WILD TIMES for New Year's

[Chukar12]

I took an old friend, an old dog, and a really old dog to the desert to help ring in the new year. The human was good company talking sports, politics, dogs, family, friends and business; the year behind us and the one to come. The dogs neither hinted at or mentioned any of it. We complained of aches in 50 year old bodies subjected to a lifetime of sports, motorcycles, bulls, pizza, beer, heavy backpacks, steep mountains and cold desert floors; the dogs, equal in years showed little sign of the issues, were sparing in complaint and entirely void of hesitation at the mention of crossing just one more canyon and climbing one more peak. Once again, my canine friends reminded me of the good life; their wants and needs were simple, their regrets were invisible. They hunted birds with me happy with what nature gave us...I hope all my new year's are this wild.

[Chukar12]

[DGFavor]

Nice outing! Good stuff!

[mtlhdr]

Sounds like a good day. Finding chukar tough to come by this year. Been finding small coveys here and there but getting them to cooperate has been difficult. Good job.

[Gertie]

Looks like 2014 is off to a good start! Thanks for posting

[Wyobio]

Sounds like a good day. Finding chukar tough to come by this year. Been finding small coveys here and there but getting them to cooperate has been difficult. Good job.

We hunted SW Idaho over Christmas and had the same result. The birds that we found must have been mostly last years brood, they knew the drill and bailed off the ridge tops before we could get to them. Coveys looked small, and the stragglers that wait to flush within range were not there for us this year. Even most of the Hun's were flushing wild. Fortunately we found a few quail spots on BLM that had good coveys and strangely held a few rooster pheasant.