Not just for the birds

Author: Leslie McMichael

  • The Beautiful Familiar

    The Beautiful Familiar

    “Come on dogs, let’s go hunting.”

    Not just one dog but two. Not much more work having two. They get fed at the same time, go to bed at the same time, and adapt to each other’s miscellaneous routines at home, like, for example, keying off of each other when it comes to hearing something outside, both of them to end up running full speed through the kitchen and out the dog door barking their heads off. We’d gotten use to having two dogs around all the time at home and on the mountain. The one thing that I loved most about having two dogs was watching them hunt together.

    Last June when Angus passed away from cancer it was an adjustment, and a void for everyone, including Peat who now has to do all the work by himself finding the birds. It wasn’t that he was lazy, but he was smart. He was like one of those co-workers that we’ve all had at one point in our lives, the ones that sit back and watch everyone work and then when the donuts arrive from the boss on Friday rush to thank everyone for a good job, and he’d be first in the break room to get the only maple bar. Peat would be the first on the bird for the retrieve, a covey of birds that he didn’t find in the first place but he’d bring the chukar to hand and get all the immediate praise that followed while Angus continued to hunt.

    Peat this season was definitely forced to step up his game by being the lone dog. His average mileage used to be three times ours, now it’s four times. He can find birds and he’s the relocation specialist but his nose is either super sensitive or not fully refined because he’s really cautious on pinpointing the covey’s location and getting close enough. The birds are either just very jumpy and busting wild for other reasons. I don’t know if it’s because he spent so much time as the co-pilot.

    The main thing I’ve missed this season is watching him honor another dog. Peat in action is a beautiful, mesmerizing and sometimes funny sight to behold. It’s by far my favorite part of seeing a pointing dog work. Looking back, I think he purposely let Angus find all the birds just so he could honor him. They had a beautiful relationship.

    Before the season started, we stopped by to visit Angus and Peat’s breeder, Katie and Gabe of Sunburst Brittany’s and I casually suggested that maybe they could loan us one of their dogs. I wasn’t entirely serious and thought that it was stupid to even suggest in the first place, but in November they lent us and entrusted us to keep Custer, their young liver and white American Brittany for a few days. I was excited to have another dog to hunt with again, and I was equally excited just to have the presence of another dog in the house.

    One-and-a-half-year-old Custer arrived, and from the get-go it was evident that he hadn’t been around cats before. He went on point when he saw Seamus for the first time. Peat soon took notice of what was happening and acted like he’d never seen a cat before, either (despite getting his ass kicked by Seamus on his first day with us almost 6 years ago!), and both dogs chased Seamus and both got a full set of claws in their furry snouts. From that point when Custer wasn’t tethered to me, he was in his crate on the floor. My 15-year-old cat continued to taunt him by sauntering past his metal crate door within an inch. Cats are masters of intimidation. Trying to train Custer, a kennel dog, to be a house dog that lives with cats in one day so he could be loose in the house was very optimistic.

    The following day, to give the cat a break from all of us, we took Custer out hunting with Peat to a place on some BLM land not far from where we live. We started out initially wanting to have Custer only hunt with me but realized that he hadn’t bonded with us yet and he wanted to hunt with Peat. About 20 minutes into the hunt, my Garmin beeped that Peat was on point. I headed his direction and could see Peat pointing and Custer honoring him through the tall bitterbrush. It almost brought tears to my eyes seeing two dogs working together again. Instead of getting into position to shoot, I pulled out my phone to photograph and capture the moment.

    Custer honoring Peat for the first time.

    The next covey of chukar we found, Custer was the first one to point. I slowly got into position and out of the left corner of my eye, I could see Peat running full speed right past him! Instead of honoring Custer, Peat ran right through the covey and busted them. Freaking Peat! I don’t know what he was thinking. I’m no dog psychologist, but on the next covey Custer found later in the hunt, Peat honored him. They took turns on a couple more coveys and we hunted with both dogs together at least six more times before returning Custer back to Sunburst. We would have preferred to have kept him longer if it wasn’t for the cat. I love my cat. That darn cat.

    It was a beautiful thing to see Custer, Angus’s nephew, move with the same show-dog gait as Angus. He’s got the same sweet personality, and whisky colored eyes, and is a natural on the chukar hills. Custer is a miracle and a bright hope for the future where next spring a new puppy will be in our lives or maybe one of them will be in yours.

    Merry Christmas and Peace on Earth. Enjoy the video!

    Custer backing Peat again.
    Sunburst’s Custer and Peat, November 2020.
    Peat honoring Custer on some chukar. December 2020
    Custer post retrieve
    Angus and Custer, January 2020
  • High Desert

    High Desert

    Ring, Ring.

    “Hello, can I help you?”

    “Do you guys have gas?” Bob asked. I could hear the woman on the other end laughing.

    “Of course we do, we’re a gas station,” she answered. “We’re only open from 8am-5pm.”

    “Just checking, we’d hate to drive all that way and find out you didn’t,” he added.

    The undulating terrain, headwinds, and just plain bad miscalculations on our part made for terrible gas mileage in our truck camper. We were relieved to reach the gas station by phone because for starters we actually had phone service, and we wouldn’t have to turn around and go back to a gas station we’d stupidly driven past 60 long gravel and washboard miles earlier.

    We pulled up to the gas station about 30 miles from where we made the phone call and they were open, just like the woman promised. The pump was one of those old style ones that didn’t take debit cards. A young-looking guy who was loading empty cardboard boxes into the back of his pickup next to the gas station yelled to us, “Round it off to the nearest dollar and go inside to pay!” I couldn’t understand what he said so I asked him to repeat himself. He yelled back “Go inside and pay!”

    While the gas was filling, Bob walked over to talk to the guy. I heard Bob ask him, “Do you know if there are any chukar around here?”

    “Oh yeah!” he said. “Drive out of town [he pointed in the direction], take the third left, drive down the dirt road for about an hour, and when you get to the cattle guard go right and drive over the pass to the other side. It’s all BLM land and there’s a lot of chukar out there. Most people that come here to hunt go over there but there’s no birds over there,” pointing in the opposite direction. “I’d be surprised if you don’t see chukar running all over the road just driving in.”

    We finished refueling and I went in to pay and bought a couple of milkshakes, too. It was an unusually warm November day and for some reason they just sounded good. We sat outside on a couple of chairs eating them and discussed the pros and cons of changing our original plans of heading up into the Steens Mountains that afternoon for sightseeing, or taking the advice of a stranger and driving into the unknown for miles just to look for chukar. Why was this guy so forthcoming, and if he was also a bird hunter why would he give away a spot? Was he just toying with us and sending us to no man’s land?

    Feeling fat and disgusted with myself after eating a gigantic strawberry milkshake for lunch and mostly because poor Peat hadn’t had any exercise for two days, I made the decision that it was worth a try for us to go look for those chukar. If the guy was right, how could we pass up this opportunity? We hopped back into the pickup and headed down the road following his directions from memory after leaving the pavement. After about an hour of driving on dusty, dry-as-a-bone and rough roads we didn’t see any cattle guards, a mountain pass, or chukar on the road as we were promised. Bob and I agreed it looked like a place that might have chukar so we pulled over and stopped. After getting out the of truck and walking to the back, we found the back door of the camper wide open; it probably had been that way for miles. Thick layers of dust and dirt covered everything inside. Since this was my birthday trip, Bob said he’d stay and clean everything in the back of the camper while I went hunting with Peat. I quickly got dressed and headed out as he wished me luck.

    The terrain in this part the Oregon High Desert was gentle and rolling and flat in some parts, a much different experience and nice break from the steep places we normally hunt. Within minutes Peat went crazy. His little tail fluttered like a hummingbird and he gets this look in his eyes of being half possessed. There was so much bird scent on the ground that he was bouncing back and forth like a steel ball in a pinball machine and spinning circles like a whirling dervish. He then made a beeline up a small rise and went on point. When I got closer to him, I stopped and got into position to fire. I took a couple steps forward and a huge bird busted from the sage about 10 yards away. I held my fire, realizing it was a sage grouse and watched it launch itself away from earth. Then another one busted, followed by another, another, and another. There were probably at least 15 of them. The scent Peat was tracking were those grouse, a totally new scent for him. He’s never smelled sage grouse before or even seen one for that matter, but they must smell like other types of grouse. Funny how the guy didn’t mention that we might find sage grouse out there too. Maybe we weren’t in the right place but it just goes to show you that you need to be prepared for the unexpected and know what you might see so you don’t accidentally shoot a bird you’re not supposed to.

    Peat and I continued to hunt, weaving our way through the sage, and we did find a desperate muddy trickle of a spring and a covey of chukar nearby but the birds heard us coming and ran uphill and busted wild before I could get a decent shot.

    Watching a couple of sage grouse fly away.

    I couldn’t wait to get back to the camper and tell Bob about my experience of seeing the grouse and finding chukar too. As I was hiking down, Bob was heading up the mountain to join me. I lengthened my hunt to go with him and Peat for a couple more hours, and then watched Bob wander off in another direction following the dog as the sun fell behind the ridge.

    We hunted a couple days out there in the High Desert absorbing the warm afternoon sun, watching the evening sunsets over the mountain like a lantern being shut off each night and the brilliant stars in a place with no light pollution which seems is increasingly harder to find.

    Winter was coming the next day so we left just before the first snow in this place that will be shut off from the rest of the world until at least next June when the snow’s gone and the roads dry out.

    On this day of Thanksgiving, I thank the stranger who led us to this numinous quiet place where we didn’t get lost and nothing bad happened, this wild place of chukar, sage grouse, herds of pronghorn, songbirds, jack rabbits, and hundreds of miles of public land, but mostly because of the deepening calm brought by a landscape millions of years old.

  • Love and Grief

    Love and Grief

    “Her name is Rosie”, the old man that was camped near us with Florida license plates told me as his dog walked over to me. Rosie was an overweight black lab with gray on her face and eyes clouded over with glaucoma. “Come on Rosie, don’t bother her,” he yelled in her direction.

    I yelled back. “She’s okay, I like dogs.” He still walked over in my direction to fetch her.

    “I’ve been coming to the Madison every year with her for the past 7 years,” he told me. “This year she’s had a hard time jumping up into the camper. She just turned 12.” I bent down to pet her. “I don’t know what I’ll do when she dies, I love this dog and I’m already dreading the day I have to put her down,” he sighed.

    “My husband and I just had to put our 13-year-old Brittany down last month; he had cancer.” I tried not to let him see that my eyes were starting to tear up as I told him about Angus. “He didn’t suffer; he went downhill pretty fast.”

    “I camped here with my son years ago, we used to ride motorcycles together, but I don’t ride anymore,” he said. “I like going back to the places that we used to go together.” He paused for a moment, “He died a few years ago.”

    I hesitated responding, remembering how my own dad used to ride motorcycles and go on trips with my older brother. On a gorgeous fall day in September, 16 years ago, my brother took his own life only a couple of days after he’d spent the weekend going on a motorcycle road trip with my dad. “I’m sorry to hear about your son, that’s tough,” I told him. I don’t know why, but I didn’t ask him how his son died. I just remember telling him, “Yeah, it’s nice to go back to those places that you shared with someone you loved, it makes you feel closer to them.”

    As he walked away with Rosie, he said “I’m sorry for your loss.” I appreciated the words of condolence from this total stranger who reminded me of my own dad.

    To get to this place on the Madison River was a long drive in stormy weather on hundreds of miles of winding roads. Bob and I drove in separate vehicles bringing the extra one to use for longer shuttles on the days we fished out of our drift boat. I’d been listening to music along the way, but somewhere between Grangeville and Lolo Pass, a song called “Mercy Street” by Peter Gabriel started playing on my Bluetooth shuffle and it touched a nerve. It caused me an overwhelming sense of emptiness and panic, and I felt like we’d left Angus behind. Teardrops followed like the rain falling heavily on the windshield. Peat was in the cab of the pickup with me; he’d been sleeping soundly but was awakened by my loud wailing over the music. Not wanting to upset him, I made myself stop crying and focused on the curves in the road. I’d been forcing myself to forget about it but I vividly remembered that dreadful day, that day we drove Angus to our vet in Council in the back of our old Jeep that we parked out front next to the curb and we ended this life. I remember trying to be strong and comforting for him and not let his last moments of life be watching me crying and being so upset. He knew what was happening, he was ready, he was the strong one, the stoic one. When I think back and remember life with Angus it isn’t just those memories on the chukar hills but those days in-between because he had a calm presence that just made everything seem right in the world.

    I called my father immediately after Angus died to let him know Angus had just died. Angus had been my loyal companion from the time when he was small enough to fit in my hands. I thought my dad should know, but he didn’t answer the phone and never called me back. It’s complicated, thorny, and complex, but I’ve got a non-existent relationship with my dad and it’s been that way for years and I’ve learned to accept it.

    After talking to the old man from Florida, I sat in my camp chair and stared at Peat and wondered if he remembers being on the Madison with Angus and running in the golden fields near our campground and if he’s sad because he’s gone. I wanted to come back to this campground on the Madison to remind me of happier times from the previous summer when life wasn’t so strange, surreal, uncertain. The time before lost lives, broken friendships and when people used to be kind to each other, the days before we knew Angus had cancer even though it was already growing inside him.

    Innocent times

    As we drove away from the campground to head home, the old man from Florida was still there alone in his camper with Rosie. We headed west and through the rolling hills, mountains, and ranches near Dillon and Wisdom that reminded me of home but on a much larger scale. On our last night on the road we camped in a National Forest campground high up on the Idaho/Montana border that we’d visited two years before with Peat and Angus. After setting up camp, Bob, Peat, and I walked along a beautiful little creek where we went the last time we were there. I watched this funny dog that makes me laugh constantly, this little dog that loves life and play and that I adore and that I’ve raised since he was 7-weeks old explore the world without Angus. I remember Bob saying, “I think he’ll be okay.”

    I love Peat but we have a complex relationship. At home Peat has replaced Angus as my constant shadow but sadly the last three years he didn’t want to hunt with me in the field when Bob and I were hunting together. Peat prefers Bob, and it is as if I don’t exist. It’s weird but I’m okay that Bob is the alpha. When it’s just Peat and me out together, he’s fine and he hunts hard for me but just like humans relating to one another, relationships with our dogs can sometimes be complicated, intricate, and painful. Angus is missed terribly and I’ll miss having him be my hunting partner on chukar opening day but I’m looking forward to having some quality days with Peat this coming season.

    Grief is loud but love is even louder.

  • Home Movies

    Home Movies

    After the light came

    We got an early start and headed up the mountain in the dark wearing headlamps for the first part of the climb. After about an hour of zigzagging up the mountain the sun started to rise in the distance. Some parts of the climb were super steep and I ended up having to grasp some clumps of bunchgrass and branches of sagebrush to pull myself further up. Legal shooting hours were one half hour before sunrise but Bob’s goal was to reach the top of the rocky ridge and not start hunting until the downhill. This was early fall and still pretty warm outside during the day and he was hoping that the birds would be heading up after spending the early morning drinking water down by the river and, as they say in cowboy movies, “Head them off at the pass.” This was my first time hiking for chukar with Bob and Angus and this whole world of seeing things off trail was new and exciting.

    Bob asked if I’d carry our video camera to record some of the hunt that day. I’d never used our video camera before and he showed me how to operate it the night before. He told me that the red light meant you were recording and the green light meant it was stopped. Besides negotiating new terrain and trying to keep up with Bob and Angus, my job was also to stay out of the way and be ready to film at all times. When something would happen which I wasn’t anticipating because I didn’t understand what was going on, Bob would signal me that Angus was onto birds or he was on point so I could start filming. With so much going on in my mind that day, operating the camera and pushing the correct button was the opposite of what Bob told me and that the green light meant go. Unbeknownst to me, I spent most of that day recording the ground thinking the camera was turned off.

    Angus pointing chukar
    Angus strikes a familiar pose. This was the first time I saw Angus point.

    The descent on this first chukar hunt was equally challenging and it was easier on my legs to go up than down. Chukar country is steep. We stopped on the way down and I took off my backpack to get something out of it and sat my pack on the ground. Before I knew it my pack was somersaulting down the hill. I stood there and watched in disbelief not being able to do anything about it and thanked my lucky stars that it was still zipped up and that we were heading downhill in that direction anyway.

    When we got home Bob sorted through at least an hour of footage of nothing but the moving ground and dizzying images of boots. I was embarrassed by my lack of getting something on film but he found at least a couple of minutes of hunting action and he made a short video and uploaded it to YouTube. The name of the movie was “Another Chukar Hunting Adventure with Angus.” Back in 2010, YouTube was still fairly new and there weren’t a whole lot of chukar hunting videos out there. Anything was better than nothing, we thought, and we even got some positive feedback on the video and not too many thumbs down. I agreed to carry the camera the next time we went out, and the next and the next and that continued for another seven years until I finally got tired of following Bob around the mountain with the camera and got a shotgun and started hunting myself.

    I call our YouTube contributions “home movies” because they’re not professional quality by any means. Over the course of those seven years of filming, my fitness improved and usually I was able to stay with Bob plus anticipate when something might happen, and I learned to try and hold the camera still and slow my breathing down or hold my breath while filming so we wouldn’t have so much heavy breathing but that wasn’t always easy.

    During this down time we’ve all been having the past month, I’ve been going back and rewatching some of the videos we made over the years. A virtual rabbit hole of good times spent on the mountain. This first video, Another Chukar Hunting Adventure with Angus is the movie made with the footage from my maiden day on the mountain. I’d never seen chukar hunting in person or a pointing dog working until that day and immediately knew that it was something special.

    This next one, How Not to Handle a Hun was made in 2013. We took “The Kid” Jarret hunting and he learned that not all birds are retrieved dead. It was a good learning experience for him and me. It’s something that carried over when I started hunting. My first Hungarian partridge that Angus retrieved for me during my first season wasn’t dead. I had to deal with it and it’s not pleasant but it’s part of upland hunting.

    Chukar Hunting Retriever Man was filmed on the 2016 season opener with our friend Cameron. We lost one of the birds on a rocky cliff down by the water and Angus couldn’t get to it. We decided to go back and get the boat and motor back upriver to find it. While Cam was retrieving it up in the rocks, Angus ate Cam’s roast beef sandwich. We still laugh about it.

    Shit Chukar Hunters Say was my idea back in 2013. I’d seen something called “Shit Cyclists Say” and wanted to make a chukar hunter version of it. We made it with our friend Greg on the hill behind our house. We didn’t really have much of a script and Bob and Greg did a wonderful job ad libbing.

    Public Land Chukar Hunting in Idaho. We went hunting in a place we’d never been before back in 2016 and at a place we really didn’t expect to find chukar but did. I really like this video because it was the first time Bob did a voice over and I love that about it. (He made this video as an example for a video project he had his students do.)

    A Walk for Chukar is one that I made myself last year when learning how to use iMovie. It celebrates the landscapes where these birds live. I love this video and can watch it over and over.

    This last video, Another Chukar Hunting Adventure with Angus, 2020, is footage from this past season 2019/2020. I just made it this week. We used the same music from that first one made in 2009, and the only thing that is different is location and all three of us are much older.

    Looking back at these and watching them, there is one thing that resonates with us, inspires us, and makes us look forward to next season are these beautiful places in the chukar hills.

  • Decade

    Decade

    Celebrating and reminiscing about great days on the chukar hills from past seasons. These beautiful moments, funny ones, exhausting ones, and even frustrating ones always remind us of the beauty of the sport and what the culture of chukar hunting means to all of us.

    The following is a collection of some photos we’ve never shared and a few of my favorites that you might have seen before. Remembering those wonderful times spent with friends, family, some moments alone, and of course with good dogs will help all of us get through these uncertain times and give us something to look forward to this coming autumn. We again thank you for following us along on this journey over the years. It’s because of you we hope to keep this up another decade.

    Winter hunting can be a little slippery.
    This was a beautiful place to hunt but we found it over grown with cactus, poison Ivy, and rattlesnakes that day. We’ve never been back.
    Big country, God’s country.
    Peat honoring 6-month old Susie. The funny thing was that out of camera view, Susie was pointing some cattle on the other side of a fence.
    I was freezing cold and miserable in this photo but we kept climbing and following the dogs. Sometimes you misjudge what the weather might do and just deal with it.
    Heading down after I got us lost. We were only temporarily lost but it’s always a little disconcerting when you get turned around and disoriented in the backcountry.
    Cold cowboy coffee. We thought it would be fun to sleep on the boat on season opener. We brought everything but the kitchen sink and still managed to forget the camp stove. We also had a rude awaking in the middle of the night when we woke up with our boat laying on its side on rocks. We now know that Idaho Power lowers the water level in the reservoir at night.
    Snowy point.
    Hauling in a stranded boat of fisherman after we got done hunting. They were lucky this cold day since we were the only other people on the water. Oh, and Bob discovered that in the process of towing this boat we’d shredded our boat’s prop.
    Angus pointing. I thought he was just resting in the shade but a couple of chukar busted right in front of him. I kicked myself for not being ready with my shotgun.
    Good day Bob spent spent with his brother Geoff and his Brittany Donner.
    Dog trio on the rim. Bob can hunt for hours without pulling out his camera so these moments are rare.
    Opening day, 2018
    Sam spoon feeding Hannah and Angus. Sam started us on the post-hunt Vienna Sausage tradition.
    We’ve tried hunting with snowshoes a couple of times over the years. Too much snow was hard on the dogs.
    A rare two balloon day.
    Prepping for the perfect after hunt photo.
    Tough climb but the views were spectacular.
    The early season is always hot and dry.
    Vienna sausage post-hunt treat tradition continues.
    Early season after-hunt cool-down.
    Trying to get the dogs to look at me for group shot.
    Huns. I love the expression on Angus.
    Standing there watching 6-month-old Peat on season opener eating his first chukar and we couldn’t do anything about it. He did the same thing 5 more consecutive times. He hasn’t done it since.
    It always seems like we spend more time going up than going down. That’s probably because we do.
    Proud parents of a baby boy Peat. Angus looks dejected. Peat looks like he’s planning the years of shenanigans he’s in the process of executing.
    Friends forever after a rough start.
    The Sunburst Brittany Clan. All three kids hiked all day with us in tough terrain.
    The kid followed us up every mountain. The kid “Jarret” is now a high school junior.
    Snowballs on Angus and inside my boots. This is the one the day I wished I’d worn gaiters.
    We went hunting with my brother-in-law only once but it was memorable.
    Opening day of chukar 2019. We thought we’d only have Angus for a few hunts but he lasted the entire season and is still going strong.
    My first ever chukar on my first season. Angus pointed and retrieved it, which made it even more special.
    Heading back to the pickup. Late afternoon hunts are always nice, and I love the light in this photo.
    Hunting stories in Hells Canyon Beer pub with Sam.
    Man and dog looking for chukar
    Where’d they go? Snow chukar at all.
    This was when I only carried a camera. At the time I didn’t know what I was missing.
    Brittany and Hungarian partridges
    Young Angus and Huns. We used a vest for a few hunts but stopped using it. I’m not sure why.
    Man and dog chukar hunting
    Boots with good ankle support is definitely required for chukar hunting.
    I’m never sure how to hold my bird for photos. I always feel awkward.
    My Benelli. I use an auto loader but rarely shoot more than once on a covey.
    It’s always hard to show steepness in photos, this one sums it up.
    Failed negotiation with Jarret over sharing his Peanut Butter and Cheeto sandwich.
    Jan 2020 highlight was meeting Custer. He’s on my left and also the nephew of Angus.
    Not a bad view. Taking a break after the long hike up from the reservoir.
    Peat on point.
    Birthday seat covers for my hunting rig.
    Bob looking for deer while taking the kid bird hunting.
    Four Sunburst Brittanys
    Thanksgiving Day hunt back in 2016. We made a video of the day and so far it has had 1.6 million views on Youtube. There’s some sort of weird chukar hunting cult out there. 😉
    Sam and Hannah. Sadly, Hannah passed away this past winter.
    I take a lot of photos of dogs drinking water, this one is my favorite.
    Covey Rise. It’s always hard to capture birds in flight.
    Angus in pursuit of a downed bird that Bob shot when this single busted behind him.
    Angus and Leslie
    Behind the scenes in the early years before Angus turned gray.
    The year of mega snow fall. We couldn’t hunt but it didn’t stop this Red tailed Hawk.
    Steep country. I love it.
    Angus retrieving my chukar this season.
    We couldn’t go up or down, the only way was across and it was like walking on tiny marbles. I ended up crawling on my hands and knees.
    Last photo of the 2019/2020 season.