Chukar partridge will be released across Utah

About 3,300 chukar partridge will be released across Utah during the week of Sept. 11. The Division of Wildlife Resources is releasing the adult, pen-reared birds to provide better hunting for Utah's upland game sportsmen.

Utah's 2006 chukar partridge hunting season begins Sept. 16.

The DWR will release the chukars into areas where biologists have constructed game bird water guzzlers and into areas where chukar populations have been affected by severe drought or winter conditions.

Since the mid-1990s, the DWR has constructed hundreds of 350-gallon game bird and small mammal guzzlers in the best chukar habitat in Utah's desert country. Guzzlers have been installed on many west desert mountain ranges, from the Utah-Idaho border to the Mohave Desert in the southwestern corner of the state. The new guzzler design allows the watering devices to be placed in the roughest and rockiest habitats Utah has to offer-ideal habitat for the chukar partridge.

The guzzlers are placed in long, narrow canyons with steep, rocky slopes. These areas provide good escape cover to 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 to forage and still be close to drinking water.

Pen-reared chukars will be released in the following areas of Utah in mid-September:

County release areas

Box Elder

Cache

Summit

Juab

Tooele

Utah

Iron

Millard

Sevier

Duchesne

Uintah

Carbon

Emery

A portion of the chukars will be banded with aluminum leg bands. Hunters who harvest banded birds should phone information into the DWR at the telephone number printed on the band, or they can submit band information online at wildlife.utah.gov/uplandgame/index.html#bird_band. Biologists will use information collected from the band returns to assess how many birds hunters took and how many birds survived and dispersed 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 DWR will not provide maps of specific guzzler site locations or more specific release information than the information listed above.

A map showing guzzler distribution and densities throughout Utah is available at wildlife.utah.gov/pdf/guzzlermap.pdf

Chukar hunters may also encounter wild birds that have been banded. Many of these wild birds have been banded with colored, plastic bandettes and are part of a statewide research study that's assessing chukar populations and their use of guzzlers in Utah. To learn more about the research study, visit wildlife.utah.gov/uplandgame/chukar/chukar_study.php on the Web.