I ran into a friend the other day who gave me crap for not posting anything for a while. I appreciated it.
This used to be my favorite time of the bird season. Not as many people to contend with. Peace and beauty of a remarkably different quality. The “certain slant of light.” Snow concentrated the birds into predictable places, and they seemed to hold better.
Now I just feel sorry for the birds and don’t have the heart to bother them. Big snow Januarys, along with very cold air and lots of wind make it hard to find bare ground and food. Their will to live far eclipses mine. I’m not sure if chukar do this, but I know ruffed grouse spend a lot of the winter in snow caves they make, which shield them from wind and much colder temps than if they were out walking around or roosting somewhere. My dogs smell them through the snow, and they’d point them and bust them, giving me another chance to miss (if it was before the end of the year; they still point and bother grouse in January). To me, that’s not fair chase.
Being back in galliforme country this year has been wonderful. Our two-year remote yearn, idiotic as it was, helped me appreciate the good days we can get in the field here. And we got plenty — not as many as we’d hoped, but they were almost all good days. And we’re older, which should equate to more patience somehow, although — for me — it’s debatable (especially if you ask Leslie; some things do never change). The worst thing about feeling our season is done is seeing how pent-up the dogs are. But they’ll get over it. I have more things to do than they, so it’s not as hard for me.
We aim to enter next season in better shape than we did this year. For some reason, we failed to get chukar fit by mid-September. Too much golf? Just lazy? Still, we hunted into chukar shape and were able to do some tough hikes. We haven’t practiced getting old, so feeling we are old is odd. Something else to figure out. Or just accept. I’ve been keeping busy trying to get my first real estate client (hasn’t happened yet), writing a bunch of stuff, including a short novel set in chukar country which I haven’t been able to get anyone interested in yet (not surprising, but I like it and think it’s good).
I’ll end with this because it’s been on my mind all season: I’ve noticed more boot-prints in places I never used to see them, on ridges far from anywhere a UTV can go, which means people are spreading over more chukar terrain. I think that’s great. Get out there.
“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, 2014An older version of the above shot, also in Spain, 1959Solo 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 locationMy 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.
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:
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.
50 miles from home, I realized that I forgot to pack my extra shells for our hunting and camping trip. I sat there for a few minutes in the passenger seat in silence and mad at myself at my unthinkable mistake and embarrassed to say anything to Bob. I wanted to run off and hide.
It wasn’t totally unthinkable. It wasn’t like we forgot the shotguns or our boots this time. A couple of years ago, heading down the road for an out-of-town hunting trip we were about 45 minutes from home when I realized that both of our hunting boots were still on the boot warmers in the garage. We immediately turned around and went back to get the boots which made for a very uncomfortable and quiet detour back home. We swore from that moment on that we’d always have a check-off list for packing.
I fessed up about my stupid forgetfulness just before crossing the border into Oregon and the big to city to us, Ontario. We exited into the parking lot of the Walmart, parked and headed into the far back corner of the store to shop for shells and to also look for a cheap dog-proof cooler (or in our case Peat proof cooler without zippers like the soft sided ones have). The Walmart Superstore wasn’t so super when we discovered they didn’t sell ammo anymore and the cooler selection wasn’t very impressive. We left empty handed.
We then drove all the way across town to a couple of other stores that were open but their selection of 20 gauge shells for upland was pretty dismal or non-existent, focusing mostly on waterfowl shot. On the bright side, at least we found a small Igloo Playmate plastic cooler at Bi-Mart and were fairly confident Peat shouldn’t be able to figure out how to open it.
We forged ahead and originally wanted to stop for a quick hunt somewhere in the desert along the way but it started snowing sideways and then it rained. Not the best hunting weather for us or the dogs. Once we headed south the clouds opened up and we could see blue skies.
Arriving to the campground in the late afternoon we set up camp. I pulled out my pack from the pickup and opened up the shell pouch to see what exactly was in there and analyzed the situation in my head. Okay, I rarely shoot more than once on a covey and I’ve got 12 shells so that would last maybe four hunts if I only shot three times per hunt. Of those shells three of them were Angus shells that Bob hand-loaded four years ago and they’re filled with some ashes from our Brittany named Angus who died four years ago. I’ve been carrying them around for good luck ever since.
Good luck Angus shells.
It wasn’t going to be the end of the world to only have 12 shells but I’d definitely have to be discretionary in my shooting and not waste any shots unless it seemed like it was a sure thing which in the chukar hunting world is totally laughable.
Just before dinner, we met a fellow hunter in the campground who had been out the previous two days and according to him, the hunting was terrible and he hadn’t seen many birds. It was ridiculous but I was actually relieved to think that chances of shooting would be limited.
The opposite turned out on our first two days of hunting. It was really good, and the dogs found plenty of birds. We were pleased. Thrilled.
On our third day of hunting we found an area to hunt that looked good on the maps but in person it wasn’t very promising and no visible water sources were nearby for miles even though the map showed what looked like a small pond which was now drier than a bone.
Bob and I decided to stay together since I was down to my last three shells, all of which were Angus shells. Not very long after we started our hike from the pickup the dogs started finding birds but I couldn’t get a good shot and passed on ones that were borderline too far away. Towards the end of the day the dogs found and pointed one last covey of chukar up in the rocks above us. Bob got up to them first and they erupted and flew downhill towards me. I quickly mounted my gun, shot, and hit one on a crossing overhead shot. Bloom hauled down the hill past me to retrieve it and beat Peat to it. On the way up heading towards me with the chukar in his mouth, Peat snatched it away from him and continued to run past me taking my chukar to Bob as if I didn’t exist.
The only other times (yes, plural) Peat stole a bird from another dog was back in 2015 when he was eight months old. Instead of simply attempting to retrieve them, he watched Angus do all the work of finding, pointing, and holding the birds and then would take the bird Bob shot from Angus’s mouth on the retrieve and go off and eat it. He did this for the first 6 birds Bob shot that season. Angus, gentlemanly at the wrong time, didn’t put up much of a fight. Bloom, like his blood relative Angus, didn’t either.
Peat’s first season was frustrating, legendary, but epic in its own twisted way. Luckily after the sixth time stealing a bird from Angus, a switch turned off or maybe on in his brain and he started retrieving them directly to us and didn’t stop to eat them.
On the morning of what would have been our fourth hunt in Oregon, we woke up early and noticed a flat tire on the pickup. It was no surprise with all the rocky backroads we’d been driving on the day before. It was 10 degrees outside but at least it we were parked on a flat piece of ground and not pulled off on a shoulder of a busy highway. Bob changed it but now without a spare tire and with the nearest tire repair shop 60 miles away we decided pack up instead of hunting and head home rather than risk being stranded out on some remote rocky and gravel road without cell phone coverage.
A couple of days after arriving home and anxious to head out again, I went for a solo hunt with Bloom at a place where I’d been before. 20 minutes into the hunt Bloom went on point below me and held them until I arrived. The covey of maybe 15 birds busted and flew downhill. I shot one chukar, it tumbled to the earth, and Bloom retrieved it right to my hand. I was elated! I searched around and found my bright yellow shell on the ground and picked it up and looked at Angus’s name on it. It was an emotional moment. The place where this happened was almost the exact spot where I shot my first chukar back in 2016 that was pointed and retrieved by Angus.
Divine Intervention?
Bloom with his super sensitive nose is still figuring out this game but with each hunt he’s getting better. Yesterday, hunting solo with him in a new spot, I thought it would be too windy to find anything but I remembered my friend and longtime hunter Sam telling me years ago, “Birds are on the ground and their world is much calmer; it’s not as windy down there.” Bloom tracked down birds just below tops of ridges in the frigid and howling wind and went on point on at least 6 different coveys and a couple of solos. I didn’t think that I would be able to shoot with my fingers being bitter cold to the bone but it’s funny how you forget the coldness when your dog goes on point.
Bloom has a lot to live up to with his legendary genetics and with our high expectations but after the last few hunts and seeing him work, he’s going to be fine.
My first chukar (2017), compliments of Angus (and Peat)Bloom pointing a covey of chukar yesterday.
“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.
