The introduction of turkeys has brought spring hunting to thousands of hunters who like me turned into skiers, steelheaders and fly fishers. Idaho's natural wonders tend to pound at the observer like a rock opera turned on high volume. Subtlety is hard to find in a landscape that begins in the bottom of deep, narrow canyons, where rivers grind their way through bedrock, carrying even big boulders downstream during the spring runoff. Where big shouldered mountains rise up 12,000 feet, sculpted by glaciers and the elements while they don snowy capes. It's a land that grabs your attention like a gun shot and holds it like a circus tent evangelist.
Hunters grow up here lured mostly to the mountains and canyons after big game.
But those willing to look beyond nature's clamorous vision will find a place where small events still matter. It is not only a wild world of untamed passionate uproar. In Idaho there are still places where silence reigns. There is the desolate, wide-open sagebrush desert of Owyhee County, where man, boy and dog can walk for miles, or even drive, for that matter, without seeing another human. He might see a few dozen sage grouse, quail or partridge, depending on where he chooses to trek.