgun, walking a typical Western sagebrush draw with a dry creek bottom meandering through it. As I hunt alone with two dogs, it is not long before a trickle of water gets my attention. Because valley quail like woody cover, it just makes sense to investigate the water source.

A well-worn cattle trail with patches of cheatgrass strung along each side is an open invitation that leads to a spongy seep. A tangle of buffalo berry bushes, scrub chokecherry brush and other hardwoods squeeze the narrow draw. Wild blackberry vines climb, finger-like, along deep crevices up the hillside. I stop to listen for valley quail calling…

Chuck Wagon cook Chef Lenny McNab brings more than 20 years of culinary expertise to his role as executive chef at the Kessler Canyon guest ranch in western Colorado.
At the age of 16, he had the honor of preparing dinner for President George H. Bush, after beginning his culinary career three years earlier.

McNab attended a culinary school in Bad Kissingen, Germany and is one of only a few chefs who specialize in the lost art of “Dutch over cooking.”

Recipes Include

1 -Coffee Crusted Lamb Chops

2 -Filet of Elk En Croute with Mushroom Duxell and Mallard Foie Gras

3 -Coffee Crusted Cowboy Steaks

4 -Truffle Mashed Potatoes

It can happen at any time, whether moments out of the truck at the start of the new day or at the end of it all, tired, footsore and cold.

“Don’t take your eye off the dog,” Darren Roe said. It was a lesson we would learn again and again.

Bill Herrick, my companion on the hunt, and I stayed the night before at the Running Y Ranch in southern Oregon. The next day, we met up with Darren, of Roe Outfitters, before heading east into the sunrise on Highway 140.

The day dawned better than we had any right to expect, with a little wind to start. A light snow blanketed the fields, perfect for tracking valley quail behind a pointing dog. We turned off the highway and followed a track through a series of gates and parked next to a corral. Darren followed his young pointer, a German wirehair named Oreo, while Bill and I spread out on either side…

…Oreo whirled and stopped, one foreleg off the ground, nose locked on scent. Darren didn’t trust the point, but…