Fairfax owner uses chukars to train dogs
By RICK BURNHAM
Messenger Staff Writer
Photo Courtesy Of Julie Filberti
FAIRFAX - A mystery of sorts, involving an exotic bird in Fairfax, appears to have been solved.
As was reported in the Messenger earlier this week, Chuckles the Chukar appeared in the yard of David and Julie Filiberti last week, mystifying family members and a wide range of Fairfax residents who saw the bird on Henry Raymond's popular town Web site "vtgrandpa.com"
Bruce Tuck, who lives about a mile and a half away on Woodward Road in Fairfax, said the bird is one of a handful he uses to train his two Deutsch Drahthaar hunting dogs. Two of the birds escaped their cages recently. He recaptured one, but the other disappeared. Until Tuesday.
"Usually they will hang around the pen where the others are and I can recapture them and put them back in the pen with the rest of the gang," he said.
"That is what the second bird did. When the other bird never showed back up I figured he was on the lunch menu for some fox or weasel or other predator.
"So you can imagine my surprise when all the excitement about a strange and exotic bird in Fairfax became the topic of a front page news article."
Tuck said he buys the birds from a man in South Hero, who raises them from chicks. Tuck added that he usually does not keep many of the birds on hand.
"These were left over from the late fall," he said. "I managed to keep them all the way through the winter."[/b]
