I tried to pay attention this time so I could give some concrete information.
First, Nebraska is a really cool place. Everyone I met was nice and helpful. I'm sure there's wingnuts there like everywhere else but I never ran into any. Just honest, friendly, helpful folks. Sometimes having out of state plates can make things a little weird. So thank you Nebraskans. I was hunting east of Valentine.
Overall my main impression is it's too da$# hot to be hunting. Legal shooting hours started around 7:00 am and ended around 7 (sunset). I hunted til 9am Sat and Sunday and called it good. By 10:00 am it was over 80 degrees F on both days and I'm not giving my dog heat stroke. I won't be back again til November but expect it to to be a lot more enjoyable by then.
I hunted Cherry, Brown, Rock, and Blaine counties. Went a little over the gas budget but that's hunting. There's birds there. I saw sharptails on telephone wires, gravelling up on the sides of roads, and 2 were standing right in the middle of the highway as I was coming back into Valentine for the night.
Saturday my dog flushed a double out of weeds right next to standing corn. No corn in the crops. Sunflower seeds, ladybugs, and I think what was alfalfa. Little bright green leaves. The corn was still standing in that field so maybe that's why none in the crops?
Started looking for birds that went back to roost and an hour or so later flushed a covey of about 20-25 birds. I missed. Even as I pulled the trigger I knew I was shooting behind them. They were sitting on top of hills.
I never flushed anything from the lee side of hills except a couple of hen pheasants. The grouse I found were right on top. I did find a couple in the shade of small juniper trees later in the afternoon but only once.
At a location at the southern end of my journeys I found no birds but a couple of roosts and again they were right on top of the hill. Not near water and the cover was minimal.
I had the best luck hunting with the wind at my back and sneaking up the steepest side of the hill to surprise them coming over the top. It's not like hunting a CRP field with waist high brush. Lots of cactus, yucca, and side-oat gramma grass.
The birds stayed in the grass but it's not heavy and they were very spooky. The wind was erratic. One minute no wind the next a steady 20 mph that would last for 30 minutes then back to still. I didn't see the wind making them any more or less spooky.
OAP in answer to your question I have a highly scientific method of hunting which consists of getting out of the car and following the dog wherever he rambles off to. Okay it's a little more specific than that but not much. I usually work the wind and try to pinch birds against open areas but this is all open. So I just walked the tops of all the hills around. Lots of up and down.
I had some good suggestions from some parks and game people and I also drove around at dawn looking for birds out in the open. When I saw them near public areas I got out and hunted or marked the spots for future trips. Other than that I just did a lot of walking. The one constant was I always found them at the highest spot in the section I was hunting. Hope that help some.
If you can get onto a bean or corn field you'll do better from what the rancher I talked to told me. I have to suck it up, get over my shyness, and ask permission next time I go to get on some bean fields.
I saw sharptail at the Oglala NG but nowhere near the numbers I saw in Cherry and Blaine counties. I wouldn't bother with western NE until it recovers from the drought. Most of the rivers were low but they all had water in them. The canals were all dry. There was surface water but not much. Glad to have those windmills handy for the dog.
All in all I'd say if you have a good pointer and like to walk it's definitely worth a trip but it's not like going in to the hedgerow and walking out an hour later with your limit of roosters. I tried to give an idea of the terrain with the pictures below. Sorry for the length of this.
