The culture of chukar hunting in our neck of the woods is pretty evident all-year-around. Go to one of our fall 8-man home football games or a local cross country meet and you’ll see your share of Chukar Culture hats on the sidelines. We’re wearing them, parents are wearing them, the out-of town Virginians who come here every fall to hunt are wearing them, and the kids who think their English teacher Mr. McMichael is pretty cool and want a Chukar Culture hat just like he wears are wearing them.
We’ve given more hats away than we’ve sold; it’s okay, we’re not selling hats to make money anyway. The students are curious about chukar hunting and have gone through four years of high school living vicariously through the adventures of Peat and Angus.
One kid, a local 12-year-old, who completed the hunter education course a couple of years ago asked us to take him bird hunting this past weekend after hearing stories about Peat and Angus from his older brothers. We’d taken kids hunting before and the theme it seems when we pick them up at their home is that they’re usually not wearing terrain-appropriate footwear. We’ve had kids tag along with us wearing anything from colorful moon boots, rubber rain boots with no traction, or sneakers. The new kid yesterday, was wearing his Mom’s old running shoes.
We hauled the new kid up and down steep hills yesterday in the pouring rain looking for dusky grouse in the big stands of pine trees next to the sea of fragrant wet sagebrush. We all got drenched, and Peat and Angus were soaked to the bone and covered with stickers. We found lots of birds down in a deep draw but the uphill climb back to the pickup was challenging even for me in this early season. All of us were tired and wet but the kid never complained, despite the fact that his feet were soaked and he’d been slipping up and down the hills in them all morning. Like his older brother before him, he was a bonafide trooper. He asked lots of good questions about bird hunting, and hopefully he’ll want to tag along when the chukar season opens soon.
Grouse tree and the kidLooking for a way up through the thick brush
On the drive home, we asked him what size shoes he wears, but kids’ feet grow like weeds. This week they’re a size 6. We’ve got a crap-ton of old boots on our shelves in the garage, sizes men’s 9 and women’s size 10. We save our old boots as back-ups just in case, but usually they just gather dust until we eventually donate them to the thrift store. I wish some of our boots would fit the kid. We can take care of getting him a hunter orange hat to wear in the field but if any of you out there have any smaller sized, old boots also gathering dust could you send them our way?
We all have our stories about how bringing a dog into our lives changed it, enriched it, or sometimes made it more complicated. We have our own tale going back to the beginning of Chukar Culture and where it all got started with this one particular Brittany named Angus who is now 12-years old. Looking back at it all, because of this one dog our lives ended up taking a route that might have gone in a different direction or maybe we wouldn’t even live in a part of rural Idaho where we purposely put ourselves to be closer to abundant public lands for chukar hunting.
The reality of getting my first puppy and converting from a cat person to a dog person didn’t come until later in life. Growing up in rural Eastern Oregon, we always had a menagerie of outside cats and kittens that I’d dress up in doll clothes whenever I could catch them. We did have a couple of dogs, my Mom had a small white poodle that only liked her and my Dad inherited a bird dog, a large Weimaraner from a neighbor that lived down the street. My dad wasn’t a bird hunter or any kind of hunter for that matter, but Greta, named after my Dad’s aunt, lived in a kennel in the backyard and was never let inside the house. Every once in a while, I remember my Dad letting her out of the kennel and into our fenced back yard to run. My brothers and sister and I would all run for cover in fear of her running over our bare feet as she did hot laps around the grassy yard. At the time, I didn’t know that this would be my first introduction to high energy bird dogs.
Back in 2007, Bob and I had only been married for about four years and were both 44 years old, over the hill, I thought at the time. We both met and married later in life and this was about the time when people stopped asking me if I’d ever have children. Bob was working in the aviation industry and was in Calgary, Canada while I was home alone with a few evenings to myself. On the first night, I decided to start looking for Brittany puppies for sale. Bob and I had talked about getting another Brittany, probably another female, orange and white, just like Glenna, our only other dog at the time. Glenna was one year old when Bob and I first met, but I wanted one just weaned to experience early bonding with my own dog and to see what it might feel like, and I hoped it might fulfill my lack of not having children and the maternal instinct that I thought was deep inside me.
Sitting down at the computer I searched “Brittany Puppies Idaho.” The website Gun Dog Breeders came up and I found a link to Sunburst Brittanys. Wow, that was easy! I clicked on the link, and photos of a litter of tri-colored American Brittanys popped up on my screen. I was smitten! I loved the coloring and especially their cute caramel colored eyebrows, and — best of all — they would be ready to come home with their new owners in a week. I forwarded the link to Bob to check them out and then immediately emailed Sunburst to inquire about availability of the females. The breeder, Gabe, replied back the following morning, and informed me that of the litter of 10 puppies, eight were male, 2 were females but the females were already spoken for. My heart sunk. Later that night, I called Bob on the phone and told him the bad news. He said, “We could get one of the males as long as we can name him Angus.” He’d fallen in love with the photos of them too and wanted to go look at them as soon as he got home.
Angus’s litter, born June 2nd, 2007. Sire and dam were Sumac and Sage. Angus is at the far left.
Bob returned from his business trip just before bedtime, a day earlier than expected. Excited to go see the puppies he rode his motorcycle 14 hours non-stop from Waterton Lakes, Canada to Boise with only a couple of quick stops. In the morning, we drove out to Emmett to meet Gabe at his kennel located on a hillside at the base of Squaw Butte. Interestingly, Squaw Butte, located North of Emmett, was one of the main places in Idaho where chukar flourished rapidly when they were first introduced as a game bird in Idaho back in the 1950s.
Gabe’s operation at Sunburst Kennels in the early years, as far as we could see, was just a small fenced-in area in the backyard for the puppies. We could tell right away that Gabe was very passionate about what he was doing and wanted to make sure we got the dog we wanted. It didn’t take us long; Angus was the only one that came running to us. We left Emmett that day with wee Angus, a week earlier than recommended by most authorities (42 instead of 49 days). For years, we wondered — whenever something wasn’t quite right with Angus — if we’d taken him from his litter too soon. If we did, then he and we have gotten over it. Some experienced hunters have told us he’s the best bird dog they’ve ever seen. I’m certainly not complaining (or taking credit for his ability and skill; I’d blame Gabe on that one).
Baby Angus
When we arrived to Sunburst Kennels and met Gabe for the first time, we weren’t really looking for a hunting dog, we just wanted another Brittany. At this point in our lives, Bob hadn’t been doing much hunting because of his very busy job and because Glenna was one of those bird dogs you’d let out of the truck and then would disappear for hours before finally returning when she felt like it. When she did get the whim to hunt it was for herself, and she’d move every bird for miles into the next county. These were the days before we owned or started using electronic dog collars to control the dogs.
Glenna died when Angus was only three, and Bob finally took Angus chukar hunting for the first time. Aside from going grouse hunting a couple of times, Angus naturally pointed chukar, having honed his skills on squirrels in our backyard. From one of his first points when tagging along with Bob during his chukar hunt, I captured a photograph of Angus pointing and we knew we had something special. Chukar Culture and our blog started at this exact moment.
Young Angus, natural chukar pointer and the photo of the moment that started it all.
When Angus was eight we decided to get another Brittany from Sunburst. Bob contacted Gabe to see if any more of Angus’s line was around. To our disappointment, Angus’s line was no more. Gabe said that he was expecting a litter from a set of new totally different dogs that he was certain would be great hunting dogs. So, four years ago, we got Peat, our second Sunburst Brittany and my second puppy, and this time I got to name him. He’s a combination of American and French Brittany with a beautiful orange and white roan coat and scattered ticking on his forehead. We like his funny and affectionate personality, his smaller size, and his off-the-charts natural hunting ability and prey drive. Gabe was right, this line is fantastic! (If you’ve read this blog for a while, you know the true story on Peat.)
Bob and I sat down with Gabe and his wife Katie recently at their beautiful home and kennel, now located next to the banks of the Payette River in New Plymouth, Idaho. We got a tour of their kennel and met a litter of adorable 5-week-old puppies almost ready to go home to their lucky new owners. Katie, with the help of Praire, their 10-year old daughter, cooked Indian chukar curry from an old family recipe, sharing some of their chukar breasts from the past season. Over this and some delicious local craft beers we had some intimate conversations about life, dogs, hunting, ethics, and how it seems as we’ve gotten older the number of birds harvested isn’t as important as much as the experience of being out there hiking around public lands in some incredible places around Idaho with our family and dogs.
Gabe told us how a Brittany changed his life. A fifth generation Idahoan, Gabe grew up upland bird hunting in the chukar hills near his home in Emmett with his family, and hunting pheasant in the the empty fields nearby before they were all turned into subdivisions. Gabe became interested and fond of the Brittany breed after reading a book about them when he was a kid. When he returned from his two-year church mission following high school, he said he was a changed person. With some soul searching he said he had to make some tough choices and re-examine the path his life should take, and it started with getting his first dog of his own back in 2002, a Brittany that he named Sumac. Another choice, even more portentous, was to leave the church. He said he hasn’t regretted that decision, but that he has suffered some strained personal relationships with family and some friends because of it. During this transition, he met and married Katie, started his own family, and decided to become a Brittany breeder, all in a short period of time.
Sunburst Brittanys, the early years. (This and the following photos are courtesy of Gabe and Katie Mouritsen.)
Sumac, Gabe’s first Brittany.
Gabe and Katie over that past 14-years have meticulously bred their dogs. Gabe has done extensive research on pedigrees and genetics, and has found what for him is the perfect combination of Brittanys not bred to be field trial dogs but bred specifically for hunting and for family pets. Their approach works, but it’s no accident and they’ve worked very hard to build their kennel to where it is today. Not everyone looking for an upland hunting dog wants a dog like the ones they breed, but most of their new litters are sold before they are even born, and their dogs are now all over the United States, as far as New York and Alaska. We’ve been lucky to have had two of them and hope to get our third in the next couple of years.
These days Katie has taken on more of a major role in managing the kennel now that their three children are in school. Besides just taking care of the dogs on a daily basis she’s learning more about gun dog training and handling and just this past season, Katie decided she wanted to upland hunt and did all the proper things to make it happen. The cool thing about Gabe and Katie is that besides breeding these amazing hunting dogs the whole family upland hunts together. This past season their oldest boy Nathan got his first chukar while out hunting with his younger brother Kurt, and Prairie can’t wait until the day her arms are strong enough to carry a heavy shotgun so she can start chukar hunting. A multi-generation Idaho upland family for the future! A very happy and wonderful family, I might add.
Idaho upland family
Nathan and Kurt admiring a grouse up close. Serious props for the hats they’re wearing.
10-year old Prairie relaxing with the dogs after a hard hike in chukar terrain.
Nathan and Kurt checking out a chukar hotel.
Nathan after the retrieve.
Prairie documenting chukar hunting, but not for long. She hopes to carry a .410 soon.
Kurt surrounded by the Sunburst clan. Sioux and Candy (L, R) are Peat’s sire and dam.
In the end, you look back at your choices and wonder if you made the right decisions. It was a dog that saved Gabe and it was Gabe and Katie’s dogs that saved me. In a sense, Angus and Peat are my children.
“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).
Yesterday, was my last hunt with Bob for the season. It was also Bob’s last hunt. We’d hoped he’d last until the end of the month but tomorrow he’s undergoing spinal surgery.
Our life for the past three months has revolved around his spine. Yes, our life. It’s not that it’s getting in the way of hunting things; we’ve spent many hours in the car together traveling back and forth for medical-related appointments and things, and his spine affected our ability to travel out of state to visit family over the holidays because sitting in a car or plane would be unbearable. We’ve missed going to see his students play basketball games for fear of being trapped in the bleachers when the pain would start up again. Bob even got to the point where he couldn’t go into the grocery store with me for even 5 minutes so he could pick out his own yogurt and cereal since I can never remember what kind he likes. Our time together spent moving up and down the chukar hills with the dogs looking for birds and being totally in the moment was the only time he said he forgot about his pain. When it did act up, the dogs were confused by him suddenly stopping to lay on the ground to get into a position that would lessen it.
Yesterday morning was spent doing chores he won’t be able to do after his surgery and other last minute things before heading out to hunt. Because of my lack of experience running our snowblower up and down our driveway by myself, we spent 15 minutes going over how the beast worked. I started out taking notes on a piece of paper but Bob suggested a video on my phone might be better so it would make more sense later.
I think he’s right. He knows me better than I know myself.
Opting out of hunting for the day and knowing I’ll have more chances before the season ends on January 31, I wanted Bob’s hunt yesterday to be for himself and for him to experience every point, every flush, and retrieve with both dogs. When Bob and I hunt together, Peat goes with Bob and Angus usually sticks with me. My fear every time we hunt with Angus is that we might lose him. This season because he’s almost totally deaf and going blind he’s relying more on his fine-tuned nose to find birds and because of this he’s ranging farther than he normally does.
Layers upon layers on our ascent from the valley below.Bob and AngusMagical pointAngus still moving like a young dog.Chukar nearby, Peat knows. He’s only getting better each season.
Heading up into the hills from the place Bob decided he wanted to try hunting, he wasn’t totally alone. I decided to follow along hoping to capture the pure essence and gorgeous landscapes of everything around us. It was just like the old days before I started carrying a gun; I’d be hot on his heels for every square mile hoping to catch with the camera some of the action and beauty of the sport. Looking down from the rocky outcroppings on the delicate hoarfrost covering the fresh green-up, the fragrant sage, tall pine trees, and the luminous light on the hillsides made an idyllic last hunt. The steadfast and confident points by Angus and the slow and very intense creeps of Peat backing him was stunning to witness.
Fresh scent nearby.Peat taking the lead for a change.Angus pinpointing chukar scent; he’s as good as ever. Chukar hills as far as you can see.Peat’s fast feet gliding across the terrain.Moving into position in front of Peat’s point.South facing slope traverse.Angus pointing chukar in the sage.Double point.Locked up.
Lastly, yesterday on our long descent hunting down the ridge on the soft and muddy south-facing slopes, the dogs would lead us to frozen but protected draws. I witnessed the wonderment and fair chase of the wild busting coveys of chukar fueled by swirling cold winds now at our backs, and the curious mule deer we awakened from his nap in the tall grasses tucked next to the sage. All birds quickly disappeared over the next ridge, followed by the dogs who continued to work hard like they always do to find the same or another covey.
The sound and smell of dogs and people
Our relationship has been a challenge the past three months. We both vowed in sickness and in health or something like that a long time ago. I know first-hand and intimately the fear patients face the second they set foot into a hospital. I worked in a major medical center as a patient care provider for 36 years, and the roles are reversed now: it’s not easy having a loved one on the receiving end and to witness his anxiety and fears of not knowing what might happen next, and the anticipation of general anesthesia, and knowing you are depending on someone or something else to breathe for you. Finally when the surgery is done, the long-term recovery, the medical bills in the mail that will soon follow, the reality that all of us are getting older and are slowing and falling apart: sometimes it’s hard to deal with or fathom.
We are some of the lucky ones to have health insurance, sick leave accrued, and money that we stashed away for a rainy day microdiscectomy. The weather forecast for tomorrow and the rest of the week calls for a chance of snow and then rain.
Yesterday, we carefully sneaked out of the house to head down to the canyon with just Peat, leaving Angus behind. The old warrior Angus has been running lots of miles hunting the past couple of weeks and against his will we forced him to take the day off. We knew getting ready to go wouldn’t be easy without him catching on so we put both Peat and Angus inside the car in the garage while we dressed and loaded up our hunting gear into pickup outside. Once ready, we let them back into the house and corralled Peat outside into the pickup and drove off and looked back as Angus was watching in disappointment from the fenced yard.
The higher mountain elevations were blanketed with a fresh layer of snow overnight so we decided to hunt in a spot down in Hells Canyon, a place we hadn’t walked around this season and where there wasn’t as much snow. Our starting point was an easy spot to access right off the highway. Bob decided not to hunt so Peat could have a chance to hunt for me for a change. In the past so far, and we’re not sure why, but whenever Bob hunts, Peat prefers to only stay with him. As with all hunts down in the canyon, the terrain dictates that the only way is up so we headed up a small game trail in a thick draw lined with brush and trees hoping to find some grouse on the way up. Within five minutes, Peat busted through the brush and stopped above us, barking his head off. His bark was different this time, not his usual high pitched barking he makes when he flushes a grouse up into a tree. His bark was deeper and had the sound of fear in it. We quickly made our way up to him and found the source of his agitation. A big beautiful bobcat with haunting golden eyes was caught in a trapper’s snare underneath some bushes. I was angry. How could a trapper get away with putting a trap in an area close to a popular bird hunting area where hunting dogs could also get accidentally caught? Trapping bobcat in Idaho is totally legal from Dec 14-Feb 16 in this area so there was nothing we could do but walk away. We normally carry heavy duty wire cutters in case the dogs ever got into a snare but they were at home in Bob’s hunting pack. I would never mess with any trappers traps unless one of the dogs got caught in one and I would never tamper with or free wildlife from traps because it’s actually illegal to do so.
Trapped cat
Trying to put the whole affair behind us and forget about it, we continued our climb up about 1,500 feet with Oregon at our back and up into the snow that we were trying to get away from in the first place before finally getting into some birds.
Fence line ascentThe wall
Once at the top of the steep climb, Peat found and pointed a covey of Huns and I managed to knock down one as they busted and flew downhill over the ridge. Peat, not used to hunting with just me, was confused on whether to bring the bird to me or to Bob.
First point of the dayThe retrieveThank you Peat!Pointing chukarPointing a covey of chukarWhat next?Heading down and away from the draw
The bluebird sky, amazing views, and Peat brilliantly hunting just for me made up for our terrible start. Yesterday’s hunt will be forever remembered as “Bobcat Gulch.” Now knowing that traps are in the area we will probably never hunt there again and especially not during trapping season.
