I hunted the Butte on opening weekend and got skunked, and my setter has a good nose, too. In late-November I hunted the Butte again from the west side (alt 97) and the snow was deep enough that I didn't want to take that small road up to the top. I ended up hunting the bottom around to the south and up that canyon, which actually looked pretty good. Anyway, we never saw any birds there, either. It was a bit disappointing. I also hunted Swakane that same weekend and got skunked. I camped there and hunted it hard but we saw no game birds. Due to a bad back I hunted the lowlands and stayed out of the steep areas, except for that first canyon where the bird feeder and all the trash is. Plenty of quail tracks in the fresh snow around the feeder, but we didn't get into any birds. We hunted way up that canyon, too.
Cliff