This year I was getting a bit bored of spending so much time walking the wet grass and woods, not to mention getting hit by shot, at Crescent Lake and Stillwater so made a decision to get over to the dry side of the mountains to hunt wild birds more.   Early in the year I got Lira out at Cooke Canyon a few days on planted chukar just so she’d have some exposure to the birds and that was a lot of fun so this fall we took up chukar hunting for real.   We just got back from our fourth outing after these birds and it has been a lot of work and a lot of fun.

Chukar seem to be the permit of the upland bird world.   You can spend a whole day out in the field and never find one.  If you do find some you have to hope you can get close enough for a shot and then you have to get lucky enough to be able to take the shot and hit one.   Yesterday we tracked chukar in the snow straight up a steep slope and I had to keep stopping Lira so I could huff and puff my way up to her before her nose hit the ground and she continued up.  We finally got close, one bird flew and took off so low over her head that I had no shot.   Close to 5 miles of hiking and 1000′ of climbing to have this one very brief encounter with a wild chukar, it was well worth it.    So far in all this effort we have one chukar and one hun to show for all our work though we have managed to bag quite a few roosters along the way.   The season has about five weeks l left and right now my only goal is to get one more chukar.