The Hunting Blog -
This is Etan, a two year old viszla who lives on the vast plains of Argentina. We hit it off famously. He’s a great little dog — and I mean little, barely two-thirds the size of a typical show winner.
Mystique is a much abused word. Some actors are supposed to have it, but usually don’t get to keep it for long. When you’re fifteen, the girl next door has it, but alas, that too fades. Perdiz have managed to keep their faraway mystique for a long time.
Like Africa, South America calls her bantam-sized game birds perdiz or ‘partridge’, but they simply aren’t: they are not related to true game birds but are more exotic and interesting than that. Technically they are tinamou, relatives of the rhea, large flightless birds similar to ostrich and emu. You can see it in their head structure and movement, though the size is much different. Like the rhea, tinamou males establish a breeding territory, partner with several girlfriends and then hatch their eggs in a communal nest, something true game birds never do.
The routine with Etan is simple — work an upwind beat, point, flush, shoot and retrieve. With a few birds already nodding at my belt, dinner is looking good. I know that when we return to the estancia in the first cool air of dusk the big fireplace will already be crackling. There will be a glass or two of malbec from Mendoza and a view of the Southern Cross over the pampas. Life is good.
Better that that, says my little buddy, shooting me a big grin as he heads off to find yet another perdiz. Life is great.
Pete Ryan
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