I loaded 5 dogs and left for the Greensburg, Kansas area about 4:00 am on Tuesday morning, October 14, 2013. Unit 4 of the turkey units is not open for fall turkey hunting. The boundary line is Highway 183 to 54 Highway. Everything south of 54 is open. This is important because you can not work dogs on walk-in property. You must be hunting. Early prairie chicken season is closed so I hunt turkeys.
On the way down I stopped at the Byron Walker Wildlife Area. Troy Smith that runs it is a setter fan with some puppies for sale. I know the feeling, I have some for sale also. The dogs had been in the box for quite awhile so I turned them out for about 10 minutes.
It was about 45 degrees with a north west wind of about 30 miles an hour. The first farm I stopped at was pasture located near a corn field. The pasture had a lot of ragweed with plum thickets on the hillsides. Grasshoppers were every where. Good food for quail.
This is good area to run puppies. They learn that there are trash birds in the plum thickets and will run from one to the next and then chase. Sooner or later there will be some pheasants or quail in the thickets. This teaches the pups to run to objectives.
I turned Lucky and Whitey out. Lucky is the sire of Whitey, who is about 20 months old. We started into the wind and Lucky was on point in the edge of a plum thicket only about 75 yards from the truck. Whitey came around and honored. As I started towards Lucky the birds started to flush. On a real windy day, with all of the weeds and brush rattling, quail will not hold well. We hunted a big circle back to the truck. I saw 2 hen pheasants get up before the dogs got near them but I got no more dog work.
The second farm I hunted was also pasture near a corn field. This one had more brush and the plum thickets were larger. I used Dolly and her son Luke. Dolly and Lucky are the dam and sire of the other three I have with me, Whitey, Blaze and Luke. Luke is a year older than the other two.
Although this area is fairly flat with just rolling hills I would be lost without my Garmin GPS. I check it often. About ten minutes into this hunt I looked and it showed Luke on point about 65 yards away. As I got close to the plum thicket but still about 40 yards from Luke 2 hen pheasants flushed. I couldn’t see Luke so I checked the GPS and he was still on point. I got within about 20 yards of him and a cock pheasant got up right in front of me. They sure look slow when the season is not open.
A couple of minutes later Dolly was on point. I went in front of her and nothing got up. I tapped her on the head and she moved up about 30 yards and went on point again. As I went in to flush Luke saw Dolly on point and honored. Now the hen pheasant was between us so she flushed instead of running.
Dolly
Lucky
We moved over about 200 yards and started back to the truck. I don’t know what happened but I saw Luke and I saw a covey of quail. In the high winds quail don’t hold well for dogs, but Luke has been moving on his birds. We have been working on this. At least I have been working on this, I hope Luke has been too.
In the first 2 hours we moved 2 coveys of quail and 6 pheasants. We hunted three more farms that afternoon but did not see anymore quail or pheasants but with the strong wind and the temperature rising into the sixties it was really hard on the dogs.
But tomorrow is another day.
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