Couple of fun days

Spring is here and the birds know it. There is love in the air and every chukar we found the last two outings were paired. The ride west provided a great day of finding birds and working the dogs. A three hour walk covering 4 miles of steep walking provided us with 18 different pair of chukars and for the most part I had some pretty darn good dog work. Most of the videos I can’t show because they reveal too much of those hot spots. Just look up no tellum creek on the map. My second trip was a little closer to home and we found 7 chukar pairs. Neither day produced covey’s.

Day one started off hot right from the start. Some might recognize this trail and the boys had a pair to begin the day.

From there we started up that steep miserable slope. There is plenty of green grass right now to help the birds going into nesting season

but it won’t be long before it dries out if we don’t get that Spring rain. The steep chukar hills or high desert mountains need it more than anywhere else. They are too steep and sandy to hold moisture. On the way up we found birds just about everywhere there was cover.

This short video of me huffing and puffing my way up the mountain probably depicts chukar hunting as well as any. The words that were coming from my mouth were supposed to be comparing chukar hunting to an Olympic event and the degree of difficulty. Grady was on point 185 yards straight up that slope. If the ground had been flat it would have been more like 250 to 300 yards away. The Alpha doesn’t compute angles.

Jake’s points aren’t quite as rigid as they use to be but he still knows how to hold the birds.

On the steeper slopes he let’s gravity take over and takes the load off his hips by sitting on point. We don’t care about style, we just enjoy the hunt no matter how it is done.

Grady, at four years of age, still has intensity on his points even though sometimes it’s not a classic high tail flat back look.

Once again, we found an intruder to our chukar country.

This short little video which I did a poor job of editing was a the end of day two on the mountain. Grady was tired and I wasn’t real sure that he still had birds because of his stature. We all know the saying “always trust your dogs”. Well I didn’t and when I gave up with an okay you can hear the birds flush from about 75 yards from where Grady was pointing from.

Sometimes I wonder if we spend too much time on the steep country. The earlier trip began with a point early in the hike and ended up with this point as we got close to the bottom.

We got some nice weather coming so Barb and I are going on a four or five day trip to some new country. We’re going to try some not so steep stuff down in the Owyhees. Hopefully, we’ll find some birds and some country that is more conducive to old farts. No matter what we’ll have some fun and report back what we find.

Enjoy this first week of Spring.