I took the boys out for a chukar training jaunt this morning. Things didn’t work out the way I hoped it would. We were hiking on some pretty steep chukar slopes with the southern slopes bare and the northern slopes covered with 6 to 12 inches of snow. Those white slopes were slick and slow going.
Several times the Alpha buzzed me to dogs on point. Usually they were 150 to 200 yards around the hill and out of sight. As I said the northern slopes were steep and slick and it took me a while to get to the points on the dry slopes. By the time I got around the hill the dogs had broken point and hunting again. I never knew what they were pointing or why they broke point. It’s hard to correct things when you don’t know what happened.
Being a chukar hunter in itself shows I don’t have much smarts. Even with my small brain I figured how to solve this problem. It was too late for this trip but tomorrow we’ll see if it works. If it works it’s simple. Instead of traversing the steep hills from the north side and going over the top to the dry side go the opposite direction. That way as you are fighting the snow you can at least see the opposite dry slope and hopefully the dogs on point. Being able to see the dogs makes it easier to control what happens. Sounds good in theory but we’ll see what happens.
I did see two covey of chukar today. Both about a dozen birds. The dogs might have been pointing paired birds but I have yet to see a pair. But with this weather they might get stimulated to start pairing more. There is some passion starting to show out there. Take these two.
I was heading in the direction of these foxes and I was amazed at all the tracks from these two foxes.
Back to training, doing so with wild birds isn’t always that easy. You can’t control the situations. Today I needed the boys to hold longer. Anyhow, that’s what I think. It seems the boys might have had a bad day. Hopefully tomorrow it might be different.
The Reigning Chukar Champions 