Echoes on Rimrock: In Pursuit of the Chukar Partridge

By Buddy Levy and David Flemming

As a young boy, Buddy Levy accompanied his father into the pre-dawn twilight to hunt birds—particularly the chukar partridge. That youthful experience marked the beginning of Levy's reverence for the chukar and his indefatigable passion for hunting it. Here, Levy presents a lyrical and honest look at the world of hunting this "gorgeous, complicated, strong-flying" bird. He explores the complex (and controversial) layers of hunting through powerful descriptions of the hunt itself, the natural history of the bird, the grueling physicality of upland pursuit, the companionship of a worthy bird dog, and thoughtful reflections on the enduring allure of sport hunting.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diversion Books
• Release date: May 8, 2010
• ISBN: 9780982905005

Buddy Levy

Buddy Levy is the author of Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs (Bantam Dell, 2008); American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett (Putnam, 2005, Berkley Books, 2006); and Echoes On Rimrock: In Pursuit of the Chukar Partridge (Pruett, 1998). As a freelance journalist he has covered adventure sports and lifestyle around the world, including several Eco-Challenges and other adventure expeditions in Argentina, Borneo, Europe, Greenland, Morocco, and the Philippines. His magazine articles and essays have appeared in Backpacker, Big Sky Journal, Couloir, Discover, High Desert Journal, Poets & Writers, River Teeth, Ski, Trail Runner, Utne Reader, TV Guide, and VIA. He is clinical assistant professor of English at Washington State University, and lives in northern Idaho with his wife Camie, his children Logan and Hunter, and two black Labs.

Book preview

OPENING DAY

When I was ten years old, my father took me on my first bird-hunting trip. We lived in southern California then, and I remember traveling over miles and miles of concrete to go hunting. The early twilight stillness gave way to flashing headlights and honking horns, but sure enough, as I woke to the smell of my father's thermos of coffee, the scent of his Old Spice, the ancient smell of leather and mothballs from hunting regalia stored too long, the station wagon had found a windy road and the countryside began to show promise. The houses were sparse now, and the hills rolled along as if they weren't in a hurry to get anywhere.

The Hidden Valley Gun Club wasn't really hunting, it turns out, not the kind I've come to know over the twenty-some years that separate my first opening day and now, but there were birds to pursue. Planted ring-necked pheasants, for instance. The guy running the place would set you up with a German shorthaired pointer and promise you the dog was close working and staunch to wing and shot; then the bird boys would drive down rows of planted corn, hop off the tailgate of the old International pickup, swing the rooster pheasants around in circles like a lasso, then bowl the birds into the cover. This all happened out of the hunter's eyesight, of course. I figured it out later, drinking my chocolate milkshake and watching from the big picture window of the clubhouse. At the time I didn't comprehend the significance—that we were hunting a game farm, a gun club, hunting in a manner often referred to as put-and-take. It did seem odd that these birds were being released for us to chase around, and even then I wondered whether this was very sporting.

So they turned us loose, and my father, who had grown up in Louisiana and had been hunting since he was a boy, told me to just follow behind and watch for a bit. Sure enough, our dog was true. He'd work the row a ways, nudging his head into the wind, then trot off, and before you knew it he'd be motionless, head cocked, foreleg raised and tucked in. I remember being frightened by that first rooster rise, because my dad made me flush the bird. The dog was rigid, the air still, and Dad motioned me forward with his hand. Walk on in there, he said. I crept, not knowing what would happen. And perhaps to this day that's what keeps me coming back, in part. The moment just before the flush, the tension tight as the air between the hammer and firing pin. The slightest rustling of the grasses at your feet and the hair standing up on the dog's back.

For the first of what would be many times in my life I felt something then, a relationship between man and dog and bird, a line of nonverbal communication that connected us there in a condensed moment of pursuit and flight, of anticipation and fear, of imminent death or escape.

When the rooster flushed, breath leaped from me, and I do not remember if I screamed, but my hands jumped up to my ears with the sound of the eruption. The bird had taken off just as I was about to step on it. There was a frenzy of color and a blur of wings flapping and the longest tail feather I could imagine and then the blast of a 12 gauge from my periphery and the instantaneous stoppage of wings. The dog ran over and nosed at the bird. My dad opened his double barrel and out popped his shell. I caught the taste of spent powder in the back of my throat.

You can put your foot down now, Dad said.

Two more points, two more shots, two more roosters, and we hoofed it back up to the clubhouse. Dad handed the birds to the guy running the place.

Got any wilder ones? he asked.

The man spat in the dust, then rolled his boot over the mark. He exhaled, pointing out across the fields, past where we'd just hunted. Got a hundred acres of wild section over there, he said. There's pheasants, and quail, and some chukars. But no guarantees over there. Them birds is wild.

That's good, Dad said. We'll give it a try. Hunting's not about guarantees, anyway. That's why they don't call it shopping.

A hundred acres. Might as well have been a hundred miles to me at the time. It was expansive. None of the even, tailored corn rows. No fences. Just miles of waist-high grasses, tumbleweed, and dry, rocky creek bottoms. I remember scuffing along, my arms beginning to tire from holding the little 410 at an angle in front of me. Dad had taken me through his own hunter safety course, and he cued me in on a couple of rules I've never forgotten. Rule Number One: A gun is always loaded. Rule Number Two: Never point your gun at something unless you wish to shoot it. (In case of rule number two, you'd better hope that rule number one is true.) Rule Number Three: Always carry your gun in the ready position. This rule had to do with safety but also with securing bag limits. Over the years, I've seen rule number three violated hundreds of times, always marveling at the look of surprise on my friends' faces as the bird sails out of range before they've ever shouldered their guns.

We were clipping along, my dad mumbling how now we're really hunting, my arms aching and feet blistered, when Dad said, Hey, dog's on point. Get up there. Before I even realized what I was doing, I had closed in behind the dog and had cocked the 410 with my thumb the way I had practiced. And I waited. Waited for hours, felt like. A breeze cooled the sweat on my forehead but not on my palms as I clutched the shotgun in anticipation. The dog broke this time, and up came a bird. It was smaller than a pheasant and grayish as it went straight away from me, gaining speed. I steadied my bead somewhere up above and ahead of him and kind of swung up and away and pulled off the only round from my single shot and down the damn bird came.

There was a quiet when the shot blast faded that hung about me like a prayer. I could hear myself breathing as I walked to the dog and the bird. The dog stood over the dead bird, kind of pointing it again, and I knelt down close. I heard Dad say, from just behind me, It's a chukar.

I cradled the bird, still warm but lifeless, in my hand and just marveled at its beauty. I ran my fingers down the grayslate feathers of its neck and back, then turned the bird's lighter breast upward. Sun lit up the black and white pinstripes of its underside, the stripes perfectly aligned. The legs were a dull, weathered red. I looked at the bird's eye, at its beauty and wildness, and wished for a moment that the bird could still see, that I had not cut its life short with one blast of my shotgun. The living, breathing bird, just moments before in flight, now lay slumped in my hands, and I was not certain why. I held the bird out toward my father, wondering what to do next.

Nice shot, son. Then he added, Beautiful, isn't it?

He slipped the bird into my game poke. I could feel its weight as we walked, the body bobbing against my tailbone. I had drawn the blood of a wild animal for the first time, and in my adolescence I felt, also perhaps for the first time, ambivalent. I was exhilarated and sad at the same time. It surprised me how quickly and instinctively, without hesitation, I had pulled up and fired. I had been deeply excited by the pursuit, and yes, even by the kill, but there was a twinge of guilt in my heart as I walked along. I think this is the moment at which one either becomes a hunter or does not—one's comprehension of the first kill, and how one reconciles it. I wiped the blood from the back of my hand and hurried off after my father. We paused at a fence line.

We'll eat chukar for supper tonight, he said.

A couple of years later we had moved to Idaho, and Dad was taking me on a real chukar hunt. I was twelve, was legal to hunt, and so was in possession of an Idaho Resident Fish and Game license as the Toyota Landcruiser curled its way up the old Lewiston Grade. The spiral highway slung its way up, slithering higher and higher from the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater Rivers. I rolled down my window and cooled myself with the late September air. From the look of the country, this was going to be hard. The walls sheered off in all directions, sharp and steep, the ruddy-brown rock old and crumbling into the basins. Massive quilts of straw colored grasses ran in all directions above and below the towering rimrocks, and there seemed no end to this landscape, which appeared alien and moonlike to me. We were a mile or so from the river bottom, and as I looked across and over the town of Lewiston, I could see an identical landscape on the horizon above the houses and office buildings. The side hills spilled down into an enormous drainage that must have once, long ago, been under water. I consoled myself, knowing that no matter how much pain I'd be in during the next few hours, it was still better than school.

We walked for what seemed like years that day, the late afternoon sun bearing down as we pulled our hats tighter on our foreheads. Dad took off his hat, reached behind him into his poke and grabbed a water bottle, then soaked his hat and pulled it back onto his head. A few gulps each and we moved again, always upward it seemed, and then at steep angles across the hillside.

And then something happened. Dad stopped suddenly and held up his hand. The world went motionless and silent except for the dog's rough panting. Hear that? Dad asked.

What? I couldn't hear a thing for the pounding of blood in my ears.

Listen.

Sure enough, high above us from a bank of rimrocks, I heard the chuck, chuck, chuck. The dog stopped breathing, its ears perked, and then again chuck, chuck, chuck. Dad pulled out his call and placed it to his sweaty lips. Tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck, he called back. And off he went, his strong legs churning up the scree hillside. By the time the dog was on point, they were 50 or 60 yards uphill from me, and I heard the covey rise and the shots being fired. Then Dad's words, echoing off the rimrocks. Dead bird, Drake.

I got a few shots that day. As the birds generally do, the chukars would sail downhill, and once an enormous covey skiffed right over the top of me like fighter planes. They appeared huge as they ripped past me, moving at speeds magnified by the wind in their wings. The chukars made a clear whitoo, whitoo sound as they blew by overhead, and I fired aimlessly into the sky, then watched the covey arc around the contours of the grade, surfing the ridges and