High’s around fifty, cloudy, windy and a chance of chukar

I woke up early listening to the howling of the wind and started to nix the idea of hunting when I walked into the living room to two excited dogs. I had made the mistake of leaving my shotgun and vest by the door. Jake and Grady let me know that staying home was not an option. So just in case the weather turned worse, I parted to a hunting location that was only about fifty miles away.

The wind was blowing every bit as hard there and I was wondering about my senility but with two dogs dancing in the back seat I knew I had to give it a go. On the collars go and up the hill we head. I have to admit to being a little disappointed in myself. The hill wasn’t that steep but it was kicking my butt. Soon the Alpha buzzed me and that created a little more adrenaline to get me to Jakes point with Grady honoring.

Like usual I moved below Jake and hoped for a left to right shot. Chukars will almost always fly down hill so I figured I had this one nailed. Hungarian partridge don’t understand the down hill rule and that’s what we had here. They flushed straight up hill and I was lucky that one straggler flew up and to the right or I wouldn’t have had a shot.

The wind was howling and I was thinking it might be the smart thing to head back to the truck when I was once again buzzed to a point by Grady. He was about 65 yards above me. About half way to the point I was buzzed again to a point by Jake about 150 yards below me. I was hoping that when I shot at Grady’s birds Jake would break. I didn’t want to lose the elevation quite yet. So I moved in on Grady’s point.

As you can see there was no way I could move in for a left to right shot on this point so I moved ahead of Grady and flushed the birds. One of my tougher shots is the straight down hill shot and that’s where the flushed to. After the shot I was surprised to see Jake still on point almost two hundred yards below me. Grady went on hunting and I moved down towards Jake.

As I moved down the hill Grady traversed the mountain looking for more birds then suddenly saw Jake. I love seeing dogs honor each other.

Once again I swung below Jake and moved in for a shot. Neither dog moved a muscle until the birds flushed and then the chase was on. It always amazes me how tired I can be and suddenly a moment like this urges me on to the next point. We pretty much stayed at that elevation for the remainder of the hunt. I don’t believe I’d ever hunted this low for long but it soon produced another point and honor.

Once again, like I’ve done hundreds of times I swung behind and below Jake and took the shot as the birds flushed. Jake beat Grady to the downed bird and proudly brought it to me.

We were now only about a half mile from the truck and I figured we had had a pretty good day and hunted back towards it. Even though it was a shorter day it was epic watching my dogs do their thing. For twenty five years I have had German Shorthair Pointers thrilling me with their prowess and today was no different. At the truck I mad the boys pose to show our take for the day.