Mother Chukar

Who said the weather couldn't be too nice? My best friend Landon, our three dogs, and I went on a Saturday afternoon Chukar hunt. The weather was gorgeous, fifty degrees and the ground was moist. We had just one problem absolutely no wind. There were birds everywhere and they held really tight, so tight we had to step within yards to make them fly. We could hear them clucking, but the dogs couldn't pick them up because the air was shockingly calm. This hunt had one point. But two great retrieves.

Lady with a great retrieve.

The valley in the background is where we parked and then we climbed. Luckily I watched the new James Bond friday night. I figured if Bond can run for that long chasing a villain I could definitely climb a mountain chasing those Mother Chukar. They are lucky I only call them Mother Chukars and not something else after that hike.



Five hours of climbing, scrambling, and running we got two Chukars, one each. But hey the weather was gorgeous!

Best $100 Mutt

At fifteen one hundred dollars is a lot of cash. I never batted an eye though when I went to pick up my puppy Lady. My parents were very opposed to me getting a dog. But somehow I convinced them that a boy needs a dog. I think when I told my dad the pups were half Brittany Spaniel his heart melted. He had a Brittany when he was a boy and he always told us stories about the adventures he and his Brittany would go on.
I lied to my parents and told them that the pups were being sold for Fifty Dollars. In my fifteen-year-old head they would never allow me to spend my whole one hundred dollars on a dog.
The mother of the pups was my best friend Landon’s German Shorthair Pointer, Mattie. I had been hunting behind Mattie for two years and I knew she was a good dog. Story has it that down the street from Landon lived a proud Male Brittany Spaniel that often strutted around the neighborhood. One day they came out to feed Mattie and the Prideful Neighborhood Brittany had somehow snuck into Mattie’s Kennel. I guess that is where they get the term puppy love.
Landon gave me first pick and told me he was giving me a deal at one hundred dollars because well I was his best friend. I was ecstatic. Later I discovered, they couldn’t sell the pups very easily because they weren’t purebred they were mutts. They ended up giving most of them away. I guess I didn’t get the best friend deal I thought I was getting. But I’m positive seven years later when Landon hunts behind Lady he would gladly pay a hundred dollars to get her back.
I picked the bigger female of the bunch and gave Landon my one hundred dollars. I named her Lady and we walked home that afternoon. As far as I am concerned there has never been a happier fifteen-year-old. Lady and I were instantly best friends. We spent all our time together, accept for when I had to be in school. I was a little anxious to get her hunting and I might have jumped the gun by taking her hunting at three months. Bad idea, the gun-shots scared her to death and she ran all the way home, she was gun shy. “Shit” is all I could think. I invested in a cap gun, caught some pigeons, cut the feathers on their wings off, and let Lady chase pigeons all over the yard. Just when she would get one in her mouth I would start shooting that cap gun like a drunken Indian warrior. She was quickly over the whole gun-shy thing and had become a dog with a purpose, to hunt for birds.
We had a lot of trails in the early years. She often times would forget she was hunting for me and she would get on the scent of a running rooster pheasant and disappear. Or she would catch a whiff of a rabbit and forget we were hunting birds. The worst was when she found her first deer and chased the damn thing for what seemed hours, she eventually came home. Oh and don’t forget the time she ended up in the dog pound. Luckily I had the cash to bail her out.
Seven years later she is in her prime and everyone we hunt with wants to hunt behind her.

Start of My Addiction

At the butt crack of dawn I was drug out of bed, at the prepubescent age of thirteen. We were heading out on my first wild Chukar hunt in the West Desert of Utah. This would be the day that would change my future passions forever.
The new kid in the neighborhood invited me to go on a chukar hunt with his dad and him. I replied “Chukar what?” He then proceeded to tell me that a chukar is a bird you hunt just like pheasants and grouse. I loved hunting pheasants and grouse so I quickly agreed to the invitation.
I slipped out the door with unlaced boots and shotgun in hand. It was a late December Saturday. The ground was dusted with a hint of dry Utah powder. I slid into position in the little, rusty, beat up pickup. The pickup was so small and full of guns that I only had one position and that was squished. I didn’t mind though I was thirteen and going to hopefully kill something.
“Birds really live out here?” I asked. I thought for sure we would drive over the next hill into a valley of grain fields, irrigation canals, tree lines, and in the middle of it all would be a big red barn. That is the type of terrain I had hunted pheasants in. I couldn’t imagine anything living where we were going. As we drove the ground kept getting more barren and naked, but we just kept following that two-track dirt road as we slowly approached the rocky desert peaks on the horizon.
When I saw the Utah West Desert for the first time I must have felt as the pioneers did when they first saw the barren Salt Lake Valley. I saw complete desolation and I felt very unenthused. The only difference being I knew I was going home at the end of the day. The pioneers were in the desert for the long haul.
The engine stopped and all I saw was my version of hell. Hell included a steep mountain, scattered with juniper trees, sagebrush, cactus, and all kinds of nasty cliff outcroppings.
That’s when we let the dogs out, a big German Shorthair, and the other a little Brittney Spaniel we called Boss Hog the Wonder Dog.
That’s when my head really started spinning. My new friends were heading straight into the thick of it. We were hoofing it up, and I mean up, the mountain. If I had learned anything in my few years of hunting it was to keep my mouth shut and just follow the guy who knows what he is doing. I bit my tongue and followed.
About one minute into the whole mountain climbing expedition I thought my lungs would burst. I kept thinking ‘I should have lived at base camp for a few weeks to get used to the elevation,’ but then I remembered that only happens when you are preparing to climb Mount Everest. It didn’t matter that it was a cold Utah day my coat was too damn hot. As we climbed the snow got a little less patchy and a bit deeper. Deep enough we could spot chukar tracks heading up hill ahead of us.
Boss Hog the Wonder Dog got birdy first and the big German Shorthair was only a second later. My hunting buddies started running straight up the mountain after the dogs. My friend’s dad kept saying, “Hurry! They’ll be birds at the top of this ridge, we got to hurry though.” We scrambled faster then anyone ever could have up that mountain. Any normal person would have thought there was gold at the top.
When we reached the top I witnessed the most beautiful sight. Both dogs looked as though they had been struck by lightening and cast into stone. That was the first I ever saw a dog on point, and it won’t be soon forgotten. It has been burned into my memory as something perfect.
As we sucked for breath, a chukar covey took to the air. I fired three shots from my Browning shotgun at the feathery torpedoes. Not a single feather drifted to the earth. I didn’t feel like to big of a rookie though my pals didn’t draw any blood either.


We spent all day, on what seemed to be the top of the world, chasing chukars. The chukar Gods must have known I needed to see lots of birds on my first hunt to get me addicted. That first hunt we say covey after covey and point after point. I finally did connect with one of the little chukar torpedoes. It could have been running on the ground, I can’t remember. After all how sporting does a thirteen year old have to be.
I remember driving home from that first chukar hunt late in the evening. My legs felt twisted, jumbled, and just plain pooped. I had never run and up and down hill so much in one day. I think I smiled the whole way home. In fact I think I smiled all night because I had dreams of dogs on point. When I woke up I was still smiling.
Since my first chukar chasing experience I have been chasing my passion of bird hunting with good bird dogs every since. I continually have a yearning in the pit of my stomach to see a dog on point. A year or so after that first trip I brought home my own bird dog a Brittney Spaniel/ German Shorthair mutt. That’s another story for another day. I will say that I have honed my shooting skills and I only miss most of the chukars I shoot at, not all of them. Thank goodness for pioneers of every kind.