October 7th, 2010:
We made it over to my friend's farm on the Palouse mid-afternoon...Just enough time for a hunt. We jumped in the Mule and headed out. The first place we stepped out, within 100 yards, Chukar had scented and flushed two hen roosters, this got him in the game fast! We hiked for another mile or two and only had some tweetie birds here and there.

We made it back to the house and we could see some roosters out in the field about 200 yards out. We loaded up and off we went, this would be Chukar's first "gimme" hunt, we were excited to see how he would react.

We made it to within 40 yards of where we last spotted the birds and released Chukar, within seconds he had their wind. He was slinking along and all of a sudden he locked up, it was quite the sight! We approached cautiously, we made it to within 5 yards of Chukar who was still holding by the way and the bird flushed. BAM BAM, I hit the rooster with the follow up at about 35 yards, he landed in a creek. What a moment! I went down the water, called Chukar over and he jumped in and mouthed the bird, swam with it a bit and left it near the bank, I was able to reach down, fall in the water and grab the bird, success. By the way, remember that we were hunting a shooting preserve.

In the few hours we hunted, it was quite obvious that we need to work around and in birds more often, his instinct seemed to come out more and more and his exposure increased throughout the afternoon. We are going to head out again today and see if we can get into some quail.