Video

I was approached by a local videographer, or whatever the proper term is to film a chukar hunt. I tried to explain the difficulty of doing that, but he was sure we could make it work. So we met at my chosen location to give it a try. It took about ten minutes of looking at where I was wanting to hunt for him to admit it probably wouldn’t work. He pointed out some area that might be easier for him to get some good footage but I nixed that due to it didn’t look much like chukar habitat.

So we sat on the tail gate and I admired his camera as we discussed an alternative way of possibly getting the job done. He said there are no good chukar hunting video’s where you can see the dog work, the hunter approaching the dogs and the retrieves. One of the things he would like to film was the dogs working the hill and suddenly going on point. My reply was “so would I, the dogs are usually out of sight when they go on point and I just get to see them once they are on point.”

Problem number two was that he couldn’t stay in my hip pocket. I didn’t need another distraction to my shooting. My brain can hardly keep up with where my dogs are, watching out for another person would over load it. So we parted ways and planned another meeting where he might be able to film a hunt from a distance. I told him I’d try it if he wanted but most of the time I don’t even know where I am going once we start a hunt. I just go where the dogs take me. He’s a pretty good guy and persistent so I told him that I would try and get a short video and post it so he could see how tough it might be. So here goes. Grady has the birds pinned with Jake about twenty yards away honoring. It really isn’t that exciting but in the video you can see how hard it is to keep the camera steady while moving on steep hills.

I could have edited some of this out but I wanted to show how hard it is to move in on an animal with a camera. From a distance and possibly with a bipod I think some better footage could be had.

Enough of that. I ended up having a pretty good day. In fact I ended up getting a bird at the end of that video. The birds cooperated in coming out randomly. Jake and Grady put on a good show for me and seem to be back on the right track.

The really good news is that the weather has created loads of green-up and we’re seeing lots of birds. Some of them are even letting us get close enough to shoot. I’m excited to go where the boys take me next.