Alectoris chukar: a difficult bird, to say the least
A comment I just responded to made me think of the interesting collective nouns for groups of creatures: a murder of crows, a school of fish, a congregation of alligators, a shrewdness of apes, a memory of elephants, a superfluity of nuns (?), a pride of lions… Chukar need a collective noun. I think they’re feeling neglected, which might account for their behavior. I know some refer to them as “devil birds,” but calling them “a devil of chukar” doesn’t work for me because there is only one devil, and his name is Vanilla Ice.
I’m thinking of something close to the collective noun for ravens, an “unkindness,” but a bit stronger. “Pain in the ass” is, I think, too long. “Jihad” might work, but I’d rather it be an English word, although given the native lands of chukar might it be appropriate?
An expletive might do the trick, for I’m fairly sure every chukar hunter has uttered a string of such one or a thousand times during a hunt: a “f*&king of chukar”?
Perhaps naming them after a reviled but nonetheless admirable person? How does an “O. J.” or a “Cheney” or a “Kaczynski” of chukar sound?
Or maybe naming them after a method of torture might be best. A castration of chukar? A tasering or a waterboarding of chukar? Or maybe just something much broader in scope, which could encompass the entire endeavor of chukar hunting and the prey themselves: a “difficulty of chukar.”
Hoping to help The Kid achieve his goal of bagging the huge but wily pheasant rooster on his farm last Friday, we set out with high hopes catered by a few inches of fresh snow. He’s now in his second season of bird hunting, and has bagged lots of quail and one Canada goose on their place, but he told me earlier this season that his main goal for this year was to get that rooster. It has tempted, teased, and tormented the poor kid numerous times. (I’ve had a couple of shots at it myself, and can attest to its will to live.)
Rooster-walking this week…
As we walked quietly across a snowy alfalfa field to work a shelter-belt, The Kid said in the matter-of-fact way I’ve come to expect and admire, “That ol’ rooster won’t make it another year if I have anything to do with it.”
“That rooster won’t make it to next year.”
Quail flitted and frisked everywhere, but we weren’t interested. Angus, who seemed tuned to a higher bird frequency, tunneled and burrowed and just plain strove to find him. Although we never found any of his tracks in the snow, we all knew that rooster was there, hunkered down beneath some dog-impenetrable thing, laughing his ass off. “Not today, you suckers! Bwa-haa-haa!”
Who knows where that thing is?
So we decided to try for a duck or two since they were advertising themselves in the fading light. We grabbed some steel shells and The Kid guided me to a little pond he guaranteed would hold ducks. We crept up on it, and – sure enough – a handful of mallards lifted from the water just as we approached.
After the barrage, I thought we’d struck out. The Kid said, “No! We got one!” Across the tiny pond, a mallard drake lay dying on the snowy bank as its partners flew away across the field that had been plowed just hours before. The duck lay on its back, squirming slowly and then got still as I made my way down the steep slope to the water. Just a couple inches deep, I stepped into the water and immediately sunk into super-fine silt. I kept sinking slowly until my boot rested on the bottom. Up to my crotch in quicksand, I couldn’t move. The Kid stood and watched, unable to help, and only partly able to control his mirth. Quandary took on more meaning. The more I struggled to move my feet, the greater the muck held me. I was trying to keep my upper body from getting soiled with the grimy silt, but leaning into it and pulling a hamstring curl beyond my ability was the only way I could gain any movement toward freeing my feet. I managed to get my boots to the surface, but the duck, eight feet away, still needed collecting. I scrambled across the muck somehow, thinking the snowy bank it rested on was more solid. It wasn’t. But I had the duck, and somehow managed to get back across to The Kid. A thick layer of black slimy silt coated my pants and bottom of my jacket. My boots were full of the stuff. But we got the duck, in the longest retrieve ever (about 30 minutes). I handed it to The Kid. He thanked me and said, “See, I told you there’d be ducks there.”
The Kid, The Duck, and the Muck (note the patch of denim below my left hand). Photo courtesy of The Kid’s Mom
It seems my complaints did the trick. We found chukar everywhere and anywhere last weekend. I have never seen so much chukar poo, and rarely if ever have I encountered so many chukar in two straight days. We worked for them, sure (about 5,000 vertical feet in two days), but they were high, low, and middle. Angus even pointed two in a tree near the water. I’ve never seen chukar in a tree. I shot like poo, but ended up with a good amount of birds. The best thing, though, was seeing so many birds; after hearing them all spring and summer and having a tough time finding them this fall, it’s nice to know they’re out there in big numbers. One covey consisted of at least 75 birds.
I got a couple helpful comments about killing cripples, so thought I’d foreground the issue. The suffocation method was recommended to me a few years ago by a lifelong upland hunter and recently retired bird biologist for the US F&W Service. It’s worked well but does take a while. He told me that it’s the most humane way to do it, so I trusted him and have had no problems with it other than it prolongs the event.
Today, I had the chance to try the method recommended by two people (comments on previous post). Angus brought me a crippled chukar, very much alive. I grabbed it by its legs and really rapped its head hard on the butt of my stock. I used to kill trout that way so it made sense. I thought I’d used adequate force, but it didn’t kill the bird. I did it a few more times, harder with each swing, and the chukar did not go limp and its eyes still looked at me. I suffocated it. I tried again with the next bird, same thing. I must be doing it wrong. Or chukar are descended from Terminator.
Any other ideas out there? How do you kill your cripples?
Well, after this morning’s post, I wasn’t sure what today would bring. I went to an Access Yes parcel I hadn’t hunted. I’d heard from one of my students that there were lots of chukar out there, which I doubted. I was right; not being a chukar hunter he no doubt confused Huns with chukar. And there were lots of Huns out there. Angus pointed one covey, I flushed them and fired once. Angus located and retrieved the one bird I saw fall, but I noticed what looked like another bird squirming on the ground where the first one fell. I hustled up there to find three more. My first four-for-one.
Not far from the rig
Early in the hunt I approached a little pond with a row of cottonwoods between us and the water. Thinking there might be some ducks there, I slipped some steel in my Benelli. As I neared the water, no ducks in sight. One more step revealed a handful of mallards still in the water ten yards away. They took off and I shot twice and hit both. Angus, who disdains or even fears water, beelined it for the mallard in the middle, swimming, grabbed it, and brought it straight back to me. It was a bird and it was flapping, evaporating his fear. We couldn’t find the second duck. I thought it had sank. On the way back (after a stellar pointing sequence on several Hun coveys), we visited the pond again and Angus found the wounded mallard in the reeds at the far end of the pond and brought it back to me.
Typical uplandfowl day (not)
So I bagged 8 birds today, the most killing I’ve done in a long time. I had to look the wounded birds in their eyes as I suffocated them. There’s no pretending. It’s a blessing to get a bird stone cold limp with its eyes glazed over. That hardly every happens (just once today). I’m not used to numbers like this, so it’s weighing on me a bit. But I’ll get over it. Or not.
