Dolly pointing Lucky honoring
Dolly pointing
Dolly pointing in a plum thicket
Lucky pointing in a plum thicket
I set my alarm for 5:00 am on Tuesday morning to go to south central Kansas on a turkey hunt but I woke up about 3:00 am and loaded the dogs and was over an hour down the road when the alarm on telephone went off. Even after all these years hunting it’s hard to sleep the night before a road trip or the opening morning.
I knew that I would be hunting near an area of Kansas that doesn’t have a fall season and I had misplaced my Kansas hunting regulations so I stopped by a Conservation Area to get a new book. The dogs had been in the truck for about 3 hours when I picked the regulations up so I found a dirt road and let all 5 out to relieve themselves. While they were running I read the regulations on fall turkey hunting in Kansas. The tag I had was only good for unit 2 because I had already killed a turkey. All extra tags are for unit 2.
If the turkey tag was no good in this area then I couldn’t hunt the walk-in properties because you can’t run dogs on walk-in. You can only hunt. Kansas does allow dog training on some of their state owned land so I could still run dogs.
At the first area I took Tur Bo from the box and put an e-collar on his neck and flanks. I grabbed a piggin’ string and heeled him around the parking area, whoaing him by pressing the button on the flank e-collar on level 3, then saying whoa. He’s been trained to whoa with the flank collar at home but this lets him know that he has to whoa whenever I say whoa. If it’s good for Tur Bo it will be good for Luke, also. I got him out and did the same with him.
We started down a fence row, on state owned land, next to a soy bean field on private land. I had Garmin GPS collars on both dogs and because of the cover I had to watch it closely to see what the dogs were doing. Shortly after we started the GPS showed Luke on point. I saw just the tip of his tail but was still 30 yards from him when I heard a pheasant cackle as it flushed then several more got up. One hen pheasant was about 15 yards in front of Tur Bo when it flushed. He chased for a little way then came back to check the plum thicket out.
We worked our way down the fence row with the dogs hunting to either side of the fence although most of the cover was on the Conservation Area side. Tur Bo pointed again and this time he was about 25 yards in front of me in plain sight. Before I could get the camera from my pocket the pheasants started flushing. There were about 8 pheasants with at least two roosters in the bunch. Luke hadn’t moved, they just flushed. Tur Bo had tried to honor but about the time he stopped the pheasants flew so it was hard to tell if he would have stayed or not.
We moved over about 300 yards and hunted back toward the truck. The temperature was in the 60’s so the dogs were happy when we came by a low spot with water. Although we hunted some good cover, we didn’t see anymore birds. I did find a quail roost but we didn’t see any quail.
I put Tur Bo and Luke in their boxes, drove to another area of the same area and turned Lucky and Dolly out. Lucky is 10 and Dolly is 8 years old so I didn’t put flank e-collars on them. We had a south wind of about 15 miles an hour and were hunting south. About 150 yards from the truck Dolly pointed with Lucky honoring. I walked in front of her, after taking pictures, about 20 yards and nothing flushed so I tapped her head and she moved south and west to point again. This time a hen pheasant flushed about 30 yards in front of us. We continued on to the south where we found a low spot with some water then went 200 yards to the west and hunted back toward the truck.
I was walking along a ridge with plum thickets when I checked the GPS and the dogs were on point again. They were both east of me in a plum thicket. When I got there, Dolly was pointing with Lucky honoring. I took a picture then walked in front but nothing came up. The dogs moved up with Lucky pointing and Dolly honoring. They both were deep in a plum thicket. I took pictures of each and circled the plum thicket. Another hen pheasant flushed about 15 yards from me. We hunted on back to the truck without any more action.
Blaze was the only dog that hadn’t run so I drove to another area of the place, put the e-collars on her flanks and neck and heeled her around the truck, whoaing her. Then I put the e-collars on Tur Bo again. I whoaed him a couple of times then we hunted down another fence row to the north. The temperature was in the upper 60’s so we didn’t go far before hunting back to the truck.
We were hunting in the worst part of the day for bird hunting and still saw a few pheasants. We hunted from 10:30 am to about 2:30 pm. If we had hunted early of the morning and late evening we may have seen more birds but with the temperature near 70 degrees we came home.