This one is for you Bisley!My brother and I thought that since this is the last weekend for Chukar, we would head out and finally get one of those elusive birds.We left before the break of dawn and a few hours later we arrived at a spot we've seen Chukar in the past. It was fairly cold, almost cold enough to want to make you stay in the car until the sun came up…until you realize you'll probably need to walk an hour before you see any birds. Before we got out of the car, we saw some cows…I didn't want a mad cow to end my weekend early so we waited a few minutes. During our wait we saw a Jackrabbit on a hill and go down to the road. Less than a minute later it was about 15 feet from the car looking at us for a few seconds before heading out on it's way.We finally head out and walk for about two hours. During this time we saw a few Jackrabbits but I felt too lazy to field dress them in the cold so I let them be. This is where we finally ended up (and I hope this is Chukar country).
We did end up seeing some Chukar and I was able to fire off two shots (both misses). We followed them and I was able to get off another shot (again a miss). We continued to chase these evil birds. I think they found it amusing flying to the next ridge, watch us go down, then up, stay out of range and repeat the process. They fly over the following ridge by the time we got over there, we lose them.While I'm wandering around looking for the Chukar, I come across these!
They weren't happy with my presence and headed off.
I think this is what they left behind.
While I was taking pictures of the deer my brother busts a covey and gets one. He thought he got a double but apparently the second one was faking it and took off when my brother went to recover them. We try to follow the covey but the terrain was too steep and harsh for us to follow them though that didn't keep us from trying for another hour.We lost hope in finding them and decided to head back to the car since we wanted to get home by 5PM so my brother could watch something on TV! On our way back we saw these (bad picture).
When we were close enough, I took a shot and saw a puff of feathers. My brother and I are still "discussing" who got the hit. One of us probably wounded another and we spent the next hour looking for the bird that ran away but never flew!
Still hopeful we go in search for some birds but I came up with this instead
We finally called it a day since we were reaching our time cutoff. On our way home we see this on the side of the road.
We're going to head back tomorrow and hopefully have another fun day!
