Hunt 2 with Ryan and Madar
By Karl DeHart
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- Windy days – simply get out of the wind! I’m not talking a steady breeze but those
strong winds that keep the vegetation moving. Prairie grouse are especially skittish
on windy days. Chukar and huns will sit tight if you can find them tucked in a
cove or sharp bend in the ravine.
My experience has led me to concluded most upland game birds avoid
strong winds because everything is moving, hampering their ability to detect
slight movements of predators. We
found ALL of our birds in calm areas of the canyon. They were all in the bottom up to ¼ up
the slope.
- Never let your guard down. This becomes even more important after
long periods of not seeing any birds because at that point you’ll kick
yourself double hard for missing any opportunity.
The phone rang Wednesday evening, the ID read “Ryan”. My nephew Ryan had gotten an extra day off
and he was heading to 
him
or not. He was more then ready to get his
pup on some birds and harvest his first bird. The 9-hour drive to get here should have
hinted at his determination. He arrived
late Friday night and after a couple hours of getting caught up with each
others lives we crashed, morning was coming quickly.
We headed out for chukar on the first day. Travis had dropped me a hint on a spot that wouldn’t be the Brownlee-type hiking (I didn’t want to burn Ryan out) and we were going to head down to see if we could repeat Travis’ success. Thanks Travis.
What was going on outside had not registered with either of us as we pulled up to the parking spot. I went to open my door and was surprised by having to struggle to get it open…the wind was HOWLING! It was going to be an interesting hunt.
Ryan and I got things together and started our hunt following the directions given to us about where the birds were a few days ago. Duh…we all know that doesn’t work! And it didn’t work for us. Hindsight is 20/20 and today was proof of that. I made the mistake of not thinking things through. I blindly followed directions that were perfect for the weather conditions of 3 days ago, but not today. In my defense I was a little anxious to get Ryan into some good wing shooting and therefore not thinking things through like I should. I will also look back and say I entered the field with two amateurs and left at the end of 3 days with both having learned a tremendous amount.
Ryan’s Hunt: At one point halfway through the morning Ryan commented, “Well so far the most important lesson is…you’ve got to be willing to put in the effort”. We had been hiking for nearly two hours and hadn’t seen a single bird. We had hunted the flats, the slopes and the bottoms. Nothing! I could tell Ryan was getting a little disheartened. I was getting a little frustrated. Ryan entered the field ready to have a banner day but instead all we had done was hike hard in some beautifully stark country neither had explored before. I’ll give him credit for remaining positive though.
We had dropped out of the flats into the valley to water the
dogs in the stream and decided to turn back to the truck. This is when our hunt made a dramatic
change. The first thing was a pair of
chukar that got up unexpectedly in front of me.
Now everyone knows this type of surprise, you’ve lost your
concentration, you are starting to get tired, and your dog is working 
away
from you when all of a sudden five feet in front of you the birds scatter noisily. Unexpected is the right 
word;
you didn’t stop hunting but you just gave up mentally and are caught completely
off guard. Luckily, I dropped one bird
while one careened ahead up into the rim rock, safe.
I don’t have a picture of the wonderful narrow section of canyon we entered but the flushing of a barn owl off the cliff face signaled the start of a different hunt. I was lost watching the barn owl land on a ledge when the quail started to flush. I’ll admit when it comes to quail my dog…well…let’s just say the little damn runners just mess with her head! Z was ahead of us and 20-30 quail where suddenly rising out of the tall sage. I called Z off the chase, which means she just returned to the scene of the crime looking for stranglers. We moved in and singles and doubles started to take wing, leaving unscathed I might add. In typical Valley Quail fashion when flushing from heavy cover they came out in many directions. The rim rock jutting above us shot the sounds of the gun fire right back at us making for an interesting effect. The shooting never really let up from this point.
Ryan was banging away for the rest of our hunt. He’s going to hate me for telling you this but a box of shells later and he didn’t have a bird in the bag. He was what I call “stop shooting” and worse he was trying to aim! Point and shoot Point and shoot, don’t stop your guns movement, I would preach. I would watch the swing of the gun stop as he pulled the trigger. But I know it’s not that easy. Catching onto wing shooting is pretty tough for most people and even experienced hunters have poor shooting days.
We hiked the Valley back and forth busting chukar in the sage and quail in the bottoms. The action was consistent. We moved back to the truck to eat our very late lunch. After eating and relaxing a bit I pointed to the next area and Ryan was seemingly raring to go. I found out later that had I said “I’m done” he was tired enough to have not argued at all with leaving at that point. We hunted another two hours in the valleys but also pushed some chukar up top and saw some fabulous work by Z. I think Ryan left very tired but forever hooked!
Madar’s Hunt: Madar started his hunt a little unsure of what his purpose was…a long walk seemed to be his idea of how to spend the day. He wanted to chase Z but couldn’t keep up so he spent his time close to Ryan and occasionally me. He certainly wasn’t working the field looking for birds. But I’ve seen this before and wasn’t worried. He is 6 months old and just hasn’t been exposed enough to what the game we were playing is. He showed interest in mouthing dead birds. And he has a lot of point in him and that came shining out when we worked him on pigeons.
The one thing that worried me though was he was a little uncertain of the gunfire once we both started popping off shots simultaneously. He didn’t get frightened but just wasn’t sure he wanted to venture out when the guns went off.
We hiked with Madar for 2 days like this. Madar was close at hand, not showing many signs of catching onto what this was all about. On the second and third days I brought a couple pigeons to work him on and with those he acted like any good bird dog should. He new the pigeon game and would search for them and point them too. We also let him find and play with as many of the birds that we harvested as we could.
Ryan didn’t say anything, didn’t push Madar and didn’t talk disappointingly about what was happening. He did the right thing and just let him have fun. We finally started to talk a little about it halfway through the 3rd morning. Ryan was worried and starting to feel anxious about what skills and drive his pup would have. Although, we had noticed that he was ranging a little more this morning. It wasn’t long after talking when a covey of quail completely surprised us screaming by our heads in all directions from under some piled up dried tumbleweeds. I popped off a shot and for whatever reason I turned back to where they came from expecting I guess to see Z pushing around for more stragglers but instead the piled tumble weed is heaving with movement. It looked like a sand worm sliding along in the movie Dune. The best part was that it wasn’t Z it was Madar!
Madar finally figured it out. It was wonderful to see. One piece of advice regularly given is to a new dog owner is to let the pup have its own nose for the first season. Let them learn to enjoy the hunt and get excited making the first year just fun. Having a pup learn on its own is always very important.
We
chased quail up the narrow ravine. We
were sliding up the ravine between to rimrock edges
that couldn’t climb over. Z was working
hard and I watched as she trailed some scent up to the rimrock,
looking for a way up the cliff face. I
turned to Ryan and pointed out that birds must have just gone up to the
flats.
We decided to continue up the ravine and climb up the flats when we could to circle back to the birds. Suddenly Madar starts to slow and creep. Ryan and I move in behind the pup. There is a small clump of dried tumble weed ahead of Madar and his low creep slows even more as we move in behind him. The heart jumps even when you expect it, the chukar bursting from the cover still startled us. I lined up on the bird and waited for a shot from Ryan, nothing. The bird got up into the wind and was flying slow into the wind. I could see the barring on its side. I watched until the bird started to its curve to fly with the wind. I knew it would be gone soon and at the last minute took my shot. My first bird over Madar’s point! It made the day for me. To top it off he pointed me another bird and then found three of my downed chukar.
The best comment of the day though happened a few hundred yards from the truck on the way out. Remember Madar had spent 3 days only a short distance from us but as we walked up the hill almost to the truck Ryan says, “Hey Uncle Karl, Where the hell is my dog!” Yep you guessed it, he was ranging well ahead looking for the next bird. I’ll tell you I was stoked with Madar’s performance, but Ryan, you could just tell he was really really happy.
