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 4 8 ere is North America's unknown wilderness. Grasslands, the last vestige of the North American bison plains. Hemmed and constricted, certainly. Defiled by roadways and fences, of course. Yes, it has been infiltrated by plants and beasts that don't belong. It is not pristine. But it persists. And it is largely empty, unseen. Unlike any other place in the world, a reservoir for two of the world's greatest game birds, prairie chickens and sharp-tailed grouse. The Nebraska Sandhills. Sandhills. As in dunes. Real, rolling dunes of sand blanketed by the same grasses and forbs that padded the moccasins of the Pawnee, fueled the migrations of a billion bison, sweetened the tongues of mastodons, and cloaked the skulking of saber- toothed cats. These are Pleistocene dunes, remnants of glacial assault, bits and pieces of the Rockies and the Canadian shield ground down and drifted up to 300 feet high across a quarter of present day Nebraska. Twenty thousand square miles of beach dunes without an ocean. But there is grass. Sand bluestem, sideoats grama, hairy grama, Indian grass, and switchgrass. Coneflowers and penstemmons, dotted gayfeather and Maximillian sunflower. They're all here, and not just token plants clinging to the past in ditches and odd corners. More than 80 percent of this ecoregion is intact, miles and miles of the same plants and animals that were here 5,000 years ago. Well, maybe not all the animals but definitely the birds we wanted: prairie grouse. "There they go. Those are sharptails." Dave Bean stood staring where the covey had settled, all 6 feet, 12 inches of him. Thank goodness the sky was clear. The man is a lightning rod, the tallest object on the prairie. "They landed right under that ridge," he added, turning back to me as he pointed. "I saw them. What say we get the guns, load up, loose these dogs, slide on over there, and whack 'em." H