Any Chukar hunters here?

[Thunder]

Any else hunt those evil birds besides me?
If you never hunted Chukar you have never lived. They are the worlds most evil bird. They live in the most inaccessible places you can imagine. Cliffs, loose rocks, shale ect. high mountains. They have a call that is like the sirens of the tales of Ulysses. Who lured seamen to their deaths on the rocks.
When a Chukar calls you are compelled to ascend the highest peaks thru the roughest terrain imaginable. Then if you are lucky you get a shot. Then the birds fly down to where you started from and run up another nasty mountain. And of course you have to follow them. We have hunts that are named. "The trail of Tears", "The end of the earth", "4 mile", and the "Death March" which is a rough 7 mile up and down hike from "The end of the earth" back to Chukar camp. Where your big reward is Beer! Lots of it.
This is "The End of the Earth" The cliffs you see are where the Chukar live.


Occasionally we are successful and nobody dies


This is Chukar camp.

 

[longbedder]

Yep - evil little bastards they are.

Our season just ended this weekend. My legs hurt.

I gotta train the dog to run up the mountain and chase the birds back down

 

[mxfireman]

Soo much work are they worth it? How do they taste?

 

[rdn2blazer]

I dont hunt but man my brother has been hunting since he was able to hold up a shot gun. he's 42 now and all his life he has been a avid hunter. mostly a bird hunter, Chukar, duck, dove, phasent, you name it he has hunted it and loves them all. also loves fishing, and is a diver. goes fish, lobster and crab diving during the season.

loves a good bird dog, and has allways had a good bird dog too. he loves the chase and and all the walking and running and stalking as much as a good shot. he wont kill anything he cant eat period. he will pick up a spider in his house and carry it out side so his wife wont kill it and let it go. I stepped on a spider once at our moms house and he bout blew a gasket.

every weekend during hunting season he hunts and he allways gets his quota. any time of the year I could go get any kind of game bird to eat out of his deep freezer.

he sur knows how to cook those birds too.

 

[longbedder]

Tastes like chicken (kinda).

It's just one of those things - once you do it, you keep going back. Maybe it's the challenge, or sense of accomplishment when you do get one, or your heart going like crazy then stopping suddenly when a covey flushes under your feet.

 

[Thunder]

Yeah I hunt them because I like to. The challenge, they fly and launch off the ground fast. The physical effort. Its fun to watch the dogs work. I went out last weekend too, It was also our last weekend for the season. Did about a 5 mile hike in the snow around a hill we call the Dinosaur. Was sore when done but it keeps me in good shape.
Saw lots of birds but they are very wary this time of the year and were getting up out of range and flying as soon as they saw us. But there were 4 of us hunting so we managed to push the birds to each other. I Ended up getting 2 and filled the air with a lot of lead. My buddies had about the same luck. Already looking forward to next year.

Chukar taste good. As longbedder said kind of like chicken with a slight game flavor. They are a evil Taliban bird imported from Afghanistan and planted in the west. If you check out my pic you will see they have little white turbans on their heads.

 

[454k30]

IMHO its the terrain that makes these things so challenging. They taste great and I find them pretty easy to take down. Somehow they always find an cliff to fly down though!!