My First Chukar
And I thought hunting Blue Grouse last week was challenging. Chukar hunting in the Central Utah desert is quite a bit more challenging than grouse. First, you have to hike and hike and hike and it's all uphill hiking mind you. Chukar seem to be able to live where nothing else can eek out enough food to survive. Second, they like to run way out ahead of you so you can't get close enough to flush them and when they do flush they are usually well out of shooting range. Last, when they do flush they hug the terrain like an A10 warthog on a strike mission and they always fly downhill at about 120 miles per hour. After missing several chukar I finally figured out how to pick one out of the flock and shoot more quickly.
Since Jake is struggling with a major bird shy problem I decided to take my little female GSP Abby along for the ride. She seemed to do pretty well and worked well with my buddy's yellow lab named Allie. I was most pleased with Abby's instinct to check back with me frequently as we were huntng rocky steep terrain. Closer working dogs seem to be more effective when chasing chukar in the desert. I can imagine how a big running dog would probably inadvertantly bump a lot of birds. It was really a pleasure to watch Abby work even though she is still young. As the sun dropped and the winds kicked up the temperature dropped considerably and snowflakes started falling. Lucky for us it was getting dark so we headed on home.
