Death by Perdiz

Dead Tired

Last Saturday I returned home from a great week of perdiz (Nothura maculosa) hunting with JP Cacerias in Trinidad, province of Flores, Uruguay. As always João Paulo da Costa and his beautiful family welcomed us in a delightful way and we felt truly at home at El Solar del Cazador.


This was a week to renew and strength some friendships, create others, exchange experiences, stories and lies, commune around good food, common memories, a glass of local red wine or just the right amount of a long traveled Macallan.

In his fantastically provincial speech my friend Eloir superbly describes some highlights of our latest hunt in his own blog “Contos de Caçada”, and I talked briefly about it on the previous post “An Exercise in Self Control”, but I do feel that there is more to talk about.

The first great surprise is that I finally found a great airport restaurant! At Montevideo’s Carrasco International Airport surprised us with a refined black olive and honey tapenade, a delicious Bife Ancho (Rib Eye) accompanied by a refined chimichurri and papas al libro, an oven roasted potato that is thinly sliced, but not all way through, so it reminds a book. The desert, a crêpe with local dulce de leche was also freshly prepared. A bottle of Don Pascual merlot highlighted the excellent and reasonably priced meal.

The second surprise that I also already talked about was the increase in the number of perdigões or martinetas (Rhyncofus rufensis). By the end of the week I would have had the opportunity to shoot at ten of the Queen of Upland Birds, but of course no shots were taken, and we can only hope that in the near future we shall be allowed to hunt these great game birds.

There is also a substantial increase in the local duck population which had been seriously impacted by years of draught, and it is recovering to levels that may justify the re-opening of duck season in the region.

Although not a surprise, the bad news is that, like in other parts of the world, changing in agricultural practices are the real danger for sustainable perdiz populations. Perdiz needs native grasslands, and although it can adapt certain other covers and agricultural crops like millet, sorghum, corn and wheat, its two worth enemies are encroaching the Uruguayan landscape in a seemingly unstoppable way, soybeans and eucalyptus.

Soybeans and eucalyptus create green deserts that bisect the pampas. The chemicals required by soybeans kills not only weeds and insects, but also the perdiz and other wildlife, and nothing in South America eats eucalyptus, except fire ants.

On the positive side, João Paulo tells us that the recent rains that made our walking the Uruguayan fields so much more difficult will also boost the coming perdiz hatch, and we should expect a very health population next season.

Talking about rain and difficult walking I really missed my Muck boots in this hunt, by my chaps saved the days. And walking was the price to pay for every bird we collected. It may not be the mile a flush for ruffed grouse during the bottom of the cycle, but it was close. And a lot of the places we found birds this year was on e edge of water, with the perdiz only moving to drier higher fields during the warm hours of the day.

At the end of a long day at Durazno, which included a parrilada with more than one bottle of Don Pascual, I was so tired as to almost consider death by perdiz!

After this great week in a distant and pleasant country I brought home memories and sore feet, and an ardent desire to do it again.

A Bad Day of Hunting...

...is better than a good day at work!

Once upon a time, during our first trip to Uruguay when everything was new and we were learning how it all worked, we met the Artigas brothers, Luiz Fernando and Marcelo. If there was one carachteristic that stood them apart was their sense of humor.

As usual after an excellent morning hunt we came back to the lodge for a rather large lunch, which as in most properly civilized cultures or countries was accompanied by good local wine, and for whatever reason we left for the afternoon hunt rather late, probably around 3:30 PM.

We drove in two pretty bit up cars all around town, including the mandatory daily stop at the gas station for a couple gallons of fuel, and then took a dirt road to our intended location where we were supposed to be able to shoot ducks, doves and hunt perdiz. It was the same  place that we had hunted the first afternoon and where all my American friends had gone duck shooting while I had a wonderful time with Popó, the accomplished Epagneul-Breton, which delivered thirteen perdiz to hand in not much more than half an hour.

But from that great afternoon something had changed! The caretakers for whatever reason did not allow us to enter the property and told Rafael, the head guide, that we were no longer welcome to hunt there.

After much one sided argument we got back into the less than comfortable cars and I followed Rafael lead frantic speeding on the back roads that crisscrossed the Uruguayan pampas. It looked that we were in a real hurry to get somewhere as we all expected to soon get to another field where at least some of us would hunt perdiz while those less fortunate would shoot at the never ending hordes of doves.

And then, suddenly and to our surprise and disappointment we found ourselves back at the lodge, even if we got the longest and most tortuous way to get there. Nobody understood what was going on, and sensing that by that hour the afternoon was all but lost, I found quick remedy for our (or at least my) sorrows in a generous serving of good old single malt Scotch.

In order to preserve the occasion for posterity, Luiz Fernando, Marcelo and I posed for the photo above, and the careful reader will notice that we are proudly and happily holding all he birds we did not shoot that unforgettable afternoon.

Of Pigeons and Doves

Patagionas picazuro & Zenaida auriculata

By now any "regular reader" of this blog should know that I am passionate about bird hunting, and that in order to manage this passion, since it is impossible to quench it, I try to travel at least once every year since 2008 to Uruguay, a bird hunter's Mecca.

The primary goal of every expedition (it just sounds more enticing than trip, as I do too much of the later on business) is the fantastically sporting perdiz (Nothura maculosa) which is properly hunted following some outstanding dog work, either by aristocratic English Pointers (the aging Alteza is my all time favorite) or feisty Epagneul Bretons.

But when your legs tire or if you want to pretend that you are attending some high dollar high flying driven bird either in the United Kingdom or the "Old Continent" for basically the cost of your shotguns shells, Uruguay offers high volume dove shooting that is second to none, even if Argentina gets a lot more publicity.

The most prevalent of the nine Columbidae that are endemic to Uruguay is the small and acrobatic Eared Dove (Zenaida auriculata) that fly almost all day long from their metropole-like roosts to their feeding grounds where they do their best to deplete the Uruguayan agriculture output. Many sportsmen travel every year to Uruguay to match themselves and punish their shoulders while they face drove after drove of eared doves that change direction with the sound of every shot and the sight of each hunter.

But among the apparent endless eared doves fly a rarer and to me precious target, the Picazuro Pigeon (Patagioenas picazuro). The picazuro pigeon is several times the size of the eared dove (as is clearly shown in the photo above, taken last year in Uruguay), and although highly maneuverable, it has an additional tool that ensures that its greater size does not make the hunter's life easier, speed. While the doves keep zig-zagging, the picazuros just turn on their after-burners to get out of dodge. Blink and they are gone.

I've been shooting picazuro pigeons for thirty five years, and while I admit to love bird hunting I must confess that I have a real infatuation with pigeon shooting. So, the next time that I will be on an expedition to Uruguay after perdiz, it would be safe to bet that my eyes will be scanning the sky for stealthy pigeons.