Thanksgiving is coming, and since I’ve been complaining about the scarcity of birds I thought I might refocus a little here.
I think one of the reasons I love chukar hunting so much is that the landscapes I get to inhabit are particularly compelling to me. I remember driving through dense alpine forests on some forlorn road trip, anxious to get to my destination, and wishing I could stop the car and crawl into the deep, dark woods. That was before I got a dog and discovered the arid high desert habitat laced and punctuated with bromus tectorum, bunch grass, and bitterbrush. Basalt steeps. Lichen walls. Vistas unlike any I’d seen except in eastern Turkey long ago. It’s almost as if the birds don’t even matter (while they’re precisely why I’m there).
Anyway, I have lots to be thankful for, including my wife Leslie for being so good with the cameras and such a wonderful companion. And my new friends, young and old, who’ve decided I might be worth putting up with out there. And, of course, Angus (who redeemed himself in tremendous fashion last night, just as it was getting dark, by retrieving a sure-to-be-lost winged quail from the densest of slough-thickets).
Enjoy a few of the sights I’ve been blessed to experience this season:
