Not just for the birds
Moving forward. Going backwards, uphill, and slowly descending. Last hunt of 2020 for us was yesterday, I followed Bob around the chukar hills just like the old days. Camera in hand. No shotgun. Winter is my favorite time to be out there. It's quiet. Following tracks of ghosts of deer, elk, and birds. Detective work. …
The quickest door to open in the woods for a child is the one that leads to the smallest room, by knowing the name each thing is called. The door that leads to the cathedral is marked by a hesitancy to speak at all, rather to encourage by example a sharpness of the senses. If …
"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 …
I'd bet every chukar hunter has wished at some point that they were a hawk or an eagle or a falcon. Being able to survey the terrain from above, not to find chukar but for another angle from which to appreciate the landscape's beauty, just seems fantastic. Yesterday, after busting a chukar into a rocky …
Peat's first season hunting, five years ago, began quite stressfully for me (and, consequently, Leslie and Angus). The first six chukar I killed that season Peat stole from the retrieving Angus and ran off into the brush and ate them. Any normal person would have been quite upset about this. I was literally livid and …
She'd never do this herself, so I'm doing it. Part of the "culture" of this blog's title is off-the-hill stuff. Leslie, retired from a long career in healthcare, spends most of her non outdoor time in her studio making jewelry and scented soy candles. She sells her jewelry on her Etsy site "Taisie Design," but …
Doing some spring cleaning in late fall, and thought I'd add a Used Gear section to our online shop in case anyone's looking for a deal. Just three things there right now: Used Tenzing BV16 Upland Bird VestUsed Garmin TT15 Track/Train Dog CollarUsed SPOT Gen3 Satellite GPS Messenger
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. …
Are the gullible dumb? I've hunted chukar for two decades now, and once in a while I'll have a hunt that causes some kind of fundamental reevaluation of my identity. I earned an Ivy League Ph.D., and even I'm proud of that and view it as an accomplishment. At times, I've even thought it meant …
Continue reading "Ascension, or How to Hunt Chukar the Dumb Way"
I saw this on Facebook the other day and it made me cry. I'm not sure if that's saying much since I cry (when I'm not enraged) at parallel or crooked lines. I somehow developed a soft spot for Jimmy Stewart when I was a kid. I don't really know much about him, but he …