Not just for the birds

Tag: chukar hunting

  • Reflection

    Reflection

    My problem is that anything that I want to be good at, I take it seriously and have the tendency to get obsessed with it. Years ago, I raced bicycles at an elite level and for 12 months a year my life revolved around bicycles and the bicycle racing scene. It was eat, sleep, train, travel all over the place to race plus I had a full-time job on top of that.

    This time of my life was way before the internet, social media, and Instagram so I had subscriptions to every bicycle magazine on the planet to get my constant fix. Success back then wasn’t measured by how many followers or likes you had, real or fake ones that are easily bought for a few bucks but actual credentials and race results that got me free bikes, clothing, and a small stipend towards my race entry fees and travel expenses. After 15 years of spending every free moment on my bike and missing doing other outdoor activities, especially in the summer, I got burned out and walked away from the sport and didn’t want anything to do with it.

    I’m passionate about chukar hunting and love the sport but I’m almost glad the season is only four months a year. I’m also happy that I’m not in the upland hunting industry because it’s nice to take a break, change focus, and do other things the other eight months. My chukar hunting obsession needs to take a break, yes there is too much of a good thing and I don’t want to get burned out on upland bird hunting like I did on bicycle racing.

    I’m a goal oriented person which made me be a successful bicycle racer but I made a mistake at the beginning of this past chukar season to try and hunt my age which is 57 plus hike further and gain more elevation than the season before. I didn’t achieve my goal on the last day of the season and felt a little bit of a failure.

    I like the off-season and I’ll be outdoors trail-running, hiking, fly-fishing, and sometimes even riding my bicycle. My plan is to be fresh and excited to switch gears back to chukar hunting this coming fall. Who knows what my next what obsession will be. Mountaineering? I kind of doubt it but who knows, ten years ago I never thought in a million years I’d ever carry a shotgun and kill birds. I do know one thing for next season, I’m not setting any goals for anything.

  • Season Highlights

    Season Highlights

    A week later, the withdrawal symptoms have begun. Peat’s evening hotlaps have intensified. Angus seems more lost than his age and illness can explain, insisting on some daily me-time around dusk to see if any game birds have interloped on our plot. Leslie made the video. I’m having more meltdowns than usual, at least in my head (and seem to be sleeping much less). Arg. I hate the off-season.

    But, as you can see in the video, it was a season worth looking at. All the numbers were better than ever, even if it felt like there were fewer birds than ever. The numbers say otherwise (that’s why it’s good to keep a log, to keep your memory fair).

    So enjoy the video, and — if you’re anything like me — hang in there until next September.

  • Old Paths

    Old Paths

    Bob and I stood there at the bottom of the mountain for a couple of minutes looking up the steep ridge and up to a rocky outcropping high up on the ridgetop. We scanned the terrain for obvious paths made by animals. These paths usually prove to be the easier route up to the place in the rocks where we hope to find some chukar. Bob hollered at Peat and Angus to go find some birds, and our dogs, just like wild animals, naturally followed these old paths. We followed the dogs.

    I headed up the rocky game path with my head down, lifting one foot front in front of the other, and I’d count twenty steps before allowing myself to catch my breath for a second, and then I’d dizzily look around to see if the dogs were onto birds.

    Game paths are habits of the landscape. Some are straight, some are meandering, some cross through creek beds lined with hawthorns and aspen trees, and a few have dead ends. We have been beckoned by and followed many hundreds of miles of these ancient paths chukar hunting the past few years and have followed ghostly footprints left in the snow, mud, and dew. We have stopped to examine tracks of elk, deer, rabbits, mice, snakes, turkeys, coyotes, chukar, cougar, wolves, and our own dogs’ paw prints.

    chukar path

    Humans are animals too and we make tracks in the icy snow and slippery mud. Our footprints and scent are now obvious to the next traveler. Walking on these paths veining the earth makes us feel human, they make us feel more connected with nature. There are beautiful things we will never see unless we walk on these paths.

    Hole in the rock.
  • Winter Call

    Winter Call

    This final Sunday of a marvelous chukar season finds us all, for the first time this season, called to something other than hunting. Leslie and I, forced to take a sick weekend, are watching the growing covey of quail scarf corn while the dogs get an unprecedented seventh straight day of no exercise. These diluvial days seem not to have had a beginning nor can I, right now, imagine their end (especially given the forecast).

    But with dogs, it can’t ever be all doom and gloom, no matter how determined the effort. Peat, despite — and, more likely because of — his characteristic pent-up-edness, entertains us at irregular intervals throughout the day and night, improvising doggy stand-up: stealing bras and getting tangled in them while trying to break their necks, nose-diving momentarily un-minded cupboards for Tupperware, getting the Cong stuck on his lower teeth while trying to keep us from picking up what he can’t quite drop, giving himself a massage by rolling ecstatically on the floor over his Nyla-bone and elk antler chews, growling maniacally all the while. It’s the Call of the Child-we-never-had. And Angus, obliviously enjoying the retirement of his hearing, seems simply to alternate between a textbook demonstration of contentment and manic hunger. We’ve been relieved these past couple of months that the only symptom of his cancer is the blood dripping sporadically from his penis.

    Most people who’ve been touched by dogs like to tell stories about what it’s like. I like to hear theirs. Billy Collins has two poems I want to share. Enjoy.

  • The Sequence

    The Sequence

    I live for this moment. This sequence.

    My dogs look like they’re onto birds. I sense it from subtle nuances and have learned from training and experience how to read their body language. If I’m hunting with just one dog all my focus is on that one dog. If both of my dogs are in the picture, I have to decide which one to trust more and which one to follow more closely.

    I remove my shotgun from my shoulder and hold it in ready position and carefully pick my way through the loose rocks without trying to look down. I see Angus through the thick sagebrush. He has stopped and is motionless. He’s on point. Out of the corner of my left eye, I see Peat rushing up and stopping just behind Angus.

    Angus with his beautiful show dog gait starts creeping forward. Peat stays put. Scanning the tops of the sagebrush, I’ve consciously made myself focus softly, not knowing which direction the birds might bust. I slowly start moving into position in front of Angus.

    Like a flash of lightning, more to my left than I’d anticipated, a small covey of chukar busts flying at top speed away from me. I quickly mount my gun while taking the safety off, then point the end of the barrel with the fleeing partridge’s arc, my index finger goes onto the trigger, and I squeeze. Everything happens so fast I don’t have time to think, relying on muscle memory from past experiences.

    The dogs hear the noise of wing-whirr made by the covey of chukar taking off, and the sound of the single shot, and they get excited and run in the direction of where the birds flew hoping to pick up some scent on the ground of a downed chukar. They run back to me and give me that look: why did you miss? The sequence of usual events gets messed up this time and we don’t have a retrieve to make it complete.

    I berate myself, making up all kinds of excuses and asking questions. Was it my stance and posture, my gun mount, or that I didn’t focus on the bird and follow through? Some or all are true. It messes with my head.

    The three of us move on and we’ll try this spot again next year.

    The initial point and honor, with Angus about to creep
    The approach
    Peat’s backing the invisible Angus
    Bust and shot: birds just above the sage
    Why’d you miss? Do you know what I went through to find those birds? Can you not hold up your end of this bargain? Would it kill you to practice once in a while? Do you think I’m doing this for my health? Do you think I’m getting fat? Why do you give me so many treats?