Just getting here made this hunt successful
Sometimes, it’s not a heavy bag, it’s knowing you’re back, in whatever way you need to be.
For me, recovery from surgery has been a top priority, recapturing muscle tone and endurance with the ultimate goal a bonafide chukar hunt in the (really) high lonesome.
If you hunt this Middle Eastern transplant, you know there’s little point in loading the shotgun until you get up, way up. The climb is arduous, up hillsides that are more rock than soil. The air thins and knees shake. And if it’s your first of the season due to doctors, tumors and scalpels, you question your motive.
Who needs to prove what, to whom? I do. To me. Just because.
We pound upward, Buddy and I, through cheatgrass and over boulders. The bandana becomes a sweatband, breath comes quicker and the sun rises higher. That familiar burning in the thighs returns.
We find old sign but no birds. The nearest water is two miles down the hill, where we started, which explains their absence. I adjust my expectations and lean further into the slope.
A cursory circling of the bald knob at the summit is more for effect than any expectation of a covey. But the view is spectacular, and simply knowing the legs carried me up here is enough for today.
Scott Linden Outdoors 
I know what you mean about just being able to make the climb being enough. I had some health issues earlier this year and being healthy and fit again is a reward in and of itself. Everything after that is a bonus.
I’d only add … EVERYTHING is a bonus, period.
That sure enough looks like chukar country! My chukar hunting buddy used to tell me chukar hunters are retired elk hunters!