Between the holidays, the weather and a bad cold I haven’t been hunting in over a week. The cold is getting better but the weather is still the pits. I was just out checking on the dogs and feeding the puppies and it’s dreary. It’s supposed to rain and it has been misty all morning. I reread some of my old posts and got to thinking about bird hunting the last few years.
Mann on point.
Mann honoring Sally.
Luke pointing a single.
I enjoy reading about bird dogs and a friend, Mike Devero, loaned me a book he had read by an author named Horace Lytle. Mr. Lytle wrote in the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s. He also owned the really great Irish setter, Smada Bird. I found some more of his books on Amazon and ordered them.
Even back in Mr. Lytle’s day he was griping about the singles not holding and flying out of the country when they flushed. I can remember when some quail would hold for a point and when flushed they wouldn’t fly very far. Sometimes going after the singles would produce another covey before you got to the singles from the first. That didn’t happen every time but often enough it wasn’t a huge surprise. A lot of the time we would never find the singles just like Mr. Lytle did in the twenties and thirties.
I remember hunting near Warrensburg Missouri in the 1980’s, probably. Dennis Garrison and I were hunting along the southern edge of a farm when a dog pointed in the fence row. If the birds flushed south they would be off the place we were hunting but they flushed right down the fence row. We started down the fence row and a dog went on point. Thinking it was a single we walked in and another covey flushed. It also flew down the fence line to the east. Before we got where the first covey had landed the dogs went on point and we flushed another covey. That was 3 coveys of quail in about a hundred yards.
The place on the south was pasture and we were hunting the edge of a harvested soy bean field. I think, probably, the quail lived on the pasture land and fed on the soy bean field in the fall. We had timed out arrival at the same time all 3 coveys had come to the soy bean field. We hunted the place later and never found that many birds again.
Dennis and I had a really good hunt on Shell Osage Wildlife area, once. Probably more than once because we hunted it most years, a long time ago. When we got to the Conservation area the highway crews were mowing the road sides near where we were hunting. Just off the Conservation ground there were a couple of combines harvesting the row crops.
We never thought much about it but when we turned the dogs loose they were on point, immediately. We only walked a short distance and had a limit of quail each. At the time, I didn’t think about the highway crews and the farmers harvesting the row crops.
Abby pointing a pigeon.
I talked my wife, June, into going back the next day and videoing my hunt. I thought as many birds as we had seen the day before it would make a good video. Long story short, we never found very many birds, at all. I think I had a couple that she didn’t get on film. I had a bird dog, named Judy, that I had worked on water retrieves a bunch. I told June to get ready and I would throw a quail out in one of the lakes and have Judy retrieve.
I wound up and heaved a quail way out in the lake and told Judy to fetch. Normally, Judy would hit the water like a lab, splashing water everywhere, on her entry. Not today with the camera on her. She strolled out into the lake. I thought she would have to swim but the water was only, maybe a foot deep. Judy strolled out to the quail, sat down and started eating the bird. I told June to turn the camera off and started yelling at Judy. I looked at June and she’s laughing and still filming. She got the whole thing on tape.
Hunting near where grain is being harvested really puts the birds in the cover, sometimes. I was hunting alone near Atchison, Kansas a lot of years ago. I had taken 12 hours off at the fire station and had to be at work at 6:30 pm. Usually it wasn’t a problem to get home in time to get to work. The place I was hunting was 320 acres and I hunted the east side without finding much but when I got to a mile long fence line on the west side the dogs started pointing birds. Pheasants and quail.
I wrote about finding this Browning 17 years after it had been stolen from me. I wrote about it in October of 2013.
To say I was having a bad day shooting is not even close. I don’t remember how many bullets I started the day with but I shot all I had with me and went back to the truck to get more. The dogs were pointing birds as we went back to the truck and I had no bullets to shoot. I got more shells and went back. I finally, got a limit of quail and a couple of pheasants. I made it to work on time but just barely.
The last week hasn’t been a complete bust. I haven’t been hunting but a couple of times I have worked dogs on retrieving. The puppies, Abby and Josie, I throw a paint roller cover for them in the kennel. I have a narrow part of the big pen in front of their kennel. I put a check cord on them and throw the paint roller cover against the gate. Most of the time they come back to me with the roller cover but the check cord is in case they try to go around me. I only throw it about 5 times each.
For the older dogs, Sally, Tur Bo, Luke and Mann, I put 8 dummies in a row about 4 feet apart. I heel the dogs, one at a time, to the end of the line and whoa them. Tur Bo taught me to do this exercise. I sent him after a dummy and he went out, grabbed it and came back. As soon as I took it from him he went after another. He went almost completely down the line. For some reason he lost the line on the last two. I walked a little closer and he brought those two, also.
Mann on point.
I realized this would make them take a line if I worked them all, like this. Mann is pretty good about taking the line and he’s faster than even Tur Bo on going out and coming back but he’s been to Lyon’s Den for force fetch. Sally doesn’t go as fast and I have to walk her along the line a little more than the others but she will learn. Luke is special. I bring him out because he expects me to. I don’t try very hard to get him to retrieve. He’s retired and he doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to do.
I’m hoping, that next week I will be able to get back to hunting. There are several places and several states I want to try.
Allie backing Mann who is honoring Tur Bo.