Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/554642
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 1 5 1 M odern Americans overlook the Sandhills for the same reasons pioneers did. Easy travel routes bypass them. The old Oregon Trail followed the Platte River at the southern edge of the dunes. Hundreds of thousands of pioneers groaned along this Great River Road, happy to stay out of the undulating dunes to the north. Near the Sandhills' northeastern corner the Missouri skirted by, but turned northward to carry exploration and migration to the Pacific Northwest, Montana gold fields, and the Little Bighorn. Today I-80 and I-90 bracket the Sandhills by a wide margin. The only north- south traffic trickles down lonely two-lane highways between isolated farm towns, 30, 40, 80 miles between them. Pickups, grain trucks, kids leaving home for college, leaving the Sandhills for jobs in oil fields north and south, leaving behind a world that exists nowhere else. Andrew Hollenbeck may soon join them, but for now, still in high school, he's steeped in grass, studying range science, helping on the farm, helping his dad guide hunters at Laughing Waters Ranch near Bassett. "Dad seen a bunch of chickens when he was checking cattle," the kid said when he caught up with us. "Got your gun?" "Right here in the truck." "Grab some shells and take us to them." "Can Benelli come?" "Sure." She was just an eager pup, a yellow lab as interested in meadowlarks as grouse, but already ten times the retriever Cheyenne had been in 13 years. We found Wade in the pasture. He had his gun. We fanned across the landscape, an army of four dwarfed by the sky, the rolling waves of grass fuzzing to the horizon. The wind was up and the birds growing spooky. Benelli was clueless, dancing in the grass. Cheyenne had cast too far west, but the big drathaar caught a whiff on the south wind, straightened, stiffened. The first bird lifted from the far ridge at the edge of range, not too far for the eye and reflexes of a 17-year-old. Andrew's shot put the rest out wild. Dave scratched one down anyway. Benelli was back with Andrew's bird before the drathaar found Dave's. We meant to make a short swing and circle back to the truck for lunch in the shade of a cottonwood, but chickens kept leaping and luring us deeper into the grass, A ndrew Hollenbeck is all smiles during the hunt. Right: Spomer and Cheyenne celebrate. Opposite: Benelli the Labrador closes in on a prairie chicken, which has feathering on its legs, while its prairie companion doesn't.