Chukar Season Finale

Our upland bird season is over, we are a week into the hunting doldrums that is February.  Last weekend Cody and I went out to the desert with our friend Steve for one final chukar hunt of the year.  We covered a lot of miles and had a great time.  A great finale to the upland bird season can be bittersweet because it just leaves me wanting to get out for one more weekend with the dog, but there is a long 9 month wait until the season reopens in the fall.

 Though we have hunted this area in the past, we have spent a lot more time down in the valleys and flatlands where California Quail can usually be found.  On this day we were more driven, having had our fill of quail hunting on the previous couple of outings we went straight to the highlands for the delicious and elusive chukar that we knew were there.

Here is Cody biting his lip to show what a bad-ass bird hunting machine he thinks he is

 I took this picture as an excuse for a break on my way up the hill. The same goes for many of the ones to follow

Rocks!

 Hills!

The view back down, I've at least got a bird in the bag by now.

 I had to force Cody to take a few breaks this is one of them, it didn't last too long, he kept getting up ready for more.

Really started finding the chukar in these rocks, they are much better at hiding and flying away than I am at hitting them.  If I had audio you could hear them calling around us, it sounds like taunting laughter.

 I thought Cody looks like a mountain goat in this picture, this area was a jumble of huge boulders with chukar and mountain quail hiding in all the hardest to reach crevices.

 This it my first ever mountain quail, it's a tough bird to hunt so we were pretty lucky to find a couple coveys on this mountain, here is a link about the difficulties of hunting mountain quail.

View from the top!

I love this view, it was a long hard hike, we started in the flatlands beyond those closer hills and ascended  nearly 3000 ft and back down during the course of the day

 The shadows are getting long, time to start heading back down the hill

Want to hunt up this ridge and hillside, but the season is done, it will have to wait for next year

 So glad to finally be back at the truck fun day, but very long, my legs were done at this point.

What a great end to an epic season, exhausted and came back with a tally of 4 chukar and two mountain quail, not a limit, but enough to make me happy.  I roasted a couple of the chukar with a maple/bourbon glaze they were fantastic.  I also found a couple of shed antlers(not a matched set)  Steve also found two different sheds, there must be a good population of deer around here, pretty cool for some shaggy sage and rocks in the middle of the desert!