Chukar Culture: Memory, Dogs, Paradox

Description

What do Shock G, Alfred Tennyson, William Faulkner, Emily Dickinson, James McNeill Whistler, Dante Alighieri, J.M.W. Turner, Marilynne Robinson, Philip Larkin, Charlie Parker, the Inuit, Arthur Schopenhauer, Barry Lopez, Beethoven, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Bill Frisell, Swampy Cree, James Joyce, bagpiping, Wallace Stevens, and Sylvia Plath have to do with chukar hunting? McMichael connects these and more disparate sources to his time in the field to weave a dense fabric of meaning that reveals a fluid portrait of what many consider the epitome of upland bird hunting.

Selected writing from more than fifteen years of published and unpublished reflections and essays on chukar hunting, Chukar Culture: Memory, Dogs, Paradox offers McMichael’s ideas on how best to pursue this game bird with dogs, as well as his attempts to describe the complex emotions involved in the pursuit of killing game for sport. Bringing his knowledge of music and education into the mix, the pieces in this collection form a nuanced testament to chukar hunting that promises to enrich any chukar hunter’s appreciation of the hobby and edify those who—like McMichael himself—are ambivalent about it.