For the rest of the day we pound CRP plots, playa bottoms, and maize fields still pocked with hail craters from a recent storm. With daylight fading, we surround an old farmstead - a low, defiant patch of brambles and leaning walls cordoned off by a square of cedars. Worming through the thicket, the drivers curse in frustration and pain. But the birds are there. They pop from the overgrown quarter acre, bursting from the cedars, wings rattling in the boughs. The blockers shoot and howl. It's a perfect end to the day.

"We see those TV shows where birds are blasting out of all that waist-high grass and we say, 'I want to hunt something like that!'" says Jeff Novak. "It's not all tough country here, but few of these birds come easy." Nothing worthwhile does.