As I write this, I’ve had three days of blessed rest since my return from a hugely fun, but not particularly relaxing week of chukar hunting in eastern Oregon, an experience that, as ever, infuses my very being with a whole new perspective on Hungarian partridge. To wit: Huns are easy.

Huns are the homeboys in my neighborhood. From here on out, I can look forward to climbing 200- to 300-foot hills instead of scrambling straight up vertiginous 500-foot cliff faces in Oregon; walking three to five miles in an afternoon instead of six, seven, eight or 10; and sprinting after my dogs as they try to pin Huns that run, but then actually hold for a point, as opposed to chukars that run to the top of a ridgeline and then, when you’re just all but not quite within range, fly to the top of the next ridgeline over, which is just all but not quite two miles away across a bottomless gorge.

So what’s not to like about Huns? Despite their mild manners, I still can’t sell the Hun experience. If Hungarian partridge were product, it wouldn’t be moving.

Huns may be the most underrated and under-appreciated gamebird in the U.S. I suspect even blue grouse get hunted more than Huns, although admittedly more blues are shot by elk hunters for camp meat than for sport.

But you’re not going to hear me complain. While most of the rooster-heads in Montana, the Dakotas, Washington, Oregon and Idaho beeline for the nearest cornfield when the pheasant season opens, Hun hunters can go just about anywhere secure in the knowledge that they probably won’t see another Hun hunter all week, if not all season. There are, of course, good reasons for this. As tough as pheasants can be to hunt, in good cover you can usually count on seeing at least a few birds. But forget all that with Huns. You can--and I’ve done it quite often--hunt half a day in prime cover and never move a covey.

A pair of back-to-back hunts I had two years ago are a case in point. It was midway through the season, cool but not cold, and a steady breeze was blowing toward the river, two miles away. I fitted my setter and Brittany with collars and turned them loose.

They found the first covey near a fence corner. The birds flushed over my head and I managed to drop one that fell a few dozen yards from a creek. As the dogs raced over to pick it up, they ran directly through another covey, which flushed straight up and then sailed downwind, squeaking like a chorus of rusty barn hinges.

Things were looking up. I’d hunted this particular ranch for more than a decade, and during banner years had found as many as four or five coveys on the place. Today, as it turned out, would be even better.

Three hours later, as an orange sun settled into a notch on the horizon, we’d put up, by my best estimate, eight or nine individual coveys. Huns were everywhere--in the rose hips and snowberries along the stream, in the sparse grass above, and in the wheat stubble bottomlands. My Brittany located a covey halfway up a hillside so steep she kicked out mini avalanches of rock and dirt as she scrambled uphill after them, and I had no choice but to follow, clutching at clumps of sagebrush to pull myself up.