After 35 years of bird hunting, I have been fortunate enough to harvest nearly 90 percent of the readily huntable gamebird species in the lower 48 (please don’t @ me, Himalayan snowcock hunters). While each species is special, one bird in particular holds a special place in my heart, a bird I hold above all others: the greater prairie chicken. 

A lot of this comes from studying prairie chickens in the Kansas Flint Hills for my Masters degree. I also spent seven years trapping and translocating greater prairie chickens for my job as a wildlife biologist. But there’s more to it than that; the bird itself is something of an enigma. They are actively retreating from their original strongholds of Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa and making a stand in the far western fringe of their once vast range. In these fringes, they eschew trees and humans. It seems like they just want to be left alone.