Well the Labor Day weekend was when everyone picked up their puppies. I am having some mixed emotions. There is a lot less cleaning in the kennel. Seven puppies eat a lot and poop a lot. I usually let them out to play 3 or 4 times a day. I started them off with lock wing pigeons until they got too aggressive. Next I held the pigeon in my hand with one wing flapping and got the puppies really excited before I let it fly away. As it flew off I would say, “get that bird, get that bird”. These puppies really like birds.
One of the male puppies.
Abby, the mom, watching the puppies play.
Mann the sire.
After the puppies got big enough to go with me I took them on walks. I took 3 pigeons in a bird bag along. When the puppies got ahead of me I would put a pigeon to sleep in the grass strips I’ve left on the training grounds. When I called the pups back they would smell the pigeon and jump on it, waking it up, to fly away. A few times I walked them without having birds but they would check the grass strips. They learned to run the grass strips because that’s where they found the birds.
I was going to keep one of the males and had the other one sold. The buyers had been over a few times to pet the puppies but the last time they left it seemed as though they were upset about something. Just before the puppies were 9 weeks old and got their second shot I called to see when they wanted to get their puppy. I got a recording and left a message. In the mean time I was really liking the pup they had picked.
Long story short they haven’t called back and the pups are 10 weeks old today. So, now I have two puppies to work with. I had told the prospective buyers that they had to pick the puppy up by the time it was 10 weeks old. I don’t take deposits and occasionally someone does this. But I don’t mind. I like him anyway and now I have two pups to work with.
One of the young pups seems depressed because his sisters are gone. But I have had them for their whole life of just over 9 weeks and I’m a little depressed as well. When a litter is born I know they will leave but I still miss them. Knowing that they are going to good homes helps a lot. But I still miss them.
A lot of years ago I was hunting near Colony Kansas on land leased by a hunting club I belonged to. I was hunting a 160 acres that had another 80 off one corner. Most of the cover ran down a fence row with the rest in a pasture. The other side of the road was another 80 acres, with a corral near the road, the way I remember it.
Keeping the ball away from the other puppies.
I had gone down the fence row and the dogs were finding quail and when I was young I could shoot, pretty well. When I got to the back of the 160 I crossed into the 80. It was pasture but not even very good pasture but there were quail there. I was only there about 2 hours and had a limit of quail.
I started back to the truck but the dogs passed the truck, when we got there, and went across the road. I was just about to call them back when they went on point. I had a limit of quail and I’d never seen a pheasant in that area. So I wasn’t real excited but I do like to see my dogs point. When I got almost to my dog, that was on point, about 15 prairie chickens flushed. I never fired a shot. I had never seen a prairie chicken in that area either. But that many prairie chickens make a lot of noise, flushing.
A prairie chicken was something I really wanted to have mounted. The hunting club I belonged to had some farms that were supposed to have prairie chickens and the season always opened early. Everyone that we talked to said the best way to get one was to pass shoot them early of the morning as they flew to feed in the row crops. For several years we would go more than once early of morning. To get there before daylight we had to leave about 3 hours earlier.
Dolly pointing a quail.
I remember one year I had bought some of the 20 gauge shells that were made without a metal rim around the case. Supposedly the plastic rim was strong enough that metal wasn’t necessary. This was the first year that I had a chicken close enough to shoot at. A small flock came right over me and when I threw the 20 gauge Browning to my shoulder and got just a little ahead of a chicken I pulled the trigger. My gun went snap. The snap was loud but the shell didn’t go off. That was the first time I was in the right place at the right time.
I think it was the same year that I was back at the same farm when a flock came near me. This time I had good shells. When I shot a bird started sailing down. It went quite a long way but I marked it down. It had glided to a small water way off the farm we were hunting. When I got there it tried to run and I caught it. My first prairie chicken.
I took it to Craig Jones on the square in Independence Missouri to have it mounted. It was his first prairie chicken and he did a really good job on it. He had me leave it for a while so he could show it off in his large window.
Abby on point on wild quail.
Over the years I have killed several prairie chickens without really going just to hunt them. I can remember a day, a lot of years ago, when Dennis Garrison and I killed a limit of prairie chickens, a limit of pheasants and a limit of quail one day. But that has been a lot of years ago.
Just a few years ago Vince Dye and I were hunting in Kansas. We weren’t that far into Kansas in an area I had hunted a lot of times. There were 2 flocks of prairie chickens feeding in a harvested soybean field. Before the dogs even got close the chickens flushed. They made a circle and flew right over us. I was just watching them until Vince said, “shoot us a chicken”. I don’t know why he didn’t shoot but I threw my gun up and a chicken just folded up and came down.
They were really high and when it hit the ground it didn’t move. As I picked it up Vince said, “I’m not sure the season is still open”. It was his idea but I did the deed. When I got back to the truck I checked and the season was still open. At least I didn’t break the law.
Boss’s tail looks really long here.
I have hunted for a long time and this gives me a lot of memories. Sometimes something triggers a memory of one of the dogs I’ve owned over the years or just some of the hunts. Some day the memories may be all I have but at least I have a bunch.