The landscapes where the birds live dictate where you’ll hunt chukar in the West. Terrain covered in sagebrush, bunch grass, scree veins, and rocky talus outcroppings high up in the clouds is typical in this part of Idaho. You’ll encounter steep traverses and sidehilling that make you wish you had tightened your boot laces tighter. Later in the season, in December and January, it gets snowy, icy, and slick which slows you down especially if you have to posthole it. These hard-to-get places on public lands that can only be reached on foot are what the allure and fuss is all about. It is man and his dog against nature and its elements, or in my case, woman against nature.
We reminisce and think about these beautiful, wild, and remote places and will plan our hunts next season to purposely seek them out. The reality of it is, you’ll walk a lot, sometimes for hours to find them and only see one covey on good days, but it’s these special places and your attempt to put yourself into position to shoot over a pointing dog that makes you go back another day, and another day, to try again and then dream about the coming season and doing it all over again.
The video below is my form of ode to walking the chukar hills.
“The man must learn to know his dog as a personality, not a formula.” -George Bird Evans
“Peat No!” I yelled at the top of my lungs as he booked full speed through the dog door and outside to the backyard with a big piece of cauliflower firmly gripped in his mouth. The piece had rolled off the kitchen counter and onto the floor. I followed him outside to the backyard out of pure curiosity to see if he’d actually eat his sudden treasure. He did eat it. It surprised me because our dogs have always disliked raw vegetables in any shape or form. Peat has an uncanny knack for appearing to be sleeping but the second somethings falls on the kitchen floor or when a bird hits our big living room window outside, he’s all over it. Angus with his deafness hasn’t been part of this game lately. A sad reality.
Two-month old Peat
The week before, while getting the toaster from the pantry, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a lightening streak zip past me. Peat was just starting to bolt through the dog door with a plastic package in his mouth that he pulled off the shelf behind me. I managed to grab his fast, furry hind end just as he was halfway to a corn tortilla bliss.
I started making handwritten lists of things Peat has snatched and taken through the dog door. I’m not sure why I started it, but maybe because deep down in my perverted mind I thought it was funny. How can you get mad at a bird dog that is so obsessed with putting things in his mouth and carrying them around?
Prescription glasses, two pairs — one of Bob’s, one of mine — were the bigger ticket items Peat carried outside and destroyed. The rest were smaller items, like a $10 coffee gift certificate, boxer shorts belonging to a guest, throw rug, entire pan of brownies that were in a plastic container, silicone computer keyboard protector x 2, kitchen sponges, 3-, dime store reading glasses (several pairs of which he’d sometimes bring back inside to chew on some more in front of us like it was no big deal), kitchen spatula, custom osage wooden spoon, entire loaf of nice artisan bread, insulated cooler bag, Tupperware container + lid, fleece blanket, towel from bathroom, lunch bag with apple inside which he pulled out and ate in front of us while we were in the hot tub staring at him with disgust, pot holder, brewing equipment foil insulation, Zippo metal hand warmer, Kitchen-Aid mixer lid, stack of old Christmas and birthday greeting cards, expensive fly-tying rooster hackle, Tupperware bowl full of huckleberry muffins of which he ate the entire batch. I’m sure I’m missed things, but you get the picture and not everything was destroyed. He’s very selective. He ate some of them and has earned more than one trip to the vet. Remorse was nowhere to be seen in Peat’s visage.
Boxer shorts, not our guests but another pair found by an alpine lake.
Bob on the other hand isn’t so amused by Peat’s shenanigans because during Peat’s first season of hunting he grabbed from Angus’s mouth at least the first 6 chukar Bob shot that season and refused to return them. I don’t think Peat really cared. Bob did.
Yes, it’s okay that you blame us or me. We put things where there is a good chance he might grab them. The one second you let your guard down he takes advantage of it because he’s no dummy, plus he’s one fast mofo. I’m sure some of you can relate and have similar stories of your own high energy bird dog and their attempt to get your attention. We didn’t have a dog door until Angus was about three years old but do remember him managing to squeeze one of the large couch cushion pillows through the medium-sized dog door to take outside to chew on. Angus had his share of destroyed objects but not as many. You forget these things and end up with another puppy sometime in your lifetime again, and then you remember. Some of us, like a bad habit, keep doing it over and over.
I’m the first to admit that Peat isn’t perfect. He’s not spectacular, and he’s a total piece of work. Bob blames it on not enough exercise in the off season. I blame it on Peat being Peat. I could also blame it on some bad advice we got from a dog trainer friend that told us when Peat was a puppy, “Don’t yell at him when he puts something in his mouth and try to make him give it up; he might get confused and think it’s a bad thing and then not want to retrieve anything.” Some of us aren’t the best dog trainers and handlers, and we are included in that group. Peat, our badly behaved dog at home turned into a fantastic upland hunting dog. The only downfall from Peat is now Angus has to be coaxed into releasing a retrieved bird to hand because of his fear that Peat might intercept it.
We almost gave up on Peat. I’m glad we didn’t. Don’t ever give up on your puppy or dog. He or she might come around and surprise you, and allow you to buy that new pair of glasses you really wanted.
Fond of finding things to carry around. Peat pointing with a bone in his mouth.
“Range after range of mountains. Year after year after year. I am still in love.”
– Gary Snyder
Spring break this year, we drove across the West and past many, many mountain ranges in Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and Montana. I didn’t dare sleep in the car or stare at my phone while being a passenger moving past them because I’d miss them. Instead, I gazed across the landscapes or would read my tattered paper road maps splayed across my lap and try to find out the elevation of the highest peak that I could see in the distance or the next little town coming up. On one particular mountain in Nevada, I tried to imagine the route I’d take to the top. Looking out the back window as we drove past it, Bob asked what I was doing and I told him I was trying to figure out a good route to the top. He asked if I was planning on doing that anytime soon. I told him no, but anything is possible.
The western United States is blessed with vast areas of public lands in the middle of nowhere that rarely get stepped on by a human foot, but it doesn’t make them any less special or less valuable. If anything, it’s the opposite.
It wasn’t until spending time the past few years hiking around the chukar hills that I realized how important they were to me. On our road trip across the West, I started reflecting back on all the many hundreds of miles hiking up and down these mountains and back to the beginning. I felt like talking about it in the video (below).
I almost didn’t go on a blind date with him but I ended up meeting him anyway and it was because of a bird dog. That was 18 years ago this month. Before agreeing to meet him in person for the first time, I saw a photograph of him kneeling next to his 6-month-old puppy. “What’s not to like about a single guy who has a cute dog? He can’t be too bad,” a good friend of mine said as she was encouraging me not to back out of giving him my phone number. At the time, I didn’t know much about Brittanys, but I agreed they were both cute.
Glenna Skye and a couple of ruffed grouse.
We spoke on the phone, a landline, before meeting in person for the first time. We talked about the basic stuff and it seemed like everything was going well but he insisted on knowing what I looked like first. I found out later that he’d been burned before or set-up on false pretenses by a woman that said she looked exactly like Mariah Carey. He said, “Mariah Carey’s second cousin, four times removed, if that,” or something like that. I’m a firm believer that looks aren’t everything, but it was only fair that he had the option of backing out if he didn’t like what he saw.
These were the early days of the Internet, the AOL and dial-up years. Online presence wasn’t so easy to come by. Today if you want to find out what someone looks like it’s easy to just Google their name or Facebook or Instagram search them. The only photo that I could come up with was from the webpage of the bicycle team that I was racing on. It was group postcard photo but it was better than nothing. I told him where to find the photo online.
I’m the tall one in the back, fifth from the right.
We agreed on a public meeting place, a brewpub in downtown Boise. He came straight from work and got there first. I came straight from the gym, and when I walked in the door he was expecting someone in workout clothes and he didn’t recognize me at first. The funny or ironic thing about our first meeting was that his co-worker in the cubicle next to his had the same photo posted next to his computer because his wife was also on my cycling team. My blind date had seen the photo of me almost every day for a year without knowing he’d eventually meet the one fifth from the right.
After good beer, dinner, and conversation he invited me over to his house because he was anxious to check on his young dog that had been home alone all day. I agreed to go to this strange man’s home to meet his dog Glenna, and I didn’t even think twice about doing it. It was getting late and I stayed for just a few minutes before I drove back across town to my own home. I liked him. I think his bird dog liked me.
Bob proposed on top of an Idaho mountain inside an old decommissioned Forest Service lookout about 1- 1/2 years later. The following year, on a clear sunny day in August, in-between wildfires that had blanketed the skies with smoke most of the late summer, we got hitched on the top of a different mountain, and after the ceremony rode our mountain bikes down to the bottom on a fun and narrow single-track with family and friends.
Happy Valentines Day to all you lovers of mountain tops and bird dogs out there!
We’re hunkered down again today. It was a blizzard this morning when we woke up. Bob and I really wanted to know the wind chill but our weather station anemometer stopped spinning due it to being caked with snow and ice from the cold winds. I’m not complaining one bit about the snow drift that was pushed against our front door when I went outside to get wood for the stove this morning; snow is needed for water this summer. I’m sure later while I’m out there pushing around the snow blower up and down our long gravel driveway that I might complain and utter a couple of choice words, especially if I break another shear pin from the big sticks and branches Peat manages to find from who knows where and leave scattered randomly on the driveway now buried in snow.
Today is the day for doing those indoor projects you love and hate. After having papers and receipts spread all over our kitchen bar, Bob just finished doing our taxes and is now dreaming of a summer of fly-fishing in Montana and he’s doing research on Montana rivers and what kind of flies to tie. He also has a lot of school work to do today like grading papers, figuring out assignments, then practicing the bagpipes. He loves it.
I’m waiting for the winds to stop. It’s pointless blowing snow when it will blow right back in my face. Bob’s recovery from his spine surgery is going well but he’s still not able to lift or move heavy things (or so he claims). Shoveling snow and snow blowing is my project today. In the meantime, I’ve been going through hunting photos from this season and finding the ones that represent just a small taste of our season spent with good people and better dogs.
