Not just for the birds

Tag: Hungarian partridge

  • Grace

    Grace

    Unmerited favor.

    I’ve gotten out quite a bit so far this season. The weather’s been good. We recently took a trip to what — in years past — had been the best place I’d ever hunted chukar, for many reasons. We’d looked forward to it for nearly a year. But for whatever reason the hunting was terrible. Or I should say that the bird count was terrible; the hunting was excellent as it usually is when compared to not hunting. But in more miles than normal we saw a small fraction of the number of chukar we’d routinely seen in the area.

    Still, six or seven weeks into the season, it’s been good in many ways. Stats. Because of the nerdy log I keep, I can see that — so far — it’s taking me less time, distance, and elevation to bag birds than it ever has (my duration, elevation gain, and distance hiked, however, are significantly down — which I attribute to age; you can’t win ’em all). My shooting started out much better than average but — with yesterday’s atrocious performance, perhaps attributable to our first outing in Hells Canyon this season, on jumpier (probably much more frequently hunted) birds — it’s back down to my “normal” (but still unacceptable) 35-ish percent. Most of the 23 hunts I’ve done this season have been in completely new places, closer to home, found on onX; I’ve looked for public lands that — on the computer — looked like they should have chukar, and every single one of them has, sometimes with very good numbers of birds, and usually these have been places that I doubt many — or any — people have looked for chukar (they tend to be places that a UTV can’t get near). The conclusion that I make from these interim data is that — finally — it seems I’m getting more efficient — dare I say better? — at finding and hunting chukar. I could go on about all this. But…

    A person wearing an orange hat and backpack walks through a grassy field with two dogs, amidst rolling hills under a clear blue sky.
    Pretty over-grazed and overly flat terrain, but we’d never been here and didn’t see sign of others, either. And there were lots of birds. Plausible conclusion: the lack of homo sapiens is a good indicator of game bird presence.

    One of the best things for me this season has been hunting with nearly-eleven-year-old Peat. Five times now he’s chased down chukar that I knocked down, disappearing for quite a while, and come back with them. Yesterday, for the first time this season, Peat disappeared after a bust in which I was able to whiff three times with no visible evidence of having even ruffled any feathers. It was one of those “I can’t believe I didn’t hit anything!” busts. But he came running back to us at least five minutes later with a chukar in his mouth. One of every seven birds I’ve bagged this season has been courtesy of Peat’s hard work after the shot.

    A dog carrying a chukar bird in its mouth, surrounded by rocky terrain and sparse vegetation.
    Peat with the chukar I didn’t know I’d hit

    The Hard Work Before the Shot award will without question go to Bloom. He covers much more ground than Peat does. Bloom averages more than four times what we cover, while Peat does almost three times our distance. Bloom in 18 hunts with me so far this season has run 272 miles, while Peat, in 22 hunts, has covered 237. We’ve noticed that when we all hunt together, Bloom tends to false point fairly often, especially at the beginning of a hunt. He definitely improves as the hunt goes on, but it’s almost like he’s trying to impress Peat, whose favorite thing in life is to honor another dog’s point (see my YouTube channel for many examples of this). Usually, Bloom’s first point of a hunt is several hundred yards uphill from where we’re just getting acclimatized, and we book it up to him, sometimes after he’s been stationary for up to 20 or 30 minutes, and as soon as we get up to him, he bolts. I’ve started calling it a “self-imposed whoa,” which is weird because Angus, who never once false pointed, always pointed with this very un-stylish posture (Angus is Bloom’s great-uncle). But as the hunt progresses, he seems to get more and more solid locating and pinpointing birds, which is really great. He tends to leave the retrieving and tracking duties to Peat, so it’s a good division of labor. I will say, though, in the couple of hunts I’ve done alone with Bloom that he has not false pointed even once, and has been an ideal hunting partner. It’s almost as if he’s trying to tell me that I can still do this when Peat is gone.

    A brown and white dog running through dry grass while carrying a bird in its mouth, with another dog in the background.
    Bloom doing his thing, whatever that is.
    A dog with a collar standing on rocky terrain, observing its surroundings in a grassy field.
    Bloom’s “self-imposed-whoa” posture
    A dog with a white and brown coat, wearing an orange collar, stands on rocky terrain in a grassy landscape, with hills in the background.
    Bloom in a “real” point (birds were there)

    Maybe the best thing that’s made this season, so far, really good is Leslie. I’m not sure about saying this because I realize it might make me look like much more of an ogre than I think I am, but she’s done two things differently this season than she’s done in the eight seasons since she started hunting. First is insisting I go alone with Peat every once in a while. As I’ve said, that’s been beautiful; I think it’s been beautiful for both of us because she’s gone by herself with Bloom several times and has really enjoyed that. Second is, when we all hunt together, she agrees to go where I want to go, and the discussions about the route we’ll try to take get vastly reduced. I’ll be honest here by saying that the main reason I have liked hunting for the 25 years I’ve been doing it is that when one is really hunting everything else disappears, including language and everything that stems from it. There’s nothing else like that for me (except, maybe, playing music). This, for me, makes it necessarily a solo endeavor. Any “foreign” intrusion on that — whether it’s your wife or best friend or boss or whatever — mitigates the escape from everything that is crucial to liking it, to wanting to hunt. So the thing I think I’m most grateful for this season, among many great things, is Leslie’s realization and appreciation of how and why I like hunting. It’s allowed me, for probably the first time since she began hunting (which was a huge step for her for many reasons), to sincerely enjoy hunting with my wife. I realize her sacrifice here, and that, as I said, I might look bad in the equation, but I’m just trying to be honest.

    A woman kneels in a grassy area, smiling while holding a chukar bird in her right hand. Two dogs are positioned nearby, one is a brown and white dog and the other is a tan and white dog. The background features a mountainous landscape.
    Leslie on a recent hunt

    Finally, the other thing that’s made the season so far very good for me has been the book. Many of you have bought a copy of Chukar Culture: Memory, Dogs, Paradox, and for that I’m very grateful. I’d love to hear what readers think about it, so if you’ve gotten a copy please don’t be shy sharing your thoughts with me. I’m trying to figure out how to market it better, but am kind of stymied there (i.e., I’m open to suggestions!).

    Book titled 'Chukar Culture: Memory, Dogs, Paradox' by Robert McMichael, featuring a dog holding a chukar in a grassy landscape.

    Speaking of merch: hats, shirts, and hoodies are coming soon. I will post here when they’re live.

    Thanks for reading, as always, and may your season be filled with as much world-cancelling experience as you’re looking for.

  • But They Do

    But They Do

    “I didn’t know you were left-handed” my father said to me one day while we were having lunch. I sat there not knowing how to reply. I was never his favorite child, something that I’d learned to accept but was stunned at his new realization after being his daughter for over 50 years. 

    A few weeks later, I told my sister about it and she said it’s because he’s crazy, but this incident was a handful of years before his dementia took over his brain. I think he just didn’t understand how his words could make me feel so not very important. 

    I admit that after my mom died 13 years ago I didn’t call my dad as much as a daughter probably should. Instead, I would wait for him to call me first but he never did. Sometimes months would go by without any communication with him, and the phone call or birthday card in the mail that I was hoping to receive never came. My twin brother, who also was not my father’s favorite child, didn’t receive a birthday call or card either. I don’t know why we were both disappointed.

    Yesterday, I loaded up the dogs in their crates in the back of my car and left home for a solo hunt to clear my head from recent events. The morning sun was just peeking up from behind the snowy mountain range in the distance. I don’t like to drive at dawn when elk or deer sometimes cross the highway heading out of town but I wanted to get an early start. It was a long drive mostly on dirt and thick gravel for just over an hour. Rarely, in this place where both Bob and I only try to hunt once per season, we’d hardly ever see someone else parked there but I was worried anyway. I was relieved nobody else was there. 

    My hunt started with a short but very steep climb. As I weaved my way through the sage and tall ancient looking antelope bitterbrush, the air was dead silent and the only sound that I could hear was my own breathing until my Garmin beeped that one of the dogs was on point. Just as I reached the top of the climb Peat was just a few yards away. I walked towards his direction holding my breath and tried to walk as silently as humanly possible. I then heard the sound of wing beats as the covey busted and I got a glimpse of a group Hungarian partridges with their rust-colored tail feathers catching the light. They flew down towards the road.  I didn’t want to chase them back down the hill so we continued looking for other birds.

    A few minutes later, Peat and Bloom both went on point at the same time in opposite directions. Peat 75 yards to my right, Bloom 200 yards away at 10 o’clock. I headed to Peat first because it’s almost always a sure thing and just as I got to him, a different covey of Huns busted just out of firing range. Wild busts seem to be the common theme from my 16 hunts this season. I squinted down at my Garmin and Bloom was still on point, so I headed his direction and Peat quickly moved the same direction. I watched Peat put on the brakes and stop motionless after he saw Bloom pointing. Trying to guess which direction the birds might fly, I got into position. They busted and I was surprised and elated they were chukar.

    Everything seemed like slow motion as I mounted my gun and picked out one bird and hit it as it flew high from left to right. It cartwheeled to the ground and Peat retrieved it to me but it wasn’t completely dead. I held it in my hand and squeezed it hard until it stopped breathing and then stuffed it into my bird pouch. Immediately, an overwhelming sense of sadness swept over me for that chukar. The last time that I cried after killing a bird was seven years ago when I shot a ruffed grouse out of a tree. It was my first time hunting with a shotgun and it didn’t feel right to do what I did at the time but did it anyway. Since then I’ve never shot a bird out of a tree. 

    The dogs and I continued to hunt, finding more birds but I passed on a perfectly easy shot before realizing that I didn’t want to deal with more than two deaths in one week. The other death this week was my father, who died last Sunday at the age of 86.

    On the drive home I’d remembered the advice from a very insightful girlfriend this past summer who has three children of her own. I’d asked her if she had a favorite child. She said it depends on what’s is going on with them and said something like, “The reason your dad hasn’t given you much attention over the years is because he knows you are loved and you are okay. Your sister gets all the attention because she has never had that in her life.” My friend was right. My dad wasn’t a bad person, he just didn’t know how to treat each kid equally.

     When I arrived home, Bob was anxious to hear how my hunt went. I told him that I’d never seen so many coveys of huns and chukar in one day. He said, “You don’t seem very happy.”

    I came to the conclusion while out there hunting that it wasn’t killing that chukar that made me sad but instead I was thinking about my dad and the fact that I really never had a father. Two years ago when we moved back to chukar country it was partly to be closer to where he lived. We get busy with our daily lives, I regret we never got to know each other. 

    Bob said look up the poem “The Mower” by Philip Larkin. I did but found another poem by Larkin that seemed more fitting in my moment of angry grief called “This Be The Verse.” Look them up if you feel inclined. I think some of you might relate to them.

  • The Face of Death

    The Face of Death

    “Maybe we fear that the work we depend on images to do for us — the work of immobilizing, and therefore making tolerable — will be undone if we throw the image back into the flow of time.” — T.J. Clark, The Sight of Death (8)

    “I think we hide, necessarily, from an understanding of what is most to be avoided in the sight of death.” — T.J. Clark, The Sight of Death (227)

    What is the “face of death”? We’re in a sport that makes us face death whenever we’re successful. And instead of shying away from it, discomforting as it might be, we photograph it, and most of us post the photos for others — friends and strangers alike — to see.

    Why do we do this? Where does our current publicization of this taking of life fit on the continuum of monumentalized, frozen-in-time death? If T.J. Clark is right (and I’m inclined to agree with him, except maybe for the “necessarily” part), we take and share these photos of our kills both to acknowledge and avoid understanding what we’ve done. I have to think there’s something in our DNA that compels us not only to record the fact of our death-causing (and even death-gazing) but also to share it so we don’t have to think about it too much; McLuhan’s “the medium is the message” rings in my head. This compulsion might be limited to those of us outside the hunter-gatherer lines; even though we’re hunting, we don’t need to and neither have our ancestors for thousands of years. In fact, the compulsion might be because hunting isn’t necessary for our survival. It might be compensatory somehow.

    I’ve written about Brightman’s Grateful Prey before, specifically how traditional Cree animal-human (prey-predator) relationships differ from those of Invader/Agricultural traditions (i.e., most of us who are not Native Americans or First Nations people). I’ve tried to fit the imagistic depiction of prey into the Cree system but can’t, nor does it fit in Hugh Brody’s account of Inuit hunting culture, which I’ve also recently mentioned. For hunter-gatherers, at best, static portrayals of a formerly alive thing are disrespectful. At worst, they’re like putting a curse on yourself. But that’s a different tradition, different culture than this. So let’s see.

    Even without doing a thorough historical analysis, it’s fair to say that there are a couple major (let’s call them “Western,” as in Western European) traditions in how dead prey get represented. One, for lack of a better term, might be called the “Still Life Tradition,” and the other the “Hero Shot.” In super simple terms, “still life” images foreground the prey as objets d’art (removing, mostly, the hunter), and the “hero shot” foregrounds the hunter and/or his “achievement” (dead prey). I’m going to talk mostly about the Hero Shot, but I’ve included some fantastic “still life” paintings, too, mainly because they’re amazing (you’ll know why).

    Classic Hero Shot: hunters posing with their alectoris prey, Spain, 2014
    An older version of the above shot, also in Spain, 1959
    Solo Hero Shot: 1937 photo of a young Australian bird hunter with his day’s take.
    A more creative Hero Shot, 1940s, Australia, by the same photographer as the above photo (looks like some sort of snipe)
    1912 Hero Shot, including dogs (no location indicated)
    1903 group Hero Shot, Nome, Alaska (ptarmigan)
    Still Life: Jan Fyt, “Dead Partridges with Hound,” 1647
    Paul de Vos, “Hunter and Dogs by a Table with Dead Game and Fruit,” Flanders, 1640s or 1650s.
    Hendrik de Fromantiou, “A Still Life with Dead Partridge, Pheasant, and Hunting Gear,” Holland, 1670. View this full size for impressive feather detail on this perdix perdix specimen.
    Carstian Luyckx, “Gentleman hunter with his pack of dogs and hunting trophies,” ca. 1650-58, Belgium.
    John Constable, “Study of a Dead French Partridge,” circa 1830-1838. Constable was my favorite artist when I was young, mostly because of his romantic, highly detailed landscapes such as “The Hay Wain.” I was surprised to find this relative of alectoris chukar among his works.
    My favorite kind of Hero Shot, for the true hero of the affair, although he (the bird dog) has relied on me to do the killing, the middle part: he found it, I shot it, and he retrieved it.
    The Solo Bird and Hunter Hero Shot, on location
    My last “tailgate shot” (2017): to me, it’s appropriate that the drone I found sits alongside the chukar because I think it accentuates the undesirable “out-of-place-ness” of this type of image. I see a huge, distasteful imbalance between technology and nature here.
    Classic “tailgate” Hero Shot with dogs, hunters, and prey arranged with heads hanging off the edge of the tailgate. 2016.
    One of my favorite all-time dead-prey photos. Angus, who never stopped hunting is still hunting while Peat poses with a bird that came out of the conifers on an after-school hunt in a place I thought I’d only find grouse. Adding to the image’s dearness to me is the history of Peat’s initial reluctance to retrieve and radical, sudden change of course, becoming a flawless retriever to this day. It’s one of the purest gestures of reconciliation I’ve known, even though he’s “just” a dog and probably doesn’t think of it like that.
    4 years in the making: The Kid with his first chukar, after trying hard for most of 4 seasons with me, he finally got one (he actually got three that day). Doesn’t speak much for my guiding abilities, but a worthwhile Hero Shot.

    Chukar hunting is hard, and bagged birds come at a price, whether it’s the calories you burned in the pursuit, the abrasions on your dogs’ pads, the pride you had to swallow when you couldn’t get up the hill to your dog’s stealthy point in time, or the axle you broke trying to get just a little farther up that nasty road. Lining birds up on a tailgate for a photo, with your amazing dog whose praises you’ve made a habit to sing and your best human buddy you’ve shared the challenge with, makes a certain amount of sense. This photo is not intended to say, “Screw these stupid birds, I’m glad they’re dead and I’m gladder I killed them.” It’s not meant to say, as the truly stupid saying about chukar hunting goes, “The first one’s for fun, and the rest are for revenge.” Rather, it’s meant to say, I think, “I respect these birds, love where they live, admire beyond description my dog’s singular flotation of the whole proposition, and am grateful for the opportunity to hunt them.” It says, “Chukar are beautiful, and a worthy pursuit, and I’ve hunted them fairly, ethically, and shot well enough to harvest some of them, who — I admit — gave their lives in exchange for all of the above.”

    So, going back to T.J. Clark’s thoughts about these images of death, the faces we see probably daily (at least during bird season) of these multitudes of expired prey, I still can’t help wondering what we’re avoiding, “what is most to be avoided in the sight of death.” I do think something’s not being said here, whether it’s in the image or outside it, behind it, surrounding it. What, for example, really, is remorse? Pity? Sorrow? Projection? Reciprocity? Do those register? And, if so, since they’re all necessarily (aha!) irreconcilable (unless you commit suicide every time you kill a bird), where do they go, what do they do to us, what can we do with them? And how can we participate in a tradition (whether it’s a Hero Shot or a still life) saturated with adulation but based entirely on death that’s not our own, without avoiding something important? Is that possible? Does it matter?

    On a very crass and basic level, what we’re doing is trying to connect (with others?) and using the death of birds to do so. Somehow, posting pictures of bird dogs pointing or of the sun rising beautifully over a ridge just doesn’t garner the same kind of response (or we think it won’t) from whomever we’re trying to connect with. The result rather than the experience. The bottom line. It used to bug me when I’d go back to work on Monday and the dudes who didn’t chukar hunt would ask, sincerely, “How many birds did you kill this weekend?” Once I answered, “None, but you should have heard the wind carry a slow sound in the hawthorn.” Connection aborted.

    One of the loveliest poems I know is Robert Burns’ “Song Composed in August,” which situates bird hunting naturally in the middle of courtship:

    Avaunt, away! the cruel sway,
    Tyrannic man’s dominion;
    The sportsman’s joy, the murd’ring cry,
    The flutt’ring, gory pinion!

    Part of what I like about this is that it just puts it out there, this is what we do, they’re birds, they’re beautiful, and some of them, when we’re not trying to get laid, we kill. Chalk it up to “tyrannic man’s dominion” and the “joy” of sportsmen. We hear and see and might even be the cause of the murderous gore, and then get on with things. This, it seems, is exactly in the right cultural milieu. Harvest. Death isn’t really faced because it doesn’t have to be (as long as it’s not your own, and even then…). So, killing birds — and posting photos of them — isn’t the end of the world. Unless you’re the bird. I just think, aesthetically, that photos of dead birds look way better in natural settings (rocks, grass, dogs’ mouths) as opposed to tailgates or (the absolute worst) impaled on barbed wire. But that’s just me.

  • December Chukar Hills

    December Chukar Hills

    The two years we lived in Washington, as I’ve said here before, were not the easiest two years for us. We missed the chukar hills, empathized with our dogs’ longings for open hills of bunchgrass and sage, and just simply were unable to ignore the call to the hills. Local surrogates paled in comparison. When we returned to those hills last February, they were buried in snow. So we had to wait. Now that the snow’s here again, we’re recalling the patience required but it’s easier being here, no longer two days’ drive away. I’m busy trying to gainfully employ myself, and I’m liking the challenge and channeling some of that into the new blog/website. But the industry’s hurting, I’ve yet to land a client, and so am doing what I do (when I’m not hunting): reading and writing on topic. Here’s my latest:

    https://chukarhillsrealty.com/2023/12/06/residential-specialist/

    I did get out with Peat into the chukar hills for a long hunt yesterday. December 5th. T-shirt weather in the midst of lots of precipitation. Gorgeous. Not as much action as we’ve typically seen in this above-average bird year, but enough. Bizarrely, even though I filled my 100-ounce Cambelbak bladder, I ran out of water (three miles from the truck). A first for December. Still, stellar day.

  • Remote

    Remote

    “As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote.” – Herman Melville, Moby Dick.

    So far this season, Bob and I have been only hunting at higher elevations where the earthy golden grasses and light green sage colored hills meet up with the forested mountains. These are places to take advantage of now. Soon these places will be almost impossible to reach when the winter snows start falling, which will be any day now. Intrepid hunters that don’t mind post-holing for miles can get to these spots when the snow is really deep in December and January. We’ve done it before but it’s really hard on the dogs. It’s hard on us. And you wouldn’t see birds anyway.

    Five years ago in Mid-November, Bob and I hunted on top of a higher elevation plateau covered with big basin sagebrush and antelope bitterbrush. It was remote and far from any roads or two-tracks and undulated like a rollercoaster and required a steep downhill hike first, then a climb up to the top of the plateau, then back down again before climbing back out. It had all the things you would want for good habitat for chukar: steep slopes, rocky outcrops, water, plenty of things for the birds to eat, and cover from predators.

    A couple of weeks ago, waking up to almost perfect health for my age and the sweetness of early morning darkness, I suggested we make the drive back out there. I’m not particularly fond of hunts that start with the downhill first, unless we’re doing a shuttle, but I’d thought of that place often and really wanted to go back. The motivating force was, besides being incredibly scenic, especially in October, was that historically chukar were there before, so they should still be there, right? I do know that every year things change, every month and even day changes your odds of finding them, but it’s the eternal hope that really drives us.

    We left home and after about an hour drive on a gravel road, we arrived to the place where we wanted to start our hunt. We put on our heavy packs, mine weighed down by what felt like gallons of water, and took our shotguns out of the cases. Before letting the dogs out, we put their orange Garmin hunting collars on, which is never an easy process when they are excited and know what’s about to happen and behave like wiggle worms or house cats not wanting to be held.

    The early morning sun was still behind the horizon as we started our descent and the air was cool and frost coated the short green up. In the distance, a rosy alpenglow lit up the hills to the west. At the start of the 1,000-foot descent on a game trail meandering through a dark and shadowy ponderosa pine-lined draw with a tiny dribble of a creek running down it, Bob insisted that I go in front, so I took the lead, which was unusual. I prefer to follow because I’m usually slower and don’t read the terrain as well. I try to make a mental map of the landscape but I’m prone to daydreaming and I once got us temporarily lost in a snow storm, a few seasons ago, in a maze of game trails and rocks and ridges that all looked the same.

    I felt excited to be back and descending on this trail again after five years. A trail that’s been used by wild animals for time immemorial that leads to a place that hasn’t been destroyed by humans. It had rained the day before and prints of deer and dents by bigger and heavier hoofs of ungulates still wandering the area were on the trail. Some tracks were going uphill and some downhill. Peat’s petite little prints and Bloom’s bigger ones were freshly impressed into the earth heading away from us. I looked back up the trail and saw my own tracks. The sound of a grouse busting got our attention and we both removed our shotguns from our shoulders and looked into the direction of the sound. Peat tracked it down across the creek and found it up on a limb of a tall pine tree and starting barking. This is what he does whenever grouse are in trees. He usually barks his head off until we can’t stand it but I don’t like shooting grouse out of trees and Bob really doesn’t either so we buzzed Peat back and decided to continue walking and leave it be.

    I stopped and examined scat of a black bear which was berry- and seed-filled. I pressed it with my boot, and thankfully it was dry. We kept going, more scat, maybe a coyote or fox, turds full of fur. The front of my thighs and ankles started to feel the terrain and I was cursing at myself for suggesting such a strong and steep place this early in the season in when not really knowing my fitness.

    We got closer to the bottom of the damp draw and near the creek the banks were all muddy and eroded and the gooey mud stuck to the bottom of our boots. The creek was a welcome relief for the dogs as they paused to drink water before crossing. Bob took the lead in front of me and stopped and swished the soles of his boots in the water as he crossed, to get the mud off. He said, “I don’t want the extra weight for the long climb.” I did the same but stepped into a slightly deeper section of the creek and water splashed inside one of my boots and got my wool socks wet.

    I followed Bob up the other side of the draw as we zigzagged our way out of the bottom of the creek bed. Five years ago, we flushed chukar out of this spot. This year, nothing. I finally caught up to Bob taking a quick break to catch his breath. He said, “I’m taking 61 steps before stopping to rest.” We continued. I tried 61 steps for a while, hoping to find my rhythm but couldn’t. Mind games to get you to the top where sometimes your mind is your worst enemy and the relationship between walking and thinking and the movement of memory when you don’t have what I call “chukar legs” yet in this early part in the season.

    Almost to the top of the plateau after two hours of hiking, we heard chukar calling in the distance but couldn’t pinpoint exactly where it was coming from, but it sounded like they were on the opposite side of the ridge, the one we just came from.

    I truly believe that some of the chukar up there have never seen a human or hunting dog before. This could be a good thing or bad? Some chukar hunters say birds bust wild and the dogs can’t hold them in the early season because they’re not used to being hunted, or just that they’re young birds. Others say towards the end of the season in January when they’ve had tons of pressure from dogs and people, that’s when they really bust wild. From years of experience doing this, I believe it’s a total crapshoot and there is no rhyme or reason for their jumpiness.

    Once up on top, we split up to cover more ground and to increase our odds of finding old deer or elk sheds. Bob and Peat went one direction, and Bloom with me. Peat stopped ahead and pointed solidly, then three or four dusky grouse busted from the ground one by one near some ponderosa pines just ahead of us. The grouse were too far for me to get a shot. Bob tried to hit one but missed. Bloom, with his strong prey drive and inexperience, saw one flying in the sky and took off like a high speed freight train to pursue it. I buzzed him to come back, which he did. We continued hunting, keeping each other in sight as we headed down a ridge, Bob in front of me.

    The dogs methodically covered the terrain doing circuits and periodically returning to get some water. We noticed Peat was favoring his front right leg and wouldn’t put any weight on it. We examined it and didn’t find any cuts on his pads, and after palpating still didn’t find anything. We kept going down the ridge. A few minutes later, we watched Peat, who we’ve dubbed “The relocation specialist,” find one of the grouse from earlier hunkered down in a sagebrush as it suddenly busted wild before he had a chance to point it.

    The descent down the open ridge felt like it went on forever, and it was covered with loose rocks. I didn’t remember it being that way before. It’s funny how you don’t remember certain things about past hunts. They always seemed easier. Once back down, we crossed over a different section of the creek before heading back up. The climb from the bottom was hard and it was hot. We used as many game trails as we could find and I pulled myself upward using bunchgrass to hold onto, but I felt wimpy for getting sick of it and stupid for complaining about side-hilling and being afraid of traversing one particular loose scree vein on my hands and feet. I had to remind myself that this is part of the game and that every hunt after this will be easier.

    Bloom, our workhorse, continued to cover tons of ground all the way up which took about an hour. Peat kept stopping and laying down in the shade of sagebrush. I worried about him and the possibility of having to carry a lame dog up the rest of the 1,000 foot climb. In the 16 years of hiking these chukar hills with Bob, this was the first time I thought about getting a dog sling for emergencies.

    Almost towards the top of the climb we entered another small forested area. My Garmin handheld beeped that Bloom was on point above me. Bob said, “He’s your dog; you better go.” I picked up the pace, climbing uphill and looking for him and busting through the thick hawthorn and bitterbrush. Then suddenly a grouse busted above me, flew past, I shot, and missed. I felt defeated. It was an easy shot on a big bird.

    On top of the last ridge, the final point of the day was Peat finding a covey of chukar just below the rocky ridge with Bloom backing him. Just as we were carefully navigating downhill getting into position in front of Peat, they busted. We both shot and Bob hit one. The chukar landed on the ground and started running. Peat chased it down and did the most remarkable retrieve despite his handicap. The only bird bagged in our five hour hunt was pointed and retrieved by a three-legged dog.

    When I get nostalgic about the past, which seems more often these days, there are things I’ll remember on this beautiful autumn day engrossed in the intimacy of this remote landscape, and I will love them all.

    Peat is now fine if anyone is wondering.

    On the descent.
    The wall in the distance for the final climb.