Brittany Chukarman
Well-known member
I haven't done a lot of bird hunting this year. The chukar are all but gone where I've always had them for the last 20 years. Thankfully, there's plenty of quail and a very few roosters so I took Ranger out for a hunt. We worked across a hillside and he started trailing some running quail. They jumped wild and dove into a big berry patch. Game over. My bad hip wasn't loosening up today so I started downhill to circle back to the house. We came down to a place we call Murphy's after my first Brittany. It's a shallow draw with spring runoff through the middle. We keep cows out of there and have planted a lot of trees and let the foliage grow for the wildlife. There's a couple Blue Spruce that the bucks like to shred and Black Walnut trees we started from the nut. When Murphy passed on 15 years ago we buried him there on a flat spot above the bottom of the draw. The next spring we planted a Juniper seeding above his grave and built a fence around the flat spot. A few years later we planted a Ponderosa seedling hoping at least one of them would make it. Last year Murphy's grandson Pilot passed on and now he's buried there also. When we got down to the grave enclosure Ranger went around the right side and I stayed on the right. I was just letting him hunt not paying much attention to him, thinking about other things. When I was almost to the gate I looked back for Ranger and he was 10' from the graves and locked up solid. I was 60 yards from him. We had been seeing a wily old rooster in that area that lived in the berry bushes. I knew there was a good chance that he was locked on him. I had 7 1/2 shot quail loads and knew I would have to get closer and get some in the head or neck to drop him clean. I closed to about 35-40 yards and the rooster flushed. He clipped the top of my now 20' Juniper and I got a good lead and dropped him in some cattails. Ranger was on him in an instant. He didn't take after his soft-mouthed uncle Pilot and mauled the bird just a little. I'm probably just a sentimental old fool but it kind of got to me to get that bird so close to my old hunters. Crazy but I like to think they were backing him up.
The rocks on the right of the pic is Murphy's grave and rocks on the left is Pilot's
The rocks on the right of the pic is Murphy's grave and rocks on the left is Pilot's
