news
SALT LAKE CITY – The Division of Wildlife Resources will release about 4,000 chukar partridge throughout Utah during the first part of September. Adult pen-reared birds will be released as part of a continuing effort to provide more hunting opportunity for Utah’s upland game sportsmen.
Since the closing of the Division’s last game farm in 1993, many Utah upland game hunters have expressed an interest in seeing some of their license funds used to raise game birds for release into the wild for hunting. Beginning in 1997, the Division reinstituted limited releases of chukar partridge.
The Division is not operating a game farm of its own, as was the case until 1993. Instead, birds for release are now grown by a Utah game bird producer, purchased under contract by the Division, and released into the wild.
Chukars will be released into areas of Utah where the Division has constructed new game bird water guzzlers using Habitat Authorization funds, and into areas where chukar populations have been depressed because of severe drought or winter conditions.
Over the past several years, the Division has constructed hundreds of new 350-gallon game bird and small mammal guzzlers in the best chukar habitat of Utah’s desert country. Guzzlers have been installed on many west desert mountain ranges from the Utah-Idaho border to the Mohave desert of Washington County, in the very southwestern corner of the state.
The new guzzler design allows the watering devices to be placed in the roughest, rockiest, cheatgrass-infested habitats Utah has to offer -- ideal for the chukar partridge.
The new guzzlers are placed in long, narrow canyons with steep, rocky slopes, providing good escape cover for chukars. Complexes of four to six guzzlers are built about one mile apart in an area. Biologists then move down the mountain range a couple of miles and build another guzzler complex.
The idea behind the guzzler construction scheme is to place water where birds would normally look for water, and to provide enough water in an area so birds can move from day to day to forage and still be in close proximity to drinking water.
In addition to the release of pen-reared birds, the Division is trapping and relocating wild chukars from existing flocks within Utah for release in areas where populations have declined and where new guzzlers have been constructed.
Pen-reared chukars will be released in the following areas of Utah during the first part of September:
COUNTY
RELEASE AREA
Box Elder -South Grouse Creek Mountains
-Bovine Mountains
-Pilot Mountains
-Foothills above Tremonton
-Coldwater Canyon
Cache -Blacksmith Fork Canyon
Morgan/Summit -Echo Canyon
-Henefer/Echo
Weber -East of Ogden
Utah -Wasatch Front east of Pleasant Grove
-Wasatch Front east of Springville
-West Mountain
Tooele -Dugway Mountains
-Lakeside Mountains
Millard -Black Hills
-House Mountain Range--East Slope
-Notch Peak
Iron -Antelope Mountains north and east of Newcastle
-Lund Area
Daggett -Daggett County
Duchesne -Myton Bench
Uintah -West of Dinosaur National Monument
-Lower Willow Creek/Agency Draw/Buck Canyon
-White River Corridor
Emery -Buckhorn Wash
-Miller Canyon
-Muddy Creek
Grand -Westwater–Colorado River
Many of the chukars that will be released this fall have been banded with aluminum leg bands. Hunters who harvest banded birds should phone information to the Division at the telephone number printed on the band. Information collected from band returns will be used by biologists to assess released bird returns to the hunter’s bag, survival information and dispersion of birds into preferred habitats.
Because of safety concerns for potentially overcrowding areas with hunters, and because of the sensitivity of the location of guzzler sites being used by wildlife, the Division will not provide maps of guzzler site locations or more specific release information than that listed above.
Chukars are an exotic bird, 15 inches in length and weighing 20 ounces. They are native to places like India and Afghanistan in the Middle East. The chukar partridge inhabits some of the most inhospitable habitat Utah has to offer!
Chukars are found in the barren desert areas of the state and prefer steep, rocky, arid slopes. Low growing shrubs such as sagebrush, saltbush and cheatgrass vegetative zones below the juniper tree belt seem to be preferred. Talus and rocky slopes provide chukars with concealment and escape cover. Foods consist of grass seeds, weed seeds, buds and flowers and in the winter, new growth cheat grass.
Male and female chukars are almost identical in appearance, except that male birds will often have a "button-like" spur on the back of the leg.
The 2000 chukar season opens Sept. 16 and runs through Jan. 31, 2001 in some areas of Utah. Both males and females may be hunted, with a bag limit of
5 birds and a possession limit of 10.
Contact: Dean Mitchell, DWR Upland Game Coordinator (801) 538-4786
Uploaded: 9/7/2000
Uploaded: 9/7/2000