Not just for the birds
I just cleaned 20 birds (chukar, Huns, and dusky grouse). As I've mentioned before on this blog, I age my birds before cleaning them, sometimes for up to 3 weeks, so they tend to add up when we get around to cleaning them. They go from Peat or Angus's hand to my Badlands vest to …
[This is a re-post of a post from 2017] After hunting chukar for the past 17 years I decided it was about time to take my first shooting lesson. The irony is not at all lost on me, I assure you. As a teacher who tries to espouse and model lifelong learning to my students, …
It is early, and we are feeling it. It's on. Unusually cool weather for the opening weekend of chukar season made things more comfortable than normal, if "comfortable" is even legal to use in describing anything related to chukar hunting. Waterdogs We took the boat out on one of the many nearby reservoirs and found …
I admit it, I'm a sucker for trying to take a good shot or even a bad shot. A snapshot, that is. I always swear I'll leave my camera or phone tucked away while I'm hunting but end up breaking my own rule. Bob even went out a couple of times without his gun and …
I'm seduced by landscapes. I'm enthralled by them. Camping next to the Missouri River in Montana for most of the summer, Bob quietly tied fly-fishing flies while Angus slept near. A book sat on the table, a gift that arrived in our mailbox shortly before we left Idaho, given to him by a close friend. …
The culture of chukar hunting in our neck of the woods is pretty evident all-year-around. Go to one of our fall 8-man home football games or a local cross country meet and you'll see your share of Chukar Culture hats on the sidelines. We're wearing them, parents are wearing them, the out-of town Virginians who …
riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. --James Joyce, Finnegan's Wake I spent most of my summer building a relationship with our first drift boat, exclusively on the Missouri River tailwater downstream from Holter Dam, …
I don't know the people who will feed me... Frank O'Hara, "The Day Lady Died," from Lunch Poems (1964) Please, sir, I want some more...Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist Warning: This post is way less about chukar and more about culture, if you can call it that. We'd probably prefer to think of the word "hunger" …
Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was carved by the world's great flood, and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by …
When Peat was 7-months-old, we took him hunting with Angus to a place where his day of hunting lasted exactly 15 seconds. Upon arriving to our hunting destination, we let both dogs out of the pickup and before we knew what was happening we saw Peat streaking a 200-yard beeline to a covey of Huns …