Rocky the English Cocker Spaniel.
Blaze pointing a pigeon.
Tur Bo pointing a pigeon.
In Kansas, you have to be hunting to be on the walk-in farms properties. Kansas allows turkey hunting with dogs in the fall, so that gives me an excuse to be on the properties. And if a turkey holds for the dogs I will shoot at it.
On this morning I drove out west of Atchison several miles. There are a lot of walk-in properties in this area. The farm I chose to hunt had a large CRP field with corn and soy beans running along the side of it. I turned Tur Bo, Luke and Rocky out. We started south, down the edge of the CRP. Between the CRP and the row crops was a deep draw with a creek running through it. There were several smaller draws running off the larger one.
Luke and Tur Bo crossed the CRP and checked each of the draws as we went toward the row crops. Rocky was in front of me weaving back and forth through the CRP. At 4 months old he’s not sure why we are out there but his genes are telling him to keep running. As we neared the end of the CRP Luke and Tur Bo started up the deep ditch. It was warm so I wanted to make a circle and go back to the truck. These early hunts are just to see if it looks like a good place to quail hunt.
I check the Garmin GPS often because both dogs are hard to keep track of. They both run pretty big. As I went along a fence that runs beside the ditch I checked the GPS and it showed Luke on point across the ditch and up a water way that ran into the ditch. He was about 300 yards away. Sometimes, if a dog is getting a drink the GPS will show them on point so I watched the GPS until I knew he was pointing. I had a fence and a deep ditch to cross. The fence was a barb wire fence with 5 strands. There isn’t a good way to cross but I finally got through the strands after getting my pants and vest untangled from the barbs.
Next up was the deep ditch. This has been a really wet year and the cover is really thick. I had to walk up the ditch a ways to find a place to cross. Rocky and I finally got across the ditch and started around a soy bean field toward Luke. He was pretty close if we could have crossed the soy bean field but it hadn’t been harvested yet. I was about 75 yards from him when I saw him start trailing. It had taken me too long to get to him. The birds had run off and flown. As I came up I saw a quail flush about 30 yards in front of Luke that flew into the soy bean field. It was far enough away that he never saw or heard it. The soy bean field was really big but I didn’t want the dogs running into it. The beans are ready to harvest or nearly so and dogs running through them knock them off where the farmer loses them. I took the dogs back toward the CRP. Without a dog on point I found an easier way to cross the fence and ditch. We hunted our way through the CRP back to the truck.
It was getting pretty hot but I had 3 dogs that hadn’t been out of the truck so I drove to another area on the same farm. There was a harvested corn field that was right next to a soy bean field. There was a couple of draws that ran into the corn field and the lower end of the deep ditch. I turned Lucky, Dolly and Blaze loose along with Rocky again.
The dogs ran the draws then circled around to the deep ditch. We hunted the ditch up to where I had hunted earlier then crossed to the edge of the corn field. I saw a meadow lark fly into the grass ahead of me and thought it would be good for Rocky to flush it or see it fly away. I started toward it and Blaze came in front of us and the meadow lark flew. Blaze paid no attention to it. It flew across in front of us and lit again. I started toward it and before we got to it Dolly came in front of us and the lark flew away. It was hot so we went back to the truck.
I put the dogs on the tail gate and take the collars off. I check the dogs at this time for burrs or cuts. I never noticed any problems with any of them. This was on Saturday, on Monday a friend brought a young dog over that he wanted to work on backing. We had already worked her on the pop up backing dog so we wanted to use live dogs this time. I put 3 pigeons out and we turned Dolly out. She pointed the pigeons and the young dog backed her just fine. We worked another dog on pigeons then decided to work the dog again on backing. This time I turned Lucky out. As he got close to the first pigeon he started running while holding his rear foot up. He only went about 20 yards then started using the leg again. When he pointed the pigeon I looked at his foot and there was a visible wound.
I took him to the vet and Dr. Becker, from Independence Animal Hospital, ran some forceps into the wound and pulled out a piece of wood about 3/8 of an inch wide and an inch and a quarter long. That one time was the only time that I saw him carry that foot. Dr. Becker gave him a shot and some medicine. It’s already starting to heal. It’s amazing how tough these dogs are.
Close up of Luke pointing a pigeon.
Tur Bo pointing a pigeon.
Luke