Fadgen's Adventures: Opening Day of Chukar Hunting in Nevada

**** **** Mountain

A couple of weeks ago was our annual get together for the opening weekend of chukar hunting south of Battle Mountain Nevada. I have been getting together with an assortment of guys for this trip for over 20 years. The constants in these twenty years have been John Woods, JD Driskell and I.

This year it was us three, Dylan, Brian Tufte and his son Alex and Little John.

We all arrived Friday afternoon in spotty weather. We had snow on the ground in Owyhee and it sprinkled for most of our 5.5 hour drive. Dylan wanted to scout out an area for climbing purposes, so after setting up camp we were off. While doing this scouting, Shadow got caught up in some barbed wire and cut up her leg a bit.

By Saturday morning it had cleared up a bit and was partly cloudy with almost no breeze. JD's scouting information told us we could return to our normal area for the Saturday hunt so we were once again in familiar territory. It wasn't long before the first covey was spotted on the drive in. Dylan and I let JD and Brian go after these birds as we headed further up the road to a wide spot next to a spring. Once out of the truck we made a long loop down to some lower rocks before we finally started running into some chukar. After a couple of coveys flushing I had shot my limit while Dylan was short a couple of birds. Nothing too dramatic on the hunt, just easy Nevada walking and great shooting.

Shadow with a limit of birds

"They should be right there..."

The rest of the afternoon was spent trying to get Dylan into some birds and hanging with the guys. Eventually Dylan did get his limit that afternoon as did JD.

Saturday evening was spent cooking up chukar in the Dutch oven. This year I made an Indian curry dish and from all the groaning it was well liked.

Sunday saw the group split up. A few went back to the Saturday hunt, a couple others went elsewhere, while Dylan and I headed to **** Creek. Once at our hunting spot we quickly got into a covey and shot a few birds. Unfortunately, this was the only covey we saw at **** Creek. So off to the next spot, ******. We didn't see any birds at ****** which was a little strange considering the amount of water in the area, but it may had been hunted that morning.

After this hunt we took a little deviation. For some reason I allowed Dylan to bring his climbing gear for our chukar hunt - go figure. Because of this fact and the rock cliffs in the area, he figured it was time to climb. With no birds in the area, I figured what the hell and agreed. He packed up his gear, we kenneled Shadow, and we took off for the rocks.

He ended up climbing one pitch of rock that looked pretty tough and took him a bit of time to conquer. We named the route "Dreaded Black" after the lizard that crawled over his hand a couple of times. After climbing we didn't bother to do any more hunting and just headed back to camp for more hanging with the guys.

Once again a great time was had during the opening weekend in Nevada. Can't wait till next year.