In the side-by-side, rounding the steep shoulder of the mountain, we swung around a corner and saw a chukar step into the two-track. The guns were put away, but when two or three more chukar hot-footed it to catch up to the first one, my friend Stuart hit the brakes. We left the dogs in the crates and I led the charge, thumbing loads into the twin tubes of the double gun.

Thirty chukar broke out of the sage above and below us and I picked out a partridge up the hill, missed it and picked another swooping down the slope below, let go the second barrel and saw it tumble.

Stuart turned out the dogs — Stella, Taz and Liesl — and when Stella brought my chukar to hand, Taz was already locked up on a covey of Hungarian partridge about 200 feet down the hill. I missed with both barrels but was pleased to add one last chukar to the 15 birds already in our game bags.

Driving back from that Idaho hunt with a tired pudelpointer in the backseat of the F-150, I passed some of my favorite chukar haunts and started planning the next hunt.

I couldn’t wait to talk to Mikal Cline, the state upland game bird biologist who always has a smile in her voice, even when bird numbers are bleak. This time her voice was brimming with optimism. I wanted to get the numbers, find out how hunters are doing in eastern Oregon.

“It’s good news mostly,” she said. “Chukar harvest as of the end of October is up 61% over last year.”

According to the hunters surveyed and the extrapolation of the data, Oregon hunters had bagged 18,300 chukar by the end of October.

By comparison, last year, Oregon hunters harvested about 65,000 birds in the four-month season.

Breaking it down, the southeast corner of the state produced the most birds with an estimated 10,500 from Harney and Malheur counties. Northeast Oregon produced 5,753 chukar for October bird hunters in Wallowa, Union and Baker counties.

“Baker is contributing a great deal of those birds,” Cline said.

The Columbia Basin came in third place with 1,200 birds while Central Oregon’s Jefferson, Deschutes, Crook, Wheeler and Grant counties turned out about 500 birds. The Klamath region finished last with 228 birds.

Knowing chukar hunters, these numbers are going to skyrocket when the November and December surveys come in.

“People who hunt chukar like to get out there after the snakes go to bed and the cheat grass drops,” Cline said. “Sometimes chukar hunters don’t really get fired up till November and December and even into January.”

Look for the Columbia Basin and Northeast Oregon regions to turn out a bigger share of birds as the season goes on. Now that deer and elk seasons are all but over, there is bound to be more bird hunters and their dogs hitting the high ridges and rim rocks.

This was a wet year in chukar country in comparison to a few previous seasons, and if the spring rains come at the right time, the new growth can supercharge partridge production.

“The thing about partridge is they have the ability to really kick out a lot of birds when conditions are good,” Cline said. “This was a good year — it was wet and mild. We are still in the wait-and-see but it is really great to see the chukar come back.”

Now that we are approaching the midpoint of the season, the Snake River and its tributaries in Baker County are likely to start producing a lot of birds. In fact, these have been bright spots over the last few years as the drought has not been as drastic there as in the rest of eastern Oregon.

This is the kind of year when Cline is not reluctant to point hunters deep into southeast Oregon into the Whitehorse Unit.

“Partridge can handle a lot of dry springs and hard winters, but when they get water on the landscape at the right time they can really make some babies,” Cline said.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg. I am really getting excited about what November and December is going to show us. Its going to be one of the best turnouts we’ve had in a long time.”