Bad news good news

About 3 this afternoon, Barb pointed out a smoke cloud coming from the highway side of the mountain behind our house. I grabbed my shovel and headed that way. Not only is there some good game habitat, a friend of mine lives there.

There were a couple of guys fighting the fire along the road but no one was on the driveway leading to Steve's ranch and there was plenty of heavy brush to burn there. Steve, the rancher, was ten miles away with his cat putting a line around an eleven thousand acre fire that had burned a couple of days ago. His house was never in danger but a lot of sage and bitter brush went up in flame. I just mopped up along the quarter mile drive way making sure the fire didn't jump across until the first fire truck showed up.

While all this was going on, Barb was home taking pictures of the fire as it came over the hill.

Luckily, there is lot's of green between our place and the dry hills, so we didn't worry about the fire getting close to our place.

Almost as bad news as the fire is how bad of shape I realized I was in. Throwing dirt on the fire as I stood on the drive way wasn't too bad but once the first fire truck showed up I thought I could go back to my BLM days and hustle up the hill pulling a fire hose and was soon sucking for oxygen. I tried to impress those young punks but readily gave up the nozzle when help arrived. All those yellow shirts were a welcomed sight.

And when the air troops showed up I ducked into my truck and weaseled towards home like a whipped kid.

They put on quite a show on both sides of the mountain and Barb and Jake took plenty of pictures.

They even used the pond to fill up the buckets.

I wonder if any of the fire fighters will find some cooked fish as they mop up.

As I said, there is bad and good news. The bad news is the country that burnt and me realizing how big of a puss I'm becoming. The good news is I saw some quail crossing the dirt drive way for the green fields. There were two different groups of 15 or so little ones with mom and dad. They were very little but I saw one of the groups take to the air as a smoke jumper landed in the field near to them. I have never seen baby quail around here until mid July in the past but am becoming aware that maybe I haven't looked hard enough. I also watched 6 or so young huns or chukars fly through the smoke as I was putting out flames. They were very young and I didn't see any adults. The heavy brush they flew into was engulfed with flames only seconds behind them. One of the fire fighters said he saw a decent size group of chukars fly out in front of the fire also.

Today the temperatures reached 110 degrees in the valley. The highest ever in June and the second highest temperature ever. So we're in for a long hot summer. The next ten days are supposed to be above 100. It is 11:30 right now and the temperature is still 92 degrees. My brief time fighting fires today showed me more young birds than I have been able to find while scouting. I came home with confidence that it looks like we have had a decent hatch. Now, if we can only keep the land from burning up.

 

Hot and Dry

With the Idaho chukar opener 90 days away I've been searching for good news. I've already seen a picture of some young chukars in Nevada that were big enough to have hatched in May, but not seeing or hearing anything exciting in Oregon or Idaho. Jake and I continue to search for good news but so far have come up empty handed. We've seen about the same thing every trip. We bump three or four singles that usually fly pretty far. I'm theorizing that the single is flying away from it's partner sitting on the nest. I've only seen one pair in the last ten days. We've also seen at least one blue grouse on each trip.

We try to get up on the mountain early to beat the heat but it's getting tougher each week.

About two hours of hiking and we're out of water so we keep our trips shorter. As dry as it is, there are plenty of seeps and hidden springs for the birds and other wildlife. The birds aren't in danger of lack of water and if grass hoppers are any sign of how the other insects are doing they won't starve to death either. Still, I'm excited to see some young ones. 

Jake gives me a point every now and than, but most of the time it's a false point.

Sometimes it leads me to some promising sign.

These small chukar tracks will just have to keep me positive for a while. 90 days is a lot of time.

Bummer 2

Just yesterday I posted about eliminating some of the predators to chukars. Today, on our hike, Jake and I spotted these two fox pups by a dirt hill. They obliged me for a few pictures before retreating into their hole.

Even knowing how many upland eggs they can eat there is no way I could ever hurt one of those faces.

But it wasn't difficult at all to eliminate this big guy from the mountain.

I kept a trophy.

For those interested, there is a snake avoidance class this Saturday the 6th and Sunday the 14th in Boise. I highly recommend taking your dog to one of them if you haven't before.

Bummer

Until today, I thought I knew a lot about chukar. I always thought that the spring weather conditions were the major factor for having good or bad chukar season's.

I've been watching the turkey nest that I found earlier in order to document the hatch date of the eggs. I was disappointed to find the the eggs gone today. Not only were the eggs gone, there was a trail of feathers leaving the nest site telling me there was probably some type of encounter between the hen and something else.

With my discovery I decided to do more research into mortality rates of chukar and turkey. I kept coming up with studies done in Utah and some other foreign country that pretty much mirrored each other.

Harsh winters are the most devastating factor on chukar survival and have been known to knock out 90% or more of the chukar population. Predation is number two, taking 35% of the year's birds. Ground mammals do the most damage during the nesting season and the air predators take over once the eggs are hatched. The human predation (hunting) takes 8%.

The good news with chukar numbers is that when weather conditions are favorable in the spring, chukars lay large numbers of eggs. I've seen as many as 18, but have heard of even higher numbers. Even with  a 35% predation factor, those large number of eggs in most nests can produce a good year. If we could eliminate 1/2 half of the predators preying on the eggs, our year suddenly becomes great. If we could eliminate some of the predators from the air the upland numbers would jump to record numbers. Eliminating predators from the air is not possible but controlling some of the ground predators can be done.

Late spring jaunt

Jake and I took a spring jaunt through some of the country I chase chukars from time to time. Although we saw only one game bird we saw evidence that they were around. Droppings and tracks. Mother nature somehow masks the scent of wildlife this time of the year to help in survival of nests and babies. But when you find a dozen or so quail hiding in the brush, it still provides some fun for Jake with his hind leg point.

He had another good point later on but I had to pull him off this point before I snapped a photo because I was sure he was right on top of the bird. Sure enough, as I reached to grab Jake's collar a hen turkey flushed at about five feet. Now that will get the heart pumping. Here's the spot he was pointing.

A closer look revealed the nest location.

I pulled the grass back and counted 11 eggs hopefully to be hatched.

As we continued our hike I was pleasingly surprised at the number of small grass hoppers. They were everywhere.

Where the cheat had already dried up, the hoppers were brown color and when you got to the green up side of the hill there were thousands of green protein bugs for the baby birds soon to hatch.

Even though the temperature was only between 60 and 65 degrees, with the sun beating down on us, Jake was often looking for some shade to take a break in.

In fact at times he decided a longer break was warranted.

We saw several lone deer along the way and didn't see any little ones in tow, but since they were all alone I assume they either had a fawn laying low or were about to have a little one or two. This doe looked very fat and I'm sure she is close to giving birth.

Hopefully this coyote is far away when she gives birth. Jake and I jumped him not more than 200 yards away from where the doe was.

Anyhow, to make it short, the spring is progressing like a normal spring. Everything is looking good for a good year so far and hopefully we will be seeing a good hatch in the next 40 days or so. Enjoy the outdoors.

A short P.S.  After our walk and typing of this post I found three ticks on me and several on Jake. It was almost the perfect jaunt.

What's the 2015 upland season going to look like?

I knew the title would grab some interest. The hatching season is getting closer and in some instances has already happened. With the recent down pours those chicks might have a hard time staying dry and surviving. Most hatches aren't until early June or later so this weather is a great help in producing green up which makes for more insects to produce the needed protein for chick survival. So, all is still looking good.

I know the affects of these spring rains are nothing new to most of us, but yesterday Barb and I got to watch mother nature in action, showing us one of the many things that can affect chick survival. Our show was put on by a baby duck that I named Murphy. I didn't have a camera, but the fifteen minutes we watched Murphy would have been a great nature film.

We met Murphy down by our pond. We were cleaning up around the pond after a recent rain storm, when out from under the dock comes a lone baby duck. He was peeping and swimming around as fast as he could. I suppose  he was looking for his family, but there were no other ducks around. He kept his distance from us and anything else that looked dangerous from the shore and covered the pond faster than I could imagine a baby of that size could. Eventually he found a family of geese to follow around.

Murphy, not being too brave, kept his distance but followed the flock around the pond. He finally saw his chance to join the family when the gosslings all sprinted towards the center of the pond in fear of Jake salivating on the shore. During the confusion, Murphy got right in the center of the group. Things went fine for a while and when it calmed down, ma and pa goose took the young ones to shore. With ease the gosslings followed mom up the enbankment but Murphy fell back into the pond several times before his successful leap onto the shore. Barb was excited to see that Murphy was going to be taken care of when suddenly momma goose realized the intruder. She chased Murphy away and back into the pond. 

Barb was feeling bad for Murphy and was hoping we could catch him and relocate him with some other ducks as I continued cleaning the pond. Suddenly, a gasp came from Barb followed with a "Larry, did you see that"? She was about to cry as she told me a fish just ate Murphy. We have some fairly large bass in the pond and Murphy had just become dinner to one of them.

Waterfowl don't have to worry about the weather conditions like upland birds, but the fate of Murphy is an example of just one of the many obstacles our young birds might have to face before they become big enough to fly and dodge our shotgun pellets. It isn't as simple as hoping the big stud get's the job done with his women and mom finds a good nesting spot.

Now that the eggs are laid and the hen is sitting on the nest there becomes a series of new problems for upland birds. Protecting the nest. Almost every thing likes eggs. Skunks, foxes, coyotes, even snakes love eggs and once they find a nest it will surely be wiped out. I don't know how many eggs a snake will eat at one sitting but I'll never forget my first encounter with a bull snake with an egg about one third of the way down it's body still whole. You could see the perfect form of the pheasant egg. Magpies and crows will completely decimate a nest if found.

Although they say birds loose their scent during nesting season, believe me that is not totally true. I have seen my dogs point a nest from at least ten feet before and know a wandering coyote would be able to scent the nest just as well.

Once the birds have hatched they have another batch of problems to encounter. Like Murphy, they never know where the next danger is coming from. The coyotes and foxes are still a problem and now they have been joined by the predators from the sky. Hawks are now circling the skies looking for the scurrying covey's of birds as they chase bugs through the openings. Magpies and Crows are also notorious for pecking out the little ones until they die and than scavenge on the body. One year, I even saw a bear chasing chukars up. I don't believe he was successful but I watched him chase the momma, doing her wounded act for 100 yards or so.

So, if the birds can get past these obstacles and many more, maybe we'll be seeing those numbers like 100 birds per square mile or more in 2015. Once hunting season begins, it becomes a lot less difficult for the birds. They just have to avoid the business end of our shotgun blasts, which in my case isn't to tough to do.

Hopefully, in a couple of months or so, there will be plenty of great reports of young upland birds running everywhere. Let's hope Murphy's law doesn't prevail.

Two days ago I wrote this post and today. one of the storms that would be a chick killer, came through our area.

Two to four weeks from now, this storm would be pretty devastating to the upland population around here. Luckily, storms like this only hit small areas where the thunder head moves through. The weather radar only show it a mile or so wide.

It put down about an inch and  a half in 15 minutes or less.

Staying in chukar hunting shape

"How do you find the energy to hike those hills three times a week?" one of neighbors asked not too long ago. My answer was that I enjoy it so much it takes the work out of it. I've always felt I was in fairly decent shape until my hike with Barb and Jake today. I had Barb snap a picture of Jake pointing a ruff grouse with me behind him and when I got home and saw the picture I was wondering who the old fat man was that was with my dog. Barb informed me that the guy with the arthritic hands and belly to support the binos was indeed me. I thought about erasing the picture and then thought about how much fun I had today and decided to keep the picture and brag about Jake who was holding so well on the ruff.

I could take those opportunities when Barb is around to take my shirt off, suck in my gut and point at Jake with what little pecks and biceps I have left to impress the viewers but I think I'd get more laughs than anything else. I just figure that this picture shows the way it really is. I'm in as good of shape as most mid 60 males and I can get where I want to be on the mountain when I need to get there. It may not be the statue of atlas when I get to the top but I'll be there just the same.

I try and do as much stretching as possible, mainly on my back. My weight lifting program consist of moving hand lines or digging ditches around the property for me or some of my great neighbors. The only upper body strength I hope I ever need again is for packing out a limit of chukars and maybe a deer if I have to. But, I have another plan for my next deer or elk. I have taken several young men out in the last forty years to shoot a deer or elk and am hoping for a return favor for packing their animal out. If not, I'll figure that one out when it happens.

Chukar hunting is not a job for me. It is my entertainment. Therefore I am not a professional chukar hunter and don't have to train in a such a manner that I am guaranteed success. I believe I have been a professional at three things. I was a high school teacher and coach for a few years and an electrician until my retirement. I got paid for those jobs and was expected to perform in a professional manner which made me a professional at those occupations. Preparation was required to be successful.

Chukar hunting is my entertainment, not a job. I love being on the mountain and I love being with my dog or other people that enjoy the mountain as much as I do. I don't enjoy being in the gym anymore. I had enough of that in my younger days. I was an athlete in high school and ran track at Boise State College on a scholarship to pay my way. I spent several years after that buffing up and trying to impress my bride, Barbara but after a while found out she loved me with or without big biceps.

Over the years I had two knees replaced, a shoulder operation, a fall off a cliff that screwed my back up, was burned in a fire and spent a month in the hospital and several other incidents that required rehabilitation. I don't care to ever see a gym again.

What I do try to do to stay in shape is to walk often and stretch. Not walks around the block, but walks in the mountains in terrain like I usually hunt in.  I enjoy it because usually the ones I am walking or hiking with enjoy it even more than me. I enjoy watching their enthusiasm. Jake loves running the mountains and searching for birds but can be just as happy chasing a chipmonk up a pipe and waiting for him to show up on the other side.

Barb is also always there for me. She loves jaunts in the mountains, but doesn't care for the steep stuff so we usually stick to trails or logging roads. It doesn't matter to me because she's always willing to stay on the trail while Jake and I see what's up the ridge and then meet her back on the trail. Her excitement in seeing the animals that Jake and I encounter almost every trip makes my so called exercise walk down right fun.

And of course there is Conner, my grandson. He is the most enthusiastic 12 year old in the outdoors that I know. There is no place that I go that he can't and many places he'll go that I struggle to get to but I'll get there because I want to. Just yesterday, we hiked 3 miles before he shot this nice turkey.

It wasn't overly steep but we still gained about 1200 feet in elevation. As we hiked in the darkness, Conner laughed at me as he saw the drips of sweat dropping through the flash light beam as I was looking at my watch. I was getting a great workout but enjoying every minute of it. How often do you hear a person say he did some quickness work by dodging a skunk who was backing down the trail towards him. It's amazing how your lungs can burn after you've retreated uphill for 20 seconds  holding your breath at the same time.

At 12 years old, Conner decided to be a young man and pack his own trophy back to the truck. Now a twenty pound turkey doesn't sound like much but when you only weigh seventy five pounds and it's 2 and a half miles back to the truck carrying an awkward load that flops around makes it a tough task.

Plus we had to go over the top of this mountain first.

We made several stops along the way but Conner would not let me touch the bird except to hand it to me as we crossed over two fences. You can tell how tired we were after our hard workout by this picture Barb took when we returned home.

The only one dissapointed was Jake. He got left behind on this trip. 

I said when I began this blog that it wouldn't be about me, but somehow it wasn't possible to say what I do for conditioning without including me. So I'll try and leave me out of the picture from now on. Just let me conclude by listing my workouts for this week. Monday, Jake and I will be doing yard work and watching Conner's baseball game in the evening. Tuesday, I'm going to help my son wire his house. Wednesday, is the adult opener for turkey, so I'll be taking a jaunt somewhere looking for a bird without Jake. Thursday, Jake and I will be taking another jaunt in the mountains to see what we can see before heading to another Conner baseball game. Friday, depending on my success on Wednesday may find me on another mountain trying to find a turkey or Jake and I just doing some scouting. By the end of the week, my muscles may not be bulging but I'll be in the kind of condition I need to be in to do what I love.

It's almost that time again.

Yep, the weather is warming up quickly this year. It was in the mid 70's yesterday while Jake and I were out strolling. A friend of mine, Ed Bird, has a new Brittany and I understand he's in the training process. I know Ed reads this blog occasionally and this next picture will ruin him on training with wild birds for the rest of this year. He hates snakes. Although I prefer not to be surprised by them, I am confident enough with Jake's avoidance training that we still will keep doing our thing on the hill. I hope I didn't just put the jinx on us.

Right now most snakes are just emerging from the dens for short intervals to sun themselves and aren't moving too far away. If a guy stays away from those likely rock piles this time of the year, he'll probably never see one. But by June they'll be traveling and encounters will become more common and the snakes will be more aggressive than now. A good thing to avoid this time of the year when it is pretty warm is to let your dog chase rock chuck's and similar critters. Snakes like to den in the same type area that the rock chucks like. This rattler was a monster. The one looking at the lens is a normal sized snake. It's easy to see why they call them diamond heads.

My second encounter was with a little smaller snake. I'm not sure, but I think there were two snakes here also. After looking at the picture, I don't think the rattle and the snake belong together. Both places were southwest facing rocks with plenty of sun hitting the rocks all day.

The other common spring encounter is ticks. I'm tickled (get the pun) to report only finding one so far this year. It was on Conner and I understand he took one home also. His mom made the report back to me. Obviously, she wasn't excited to see one crawling up the wall where Conner had left his backpack. Jake hasn't had any on him that I could find. Usually by this time of the year I have pulled several dozens from the dogs although very few are embedded.

In my opinion, neither are worth keeping out of the mountains for, but are just worth being aware of. Just try and be aware of snaky looking areas and try and avoid them if possible and check your mutt for ticks the same as you do for cheat and cuts at the end of each trip and all well be well. Trust me, Ed.

Fun time of the year. Even for elk.

Jake and I took a hike yesterday. We did find a few paired up birds and got to work on a little training,

but two rag horn bulls stole the show from Jake. I'm not sure whether they call them rag horns because of their coats this time of year or their antlers. When I came over a ridge this bull was running about 30 yards away. I was in the wide open and the wind was at my back so I was sure he was running from me.

I took my camera out of my pocket and as I snapped this picture I saw Jake running about 20 yards ahead of the bull. I realized the bull was chasing, or at least interested in Jake. I tried hard to get both Jake and the elk in the same shot but Jake knew how to keep his distance. The whole time this was going on, probably 2 to 3 minutes, the bulls partner just fed at about 30 yards away.

At one time, the bull that was excited about Jake, started stomping it's foot trying to get Jake to come out from the other side of the brush above him.

Finally, Jake ran down the hill in search of smaller game and the bulls decided to leave also. Before they went over the hill they stopped and gave me a stare. They seemed to be saying, "we knew you were there the whole time, but watching that brown dog run around was a lot more fun than running from you."

Beauty is the Beast

Every sports enthusiast have special moments that they relish. It doesn't matter what the sport is, there are certain times when we are amazed at what we just saw. It might be the fantastic one handed grab while tip toeing the sideline on a football field. Even arena fight fans might see some beauty in the fantastic move that almost broke a guys arm. Fly fisherman often talk about the beauty of seeing a fish take the fly, while the elk hunter dreams of the bugle as he watches the breath flow from the elk's mouth in the cool morning air. A baseball fan might be amazed at the ease of an infielder scarfing up the ball and firing it to first base while a bird watcher is in awe watching an eagle soar without even beating his wings.

I'm a very lucky man. I've got to hike the mountains quite often with my dogs. There is only Jake now, but I can close my eyes and see the grace that each of my dogs have had covering the hills. I've watched in amazement as they cover the mountain side, never missing a stride. How they can maneuver through the rocks and brush so quickly is much like a pro athlete doing their thing. The whole time they are running their nostrils are working the air for that special scent and when it strikes they are immediately in a different mode. The stalking mode. Sometimes they don't even have time to move. They just freeze on point because the scent is right there. They may be in such an awkward position that they look uncomfortable, but they don't move. Other times they spin at the scent and slowly pin point the location of the bird.

All this time they are having a ball doing what they love. They very seldom stop and are constantly aware of where I am even while changing directions constantly searching for the birds. Today I kept my camera in my pocket and just enjoyed watching Jake. I've always thought it was beautiful watching chukar dogs maneuver the mountains and obstacles on the chukar mountain but today seemed even a little more impressive. Even though we weren't carrying a gun, Jake seemed to be enjoying our jaunt to it's fullest. When he'd slow down to look for me it almost looked like he had a grin on his face. I just followed along and honored his points realizing the beauty of all the actions just to get to this spot.

As we approached the truck, Jake stopped and looked down towards the rig with a smile. It was like he was thinking the same thing as I was, "what a great time we just had". That beautiful beast of mine looked just as good right there as he did when we started his 18 mile route. I had to take my camera out.

Upland Idaho

Jake has come down with some kind of a bug so I decided today would be a good day to catch up on some of my domestic chores. Early this morning I ran through the internet checking on many of the chukar sites and was disappointed to see that the Upland Idaho site is going down. Karl had one of the better sites to keep upland bird hunters communicating.

If you're still reading my blog, I'm sorry to see you go Karl and thanks for the great site you provided. I wish I had the resources to moderate such a site because it was very interesting to get different takes on many different topics. My blog, as most blogs are, is pretty much about me and my dogs and there isn't a lot said about others exploits. Maybe one day I'll get it figured out how to create such a great site. My blog is so prehistoric that I still have to move any responses from my email to the blog and some times I'm not at my computer for a week or so.

It is what it is, but I'm going to miss Upland Idaho. Meanwhile, Jake and I will keep on trying to let you all know what we're finding out there. It may not always be much, but it's everything to us.

Take Sunday, for example. Conner and I spent a day on the hill with Jake. We didn't find a lot of birds, but the huns and chukars we found were already paired up and they gave Conner a great chance to work on flushing the birds that Jake would point.

The camera actually centered one of the birds for a change.

My biggest surprise was how many blues we saw. I hunted this area early last year and found very few blue grouse but by the number of birds Conner and I saw, Jake and I must have been daydreaming during the hunting season.

The camera wasn't fast enough to center this one.

Have a good spring.