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Show V i " . -A - !- - . - - ' ' ' y ' 1 , ' ? j .... HVt" ' C ' ' - . - . , - - - '-vlt ,t1imYf -f n - ,Mi-Wi. i it-y .-infirM.r-itmmmiir- " wvm t.r-""1 s-- a HUNTING CHUKARS-Sometimes you can score on chukars along stream beds, as this hunter knows. Scene is Willow Creek in Uintah County's publicly owned Book Cliffs. Chutiar is rejpBaceroien vor endangered pheasant By Hartt Wixom Vernal Express Outdoors Writer While hunters can yet try to foil pheasants in many sectors of Utah, many are turning their attention to a bird meant to replace the rooster. We are talking about that Asian import with the masked countenance, and those faster-than-bandit legs, the chukar partridge. The chukar's introduction to Utah was hastened by the fact many more pheasant seekers were being crowded onto diminishing croplands open to general hunting, and the more modern farming practices which annually leave no cover on fence rows, between fields, and along ditch banks. In effect, better and more efficient harvests per square foot of agricultural effort has cut substantially into the ringneck's richest habitat. That's what makes the chukar a perfect "replacement" for what in some areas is known as a "rare and endangered" species, the male pheasant. Actually, the popular Chinese alien, although as colorful and crafty a bird as American scat-tergunners scat-tergunners could hope to challenge, does not inhabit 97 percent (non-irrigated) (non-irrigated) of Utah's 84,916 square miles. While much terrain is too high and cold for the hen or rooster pheasant, chukars are billed as Utah's "upland bird of the future" because they depend not at all on man or his ; agricultural trends. These masked imports are also tough hombres. In deep snow, they just seek higher, wind-swept ridgelines. Chukars are birds of the steep, rocky, seemingly barren country in the Beehive State, and there is much of it from Kanab and St. George to Snowville and Coalville. They have flourished in the dry, sandy washes of eastern Utah's Book Cliffs, and more " vegetated ravines of high Deep Creek Mountains on the Nevada border. Some favorite places of mine are the ledges of Tooele county's northwestern Stan-sbury Stan-sbury Range, the hills near Promontory Promon-tory Point in Box Elder County, and the entire Wasatch Range from Springville to Cache County, as well as cliff country on the southwestern edge of Lake Powell, and sectors of Manti and Nebo. One morning a friend and I, Boyd Bronson of South Jordan with the retriever he had personally trained, drove to the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon a few minutes before starting time. We glassed the ridges for chukars and found two flocks. Then it was just a matter of keeping the dog at heel, and hiking above them. As veteran partridge par-tridge hunters know, we had to get them to put them to wing. If we had merely walked to them up a convenient ravine, they would have run uphill forever. We got into them after the first flight, too, by listening to their tell-tale "chukar, chukar" call, a distress signal which can help the attentive hunter more than the birds. That retriever was rather busy for two hours recovering birds. I've seen many flocks along the Wasatch Front. But the Utah Div. Wildlife Resources predicts even better hunting until season closure Nov. 30 (check the proclamation as many areas remain open to Jan. 31, 1982) in eastern Juab County, especially Utah 132 near the Millard County line, and most of Grand, Emery, Garfield and San Juan Counties, .including the Green and Price River beds. Include Green River through the Book Cliff canyons to the confluence of Colorado River, as well as the latter from Green confluence up to the Colorado border. There have been large flocks observed in San Juan County's Colorado River, Imperial Valley, Gypsum Canyon. Palmer Canyon, and talus slopes of Red and Blue Canyons. Almost all of the above, although not adjacent to city population centers you have to look at chukar questing as something akin to deer hunting in energy output is on public rather than private property. The scenery is usually superb. I often hunt chukars while scouting for next year's best bucks, since they can frequent the same steep real estate. You can bring back a possession limit of 10, and not even pheasant or quail can match a chukar on the dinner plate. True, chukars are not an easy challenge. But then if ease and comfort were theonly important goals, a hunter would never leave the fireplace at all. The wild cherry tree, "brother" to the fruit-bearing fruit-bearing orchard cherries, is native to America. It's fruit is rarely tempting but it's wood is prized for making furniture of high sheen and polish. |