Not just for the birds

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  • Lousy with chukar

    Brittany spaniel chukar hunting
    Angus rehydrating

    Angus, Leslie, and I sucked it up yesterday in the crappy weather to look for birds in a spot we hadn’t explored before. It was lousy with chukar, and so was I. I shot two-thirds of a box and brought home two birds.

    Still, despite both Leslie and I being a bit under-the-weather and hiking around some pretty steep country in underwhelming weather, it was a great day. If you watch the video (see below), you’ll notice no shortage of action. (Please realize in the scenes where I’m running back and forth like a brainless buffoon my safety is indeed on.) I think because of the stiff wind, Angus seemed to have more trouble than usual pinpointing birds, and some of the birds seemed warier than usual, often busting on their own well outside of range.

    Chukar hunting near Brownlee
    Leslie in her Saturday uniform

    A couple of my recent posts discuss my confusion over chukar tactics, and today did nothing to clarify anything for me. I’m tempted to give up trying to figure out how high or low they might be in whatever conditions on whatever terrain and just do my best to think like a chukar. This worked a little today, when I speculated that in the heavy wind the birds might prefer to be on the leeward side of ridges. That’s where we found most of them. But there were notable exceptions to this, and in more than one case I called Angus away from windy areas that actually (we found out later) harbored birds.

    Hungarian Partridge
    Hungarian Partridge

    Anyway, it was nice to get that much action and see so many birds, including the interesting and beautiful Hungarian partridge. Angus made two spectacular retrieves, including one on a Hun I knocked down – I thought – cold. Angus couldn’t find it where I saw it fall, and I was sure it wouldn’t have run anywhere. But my Brittany boy wonder was hot on the trail of something, and I followed him, thinking he was tracking the covey members that busted a moment earlier. A couple hundred yards later he pointed hard, and a one-winged bird jumped and ran, with Angus in tow. Weaving in and out of sagebrush, the intrepid but ill-fated Hun eluded Angus for some time before the mutt finally won.

    Brittany with chukar and Hun
    A chukar in one hand, Hun in the other

    So there you have it: a triply lousy day. Lousy with birds, lousy shooting, and lousy weather. I wouldn’t trade it for much.

    Here’s the video:

  • Mouthful of Feathers

    Great upland bird blog - Mouthful of Feathers
    Mouthful of Feathers’ “About” page with Gustav Mahler

    Just wasting time, procrastinating, searching for blogs on “chukar hunting,” and found what’s easily the best blog I’ve seen on upland bird hunting: Mouthful of Feathers. Excellent writing, thoughtful ideas, and – if you can believe it – the “About” page starts off with a quote from none other than Gustav Mahler. Uncanny. I wish I didn’t have work to do so I could stay up all night and look at the pictures, videos, and great stories with provocative thoughts about the pursuit. I wish I’d met these people years ago and could be looking at myself in some of their photos. Damn. The only critique I have of the stuff I see on the blog is their quite poor taste in beer.

    Anyway, check it out. If you’re chukar-baka like I am, you’ll dig it.

  • Low Down on Chukar

    Steep hill chukar hunting
    Up, up, and, oh crap, UP!

    Well, after my recent post, “Getting High on Chukar,” in which I revealed that up north I have seen more birds lower on the slopes than I do down south, I went low over the Thanksgiving break in my spot down south. In other words, I decided to try the northern tactic in the south. It wasn’t the best day, but I have to remind myself that the worst day chukar hunting is better than the best day at work.

    I went with a friend. Conditions were pretty wet to start, which wasn’t bad and made the ground nice and pliable. After about a half hour of steep side-hilling not far above the creek we came to a sharp ridge and draw, and I expected to see some birds there because of all the cover and the ridge protecting them from the wind. Sure enough, as we came over the spine of the ridge we saw Angus pointing downhill about ten yards below the ridgetop. Unfortunately, though, the birds busted before we could get in range. No shots, and about ten birds in the covey. It looked like they hugged the hillside and flared about two ridges away, so we skidaddled after them, paralleling each other on the hill about 75 yards apart, with Angus bouncing between us.

    After a couple ridges and some unpleasant brush-busting and minor falls, we’d bumped up two or three singles, and missed each of them. I felt we should get to a higher vantage point and work down, but the terrain was pretty imposing for such a feat so we continued at the lower trajectory. After a covey busted well above us, probably in response to our talking about what the hell we should do in the hardening rain, I decided to head straight uphill and head back to the truck.

    Steep hill for chukar hunting
    My wife, who photographs some of these “walks,” always says, “Photos don’t really show how steep it actually is!”

    On the grueling way up I realized why I prefer getting high to start and working down. When you work low at first, there’s nowhere but up, and – Murphy’s Law or whatever – it’s usually the worst kind of “up” – rocky, loose, brush-encrusted, pitches requiring hands-and-knees ascending. Yuck. The fact that we didn’t see many birds throughout this ordeal was like a birthday boy watching his mom scrape all the frosting off his cake and run it down the disposal. Well, maybe not exactly like that, but sort of. Anyway, once we got up to the top ridge, the sun came out and the walking got easier. Still, we couldn’t find many birds up there, but at least I knew where I was. And, maybe best, the truck was below us.

    So, I’m not sure if I learned much on this day that I didn’t already know. I actually think the birds’ elevation is far more mysterious than “high” or “low” and depends on way more factors than I understand. Therefore, since I still know next to nothing about chukar behavior, I’ll continue “learning” by starting high and working down, especially if I can figure out which way the wind is blowing.

  • Steep and Weedy

    Man chukar hunting in Idaho
    On the steeps with Angus

    I’m not a spring chicken anymore. Birthdays come at me with increasing speed. But what motivates me to stay healthy is knowing that to spend time in the hills with my dog I have to be pretty fit. The hills chukar prefer are steep. The steeper the better. The footing is usually terrible or worse. Loose rocks, often hidden by mats of thick medusahead, can trip you or worse. Medusahead is a noxious weed originally introduced as cattle feed, but is now recognized actually to injure the mouths of livestock when they eat the dried plant; tiny barbed seeds (awns) get impaled in their mouths and gums, which can in extreme cases be lethal if not treated. And imagine the impact on your poor hunting dog, getting the awns stuck between toes and in the ears.

    Medusahead weed
    Medusahead in its dried, most dangerous form

    For an off-trail hiker, as all chukar hunters must be, Medusahead makes for a thick carpet of rough, sticky walking which can grab your boots and actually trip you, especially if the matted plant-carpet is covering rocks. Medusahead is different than cheat grass, which is a staple food of chukar, and also a noxious weed. But Medusahead, incredibly, is spreading so rapidly throughout the West that it’s threatening to choke out cheat grass, as well as other native grasses. As if that’s not enough, the unusually high silica content in medusahead makes it the perfect catalyst for explosive and catastrophic rangeland fires. Medusahead is a well-known, highly studied problem and some programs are having an impact on its damaging spread. But it is so widespread that it’s hard to imagine it can be eliminated.

    What can you do about it? Not much. You can try not to spread it by removing any seeds or stickers from your shoes and clothing after a hike, and keeping your vehicle out of it so you don’t spread the seeds that way. Or you can contribute to programs that are trying to figure out how to manage or eliminate the weed; search for “medusahead abatement” in your state. Most states in the West have such programs. The Idaho State Department of Agriculture has a Noxious Weed Watch List you can consult for more information.

  • Getting High on Chukar

    Man hiking uphill in search of chukar
    The way up

    As I mentioned in an earlier post, when I moved up to Cambridge, I was excited about its proximity to the legendary chukar area called Brownlee. I’ve enjoyed exploring the new terrain in this area and have seen some pretty country. And I’ve been lucky enough to make it out in search of these birds nearly each weekend since the season started.

    I have not, however, yet found the bird numbers I’d anticipated. At the five or six spots I’ve humped significant ascents and traversed soreankle sidehills I haven’t succeeded at bagging more than a bird or two, and — in two cases — I’ve been skunked by the hill. Why? I’m not sure. I think it’s because I’m a slow learner, and I haven’t put in the hours (or seasons) to gain the local knowledge. What’s worked for me in the areas farther south that I know and understand hasn’t, so far, up here.

    Man and dog chukar hunting
    Diagonaling down to the chukar

    One hunch I need to test is the elevation thing. The drill for the area I am familiar with is this: leave the truck and hike straight uphill for 30-60 minutes, gain a ridge, work from above, and without fail Angus points a covey pretty close to the top or soon after we summit. I began doing it this way after a couple early incidents in which I watched Angus point facing uphill, only to see the chukar easily evade us by running uphill, often over the ridge high above me. No shot. So I’d rather over-climb and then work down to keep that heart (and lung) breaking sight to a minimum. I’ve seen lots of birds this way, and assumed I could apply the same approach anywhere.

    Up north, though, I think that this high-low method hasn’t worked well for me because I’ve gone way too high. All the birds here that I have found (that Angus has found, rather) have been much lower on a hill than I’m used to seeing. So I’ve gotten some good exercise but probably passed so far above the birds that Angus can’t get anything fresh on them. They might not have been that high for days, if at all.

    Man and Brittany with chukar harvest
    Results of the “go-high” approach down south

    This theory got some positive supporting data today. At 10:00 a.m. we hiked straight up to a ridge about 750 feet above the elevation of the truck parked along a river, and heard chukar below and to the west of us. I thought they were heading up the slope and thought — if we didn’t get into more birds up top — we might intercept those far-off chukar on our way back to the truck.

    Well, after a couple hours of tough hiking during which we saw no sign at all, even in good-looking habitat, I decided to try to find the covey we’d heard at the outset. I reached the high point of where I thought they were headed. No sign. Diagonaling back to the truck, and maybe 100 feet above the level of the road, Angus pointed about exactly where I figured we’d heard the birds calling earlier. Now noon, they hadn’t moved in two hours. Loads of fresh chukar poop littered the ground. Angus was locked. I knew the birds had to be there, and suddenly the first few lit. I managed to kill one and watched it fall while Angus had bounced to another point a few yards away. While reloading, of course, another dozen birds erupted from the bitterbrush and bunchgrass. And then another group. All nearly within range of the truck. Dammit.

    So maybe I’m learning something here. I’ll post an update at the next opportunity.