Holy Chukarmole (stay tuned for a new recipe)!
Who knew the chukar hunting community was so diverse as to make it downright like the rest of the world? All along I was under the impression that to be a chukar hunter meant that you were beyond the pale of unethical, uncivil, un-whatever behavior. After all, to be a real chukar hunter means you have to have the lung capacity and cardiovascular superiority that corrolates higher on linear regressions to posit higher level brain function. How drastically has my bubble burst?
The good news is that we’re not as abnormal as I once thought (assuming “normal” – whatever that is – is a positive characteristic). My first clue was a kind of blind-side: I just this morning went to one of my favorite blogs to see what the Bionic Man (my euphemism for the purveyor of Tucker’s Chukars) was up to with all this crappy weather. He tends to find more birds and take more birds than the average bear, so I like to read his blog to get simultaneously depressed and inspired (a personal quirk I’m not proud of but have accepted as part of my “aging gracefully” resolution). Therein I learned of a brouhaha with another fixture in the chukar hunting community, the origin and precise nature of which eludes me after several hours of social media “research” and at least as many beers. In the immortal words of Rodney King: “Can’t we all get along?”
As if that bubble-bursting weren’t enough, quick in the wake of this horrific discovery of the chukar-hunting community’s normalcy, I get a comment on THIS blog from someone taking a rather profane exception to another reader’s comment — tongue-in-cheek perhaps, or something else — which I debated on approving because it was a bit off-color from what I’m used to seeing. Jesus. Hotflash (and I’m not menopausing!). Cool IT, please. And if you want to troll on this blog, please don’t. It never was my intention to provide a forum for that kind of Trumpish behavior (no offense to any supporters of the president-elect, but really: this should be a space for civil discourse).
What we should be focusing on, instead, in my humble opinion, is the defeat, the chastisement, and the literal or figurative (your choice) obliteration of the kinds of “hunters” who congratulated themselves recently with the following road-sluicing public document:
I’m still trying to get my head around the weather, what the right thing to do is if your chukar hunting jones just ain’t gettin’ satisfied as the calendar heads to that lonely last day of January and you KNOW you have got to make it at least until September 1st with some seriously pent-up hounds chomping at the bit and lots of other stuff that will no doubt make you very cranky. It’s a tough job, that long waiting period. Right? And every year, I swear, I fail miserably at doing that learnin’ I promise myself I’ll do about these fascinating partridges. But thanks to some very kind and civil readers (you know who you are) who have given me some great suggestions (“compensatory mortality” and “chukar populations Christensen” especially), I’m gonna do it. In the meantime, stay — or get yourself — cool. The freaky winter should help.