Chukar

Chukars appear in Ben Givens’s life both as game birds and as food. Their pursuit links his childhood excursions with Aidan Givens to his later trek across dry country, where hunting becomes part of the effort to keep himself and Rex going.

Place in Ben’s Early Life

At the edge of the family orchards, Ben and Aidan entered a desert of buttes, coulees, and unnamed canyons to hunt quail, chukars, and sage grouse. They sometimes rode on horseback, shotguns slung across their backs and canteens striking their saddles. When they camped in the sage, they dressed their birds, tucked sage sprigs inside them, and cooked them over a twig fire. Chukars belong to this remembered world of hunting, shared work, and nights spent talking beneath the sky.

The orchard and desert make a marked pair: one ordered into rows, irrigated and worked through the seasons; the other an open hunting ground beyond the cultivated land. Chukars belong to the latter. The bird’s place in Ben’s memories is therefore connected not only to shooting but also to the landscape he traversed with his brother and the practical knowledge of preparing what they caught.

Quarry on the Trek

Years later, Ben describes walking cross-country from Vantage to George while hunting chukars. When asked what he had been hunting, he identifies them as little birds. His explanation also makes clear that the trek cannot be reduced to a sporting expedition: he says he had encountered problems when another man’s dogs became entangled with his own, and Tristan was killed. Chukar hunting names the purpose of the journey, but the dogs’ conflict and Tristan’s death give that journey its painful circumstances.

Food and Care

During the trek, Ben skins the chukars he has carried in his rucksack, removes their backs and viscera, and separates the meat. He threads the breasts and dark meat onto willow sticks, buries the remainder in the sand, and grills the meat over his fire. The careful preparation recalls his earlier camps with Aidan, but its immediate setting is harsher: Ben is hungry, traveling with limited water, and making a meal from what he has hunted.

The cooked birds taste better to him than anything he has eaten in weeks. He eats them down to the bones, then conserves his water with Rex’s needs in mind. Later, he feeds the dog the remaining chukar meat and lets him drink from his palm. The bird’s role thus extends beyond Ben’s own sustenance: it becomes part of his care for Rex as the injured dog tries to stand and hobble forward.

Narrative Significance

Across these episodes, chukars connect inherited outdoor skills to immediate survival. In Ben’s early memories, hunting and cooking birds accompany life with Aidan in the sage country; on the trek, the same knowledge helps feed him and Rex amid injury and scarcity. The bird is not presented apart from those human and animal circumstances: it is quarry, a meal, and a small but concrete resource in a journey marked by loss.