It's here.

The 2018/2019 chukar season is on and by what I found and by the post on some of the other chukar sites it's going to be a productive and fun season. The opener had enough clouds early to keep us on the hill a little longer but when they left the boys were ready to call it a day.

In the last post, Troy mentioned about how many people (including himself) had new pups this year and was interested on how they are all doing. I also would like to hear about your outings and maybe your stories might enlighten the rest of us on how to handle different situations. I know this site doesn't let anyone post their pictures but if you send them to my email at tuckotatime@gmail.com I might be able to figure out how to get them on this blog. I would really enjoy that.

I'll start with Grady's first chukar hunt. He was built for the chukar hills. He found his legs in the open country and covered some ground. He was independent of Jake and covered different country but kept an eye out for him. Like all of my past dogs he was a natural honorer. I think that's due to the pup's spending so much time on the mountain with the older dog's before the season. Grady had three honor's in the first couple of hours and stole one of the retrieves from Jake. Jake didn't seem to mind and Grady brought the bird down the slope right to me.

This was the same scenario I had while grouse hunting and I was hoping for Grady to get his own point. When he finally did it was a beautiful and staunch point. One that left no doubt that the birds were there. Although I wanted to take the camera from my pocket I refrained and softly told Grady good boy as I walked out front. He stayed tight until the flush when all hell broke loose. It was no wonder he hit scent, there were at least forty birds of different size in the group. I picked a mature bird and dropped it with Grady quickly picking it up and proudly bringing it back up the hill to me. He put the sequence of bird hunting together that I hope we'll repeat numerous times this year.

The biggest problem we might encounter is actually Jake honoring Grady. His trainer, Riley died at too young of an age to hunt with him so this is the first dog Jake has ever hunted with. He seems to pay little attention that Grady is even on the same hill. With over four more months of season it's going to be fun working on it though.

How did your pups do?
                                                                         

Chukarhunter50 (Mark Midtlyng) confirmed a pretty good season to come with these pictures of Emmie, his small Munsterlunder. He also mentioned a fire burning Saturday on Brwnlee reservoir.

                                                                 

I'd say they had a darn good opener.

Another chukar hunter, Brian B. Kondeff sent me some pictures of his two DD dog's from this weekend. Brian mentioned that when he got Sophie (lighter colored dog) as a pup his trainer suggested to hunt her alone but he couldn't do that due to the lack of time in the field each dog would get if hunted separately. In the end all problems worked themselves out and three years later you can see the results as 6 year old Gus is honoring 3 year old Sophie.

Brian says his opener was a great success with an estimated bird flush of over 200 birds before the heat and mountain sent him and his two companions home to recover.

  

Quinn Inwards GSP, Sage got her first hun off a fine point at just over six months old. The bug is getting to Quinn and it won't be long before Sage has him infected for life.