After watching the Fish & Game videos and learning that a snare trap can kill my dogs if I can't get the cable off, I decided I now need to carry a pair of short-nose cable cutters along with all the other crap in my vest. Aside from the fact that they're ridiculously expensive ($65 …
Watch Out for Traps
Not what you want to see As we finished our hunt the other day, and were milling about the truck a pickup drove by us and then backed up. The driver said, "Hey, just wanted to let you know I've got some traps up there." We'd walked right past his traps, and of course our …
Angus of the Chukar Hills
"Angus of the Chukar Hills" by Rachel Teannalach When the season consumes you, you don't worry about much else. When it's over, you worry about everything else. Filling up that worry with good things to carry it away like water helps. Yesterday was one of those good days between seasons. We collected a painting we …
Not just for the birds
It's not at all "just" for the birds. It's not "just" for any one thing. It's for Angus, whose rapturous pursuit of birds expresses the epitome of equivocal desire: his instincts draw him toward birds, but he knows I'm also interested and - because he checks on where I am, even when he's birdy - …
Landscapes
I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show. -Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) Some of Leslie's chukar hunting landscape photos from this fall and winter... Have a wonderful holiday. Peace on Earth.
A difficulty of chukar
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 …
The time is nigh
Getting close. We've taken to sitting in the boat in the evenings now, imagining, strategizing, speculating, expectorating, and imbibing IPA. Chukar have serenaded us during every fishing trip this summer. Angus has filed away their crowing coordinates. We took a hike last weekend through a favorite late-season spot (which is the same place we took …
Pirouetting Chukar Hills
As we turn off of the highway and onto the dusty dirt road heading towards the chukar hills, our bird dog stands up in the back seat of the pickup and sticks his nose out of the crack in the window, snorts, and wags his stubby tail in excitement. The last time we turned up …
Bird Dog Summer
My wife just posted on Angus's summer in: Bird Dog Summer. via Bird Dog Summer.
Waiting
Six more months. Spring is such a tease. Angus and his new little buddy, Ava (I wish I could say it was our new puppy, but it's a friend's) got into some Huns today in some nearby BLM land. Ava watched Angus hog the points and got snoutfuls of bird scent. She's going to be …