{"id":109706,"date":"2022-04-08T05:38:46","date_gmt":"2022-04-08T11:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=109706"},"modified":"2022-04-08T06:52:43","modified_gmt":"2022-04-08T12:52:43","slug":"a-sneaky-chukar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/04\/08\/a-sneaky-chukar\/","title":{"rendered":"A Sneaky Chukar"},"content":{"rendered":"

I love Chukars, in part because they make hunters pay in blood, sweat and tears (literally) for every bird they get. If there’s such a thing as a hunt that is strictly “fair chase”, it’s Chukar hunting. It may be the only hunt that still is.<\/p>\n

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Yesterday morning on Antelope Island I found this Chukar feeding in the flats directly adjacent to a rocky and very steep hill that rose abruptly from its feeding area. As I began to approach the bird ‘he’ immediately began scampering straight up the hill as he ran crouched over with his head down.<\/p>\n

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When he got to about eye level with me on the hill he began to traverse the side of the steep slope, still in full “sneaky mode”.<\/p>\n

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He maintained that posture as he ran a long distance…<\/p>\n

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across the side of the hill. I have 61 photos of him running that look very much like this. I chose these three photos pretty much at random.<\/p>\n

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Eventually he paused for about 2 seconds on this rock in a rather unattractive and colorless setting before jumping down and disappearing in the vegetation as he ran further uphill.<\/p>\n

This is one of the Chukar behaviors that hunters know all too well. Chukars tend to stay on the ground and run away as they hide behind rocks and in the vegetation rather than flush into flight where they’d be much easier to shoot.<\/p>\n

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Amongst hunters, Chukars are legendary for being an extremely difficult quarry. Their preferred habitat is the sides of remote steep, rocky slopes that are physically exhausting to hunt. Legend has it that the most successful Chukar hunters are those with one leg shorter than the other so they can walk more easily on the sides of steep slopes.<\/p>\n

Just finding a small covey of Chukars is hard enough but when you do they usually don’t flush, instead they just run away under cover, often straight uphill or up cliff faces where they’re next to impossible to follow. If they do flush they tend to fly downhill – a near impossible shot for the hunter. Partly out of respect, hunters refer to Chukars as “devil birds”.<\/p>\n

A favorite saying of Chukar hunters goes something like this – “You go chukar hunting the first time for fun, and every time thereafter for revenge<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Notes:<\/em><\/p>\n