Moving forward. Going backwards, uphill, and slowly descending.
Last hunt of 2020 for us was yesterday, I followed Bob around the chukar hills just like the old days. Camera in hand. No shotgun. Winter is my favorite time to be out there. It’s quiet.
Following tracks of ghosts of deer, elk, and birds. Detective work. Bob whispers to me, “I think they were just here.” I look down to examine the prints in the snow. Tiny dog tracks are heading upwards, the lone elk is going downhill. We keep going up.
We continue to follow Peat. He’s pointing 185 yards away. We look up to see if we can see him, snowflakes are gently falling to earth and into our face. We climb the steep ladder to get to him. He’s focused, patient, and won’t even look towards our direction but knows we’re finally there. His job is almost done.
The covey busts, Bob shoots, Peat retrieves. Beautiful dog work. Magical. We continue this sequence a few more times finding new coveys and relocating old ones. The dense fog started to come up from below and the snow fell more heavily. We were dressed for the elements but the ground was getting slippery so we decided to head back to the pickup. Bob tells me, “Be careful on the downhill.” We headed down the same ridge we came up and our footprints, Peat’s, and the elk’s had vanished underneath a fresh dusting of snow.
Yesterday a pheasant rooster turned up at our bird feeder and gorged himself for more than an hour. Our house is about 400 yards from the nearest cover any self-respecting pheasant would consider. Surely a sign the Upland Apocalypse is upon us. I’d hoped we’d see a turn toward some burn-off so I might get out one more time before the end of January, but with the continued frigidity and snowfall it looks like the fat lady has indeed sung. I’m looking for a fork to stick in myself. We’re done.
I worry the birds are, too. Done for, more like. I keep hearing about herds of chukar on the road and gangs of road-sluicing morons taking advantage of the desperate birds. If there’s any hope for some leftover breeders, the road killers are doing their part to prevent that from happening. It’s a shame we’re looking at yet another upcoming season of super-low bird numbers.
And Fish and Game, in their brilliance, have rejected the many requests by sportsmen to end the season. I’m not a biologist and don’t know a lot about over-winter survival for chukar, but it only stands to reason that adding more mortal pressure to an already maximal environmental stress on a species isn’t a recipe for success. I don’t get it. I’m sure one of my smarter readers can clue me in on this.
I hope I’m wrong. I hope we see some good numbers of birds in the fall. If we do, I’ll be even more impressed with these feathered phenoms. But I’m preparing for another disappointing year. In the meantime, I have lots of amazing memories of this great — but shortened — season. I hope you do, too.
After our big storm, which left nearly a foot of snow, I was ready to call it. We’ve had a great season, and finding birds has always been hard for me once the snow flies. I read at least one blog, though (especially Tucker’s Chukars), whose author does not appear to be impeded by sub-freezing precip. And after last Friday’s debacle, which left Angus and Peat rather lacerated and on the DL, this weekend kind of dragged on into a dreary, slate-skied Sunday.
I had to get out. Couldn’t take Angus because of his stitches, so tricked him into a walk with Leslie while I put Peat in the truck and got ready. Drove into Hells Canyon, where I haven’t been for quite a while, and watched a couple chukar sail over my windshield before deciding it might be thoughtful to get out. About 8 inches of snow covered the slope and its rocky exoskeleton. Hiking along a tight draw with brush, five minutes into the walk, Peat pointed. It was like that for the next two hours. I saw more birds than I think I’ve seen in the snow before, and got lots of good shots and a bunch of chukar.
Oh, Peat!
Miracle dog
Hunting alone with Peat, on a stormy pre-winter day in that terrain, with the kind of action we had, really can’t be beat. It was fair chase: the chukar could see me coming a mile away, as I could see them running up snowy slopes to rocky outcroppings and brush-filled draws. Usually they beat us, but I got more than I need or expected to get, much less see. And Peat performed beautifully, wearing his protective vest for the first time. A very good day.
Where do birds go when they’re cold? I wondered this yesterday as I walked alone across Friendship Bridge in Boise and looked down at the mallards preening themselves in the river. On the road home today after hunting I saw a quail puffed up like a volleyball, right on the road just off the margin of snow. I wanted to stop and cuddle it.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many chukar in one day as I saw yesterday.
I also have never seen so many chukar and took so few. Zero to be exact. Not for lack of trying: in 3 hours we hiked about 3-1/2 miles in the snow, climbed 2,000 feet, shot 12 times, all in the 35-40+ yard “wing-and-a-prayer” range. Yes, the birds were busting wild, but also – like Tucker’s Chukars’ Larry wrote recently – it was just really tough to get close to a pointing or creeping dog.
After driving to burned-off spots in Hell’s Canyon for the past several weeks, places which have been hunted hard by many people (judging from shells and footprints, and the frustrating commonality of wild busts), I thought it would be a good idea to take the boat on Brownlee and find some promising ground where birds might not have been pressured so much. That made for a pretty chilly start, but after surveying several spots from the reservoir, we motored into a bay which looked like it would afford a good hunt for two people starting in opposite directions and working toward each other. After tying up the boat, though, I noticed bootprints in the snow, probably from the day before. I’ve never felt crowded or annoyed by the hunting pressure on Brownlee, or in Hell’s Canyon generally, and I’ve yet to run into another chukar hunter in the years I’ve been doing this. But it struck me as pretty ironic that my plan to find some untrammeled ground had obviously failed despite the extra effort of taking the boat (it was 10 degrees when we left), especially since I’d noticed no boat trailers at the main put-in the last three weeks. Sure, we could have relocated and found a spot that hadn’t been hunted, but it was very cold and windy and we wanted to get moving.
Which we did, and soon were into lots and lots of day-old bird tracks in the snow. I was amazed to find chukar tracks heading up deep snow drifts to the top of a snow-covered ridge, all of which led to a cluster of big sagebrush. A pair of bald eagles soared overhead against the slate sky. I dislodged a large herd of mule deer as I neared the peak, and then, hunkered even deeper into the bowl, an even bigger herd of elk. Oddly, the bird sign got fresher the farther up the ridge, maybe the result of the hunting pressure from the day before, or maybe just one of those mysteries for which this bird is famous. Or infamous, depending on your perspective.
Finally, Angus kind of pointed. Snow seems to have a weird effect on his nose; maybe this is true for all pointing dogs. He’s either way, way extra cautious or completely clueless in it. I can’t draw any conclusions and have no theories. I’m sure there’s a good scientific explanation for his erratic work, but I don’t know it. Sometimes, though, it works out, and on this one I actually got into a decent position for the bust, which was uphill slightly, and – as was to be the case all day – came in at least three waves of birds, followed by one or two singles farther down the slope. I missed all three shots, none of which was high-percentage as the birds were tailing around the curvature by the time I drew a bead on them. Okay, not a bad start. Birds at least.
I chased the remnants of that first covey deeper into the snow toward the termination of the bowl, hoping to send them back down in the direction of my buddy hunting below me and back toward the water. It didn’t work. The birds just kept busting wild and going higher up and eventually out of the drainage altogether. So I turned around and headed toward the undulating, frozen but (treacherous) open south-facing slopes and began seeing lots of sign. In fact, I have never seen more chukar poop scattered over a large area than in this drainage. Most of it was a couple days old, but all was pretty recent. I’d only seen a small covey so far, but knew there had to be larger numbers somewhere.
They were lower down. I started getting into them about halfway down from the top. Angus was birdy all the time. His tail stump must be sore today from all the oscillating it did yesterday. But the birds were either in totally open ground so it was nearly impossible to sneak up to them, or wedged in spring crevices that amplified our traverse so that they busted before we even knew they were there. Still, every crack held birds, and I must have seen at least 250 chukar during the last hour of the hike. It’s nice to know there are so many birds this late in the year, and I hope they fare well over the winter and into the critical spring season. Think good weather thoughts if you have a moment.
With a month left in the season, it’s hard to imagine much more, or any, decent hunting given the weather we’ve had and will continue having. But I believe I’ll test it at every chance.
We left the house amidst a blizzard and drove over the summit in 8 inches of unplowed highway. “What are we doing?” There’s a sense of wonder, always, when traveling to a hunting spot because rarely can you know what it’ll feel like when your feet hit the ground and you start hiking. Today didn’t look good, but we had planned to do this and, by god, we were going to do it. Plus, a couple of friends had driven from McCall to join us, so we at least had to make the effort.
Halfway down into Hell’s Canyon, blue sky and sunshine teased us. “It’s a sucker hole,” Dave said. “You’re a sucker hole,” I replied. “This is for real!” It was for real. My face got sunburned. We had sun all day, with scant clouds. Not a breath of wind. I took my jacket and gloves off within the first ten minutes, and still overheated during the climbs.
Two inches of fresh snow that hadn’t been there two days earlier made the hiking softer, and betrayed the movements of birds, most of which were down low. But we kept climbing. At the top, chukar crowed in some rocks above. Peat, Angus, and I made our way up there and, sure enough, within a few minutes Peat locked up, followed by Angus, who then crept his way through a maze of basalt. Angus’s nose and eyes pointed down a narrow chute of rock which I couldn’t see into even though it was just a few feet away. He was a statue, and wouldn’t move and didn’t blink. A canyon wren chatted and hopped around the crags. I waited, having found a two-square-feet level rock to stand on, surrounded by precarious footing. Several silent moments passed. Then, a shockwave of maybe 20 chukar burst from the tight cocoon of rock. Fumbling with my safety, I managed to hit one bird, which fell into the snowy bottom of the steep draw.
The dogs ran around below me looking for the bird. They couldn’t find it. I descended, thinking I could help. Although I’d marked the bird, the powdery snow had piled up to about a foot deep and I wasn’t certain it would even be visible, based on the trouble the dogs seemed to be having finding the bird. After a good ten minutes I was ready to give up, but Peat scampered to the termination of the draw, nowhere near where the bird had fallen, and picked it up. He bee-lined straight to me with the bird as if that were his business. No messing around. No damage, no torn tail feathers, no ambivalence, just the bird thank you very much. Not believing this attitude, I chanced giving the bird back to him. He took it in his mouth briefly, and then on “Give,” he dropped it back into my hand without hesitation. Crazy-Eyes had become a retriever. A Christmas Eve Miracle! Yay!
Happy holidays to everyone! May your bird hunting spirits be blessed with health, happiness, and grace.
