After a two year boom in the population, the Division of Wildlife Resources has announced that chukar partridge numbers are back to a normal range. “There are still lots of birds out there,” shares Jason Robinson, DWR upland game coordinator. “You’ll just have to walk farther between coveys. You can still have a really great hunt, but you’ll have to put in a little more effort to find the birds.” Biologists aren’t certain why the population numbers skyrocket for a year or two before returning to normal but they do know that the cycle runs about every 9 to 10 years. The spike, however, usually only lasts one year, not consecutive years like the last two. “We’ve never seen that before,” says Robinson. “Chukar hunters, myself included, were definitely happy to have two years of extremely high numbers, though.” Utah’s general chukar hunt opens September 30th. Visit
www.wildlife.utah.gov
for a free guidebook or more information.
