I roaded my dogs this morning instead of training. It’s getting close enough to the season to start getting them in shape. I’m probably a little late as it is. My plan is to road them every other day for a while.
Tur Bo always pulls.
Sally’s first roading session.
Seventeen minutes into the roading session for Luke and Betsy.
I roaded Tur Bo and Sally together. Tur Bo likes the roading experience and pulls from the time he is hooked up until I quit. This was Sally’s first time and I thought she might learn from Tur Bo. Not so much. She pulled part of the time but she let the harness drag her part of the time.
About 17 minutes into the roading of Tur Bo and Sally, Vince Dye, called me. When I found a shady spot I stopped to talk to him. I had gotten Betsy from him and I asked if she had ever been roaded. He wasn’t sure but thought she had been. While I talked to Vince both dogs stood right where they had stopped. When I finished talking I roaded them about 3 more minutes then kenneled them.
I put the roading harness on Luke and Betsy. When I crawled onto the 4-wheeler Betsy laid down right in front of the front tire. I don’t know if this means she has been roaded or not but I had to get off and move her. Luke doesn’t pull much but he usually keeps the line taut. Betsy pulled to start with but later let the harness pull her. I took their picture after 17 or 18 minutes just to compare with the first pair then went about 3 minutes longer then back to the kennel.
I wasn’t going to road Lucky and Dolly because of their age. Lucky was 13 the last of May and Dolly was eleven in February. But I felt guilty. The other dogs had had some attention and I should give them some also. I put the harness on them. I took them to the back and where I had stopped and taken pictures of the others I took their picture. They both were pulling so well I went all the way to the front and back to the kennel. Maybe 5 minutes of roading.
Even the dogs that were being pulled by the harness ran with their tail up. Not a single dog acted as if this wasn’t fun for them. I think if I continue to road them they will enjoy it more.
A friend, Mike Devero, loaned me a book, Gun Dogs Afield, written by Horace Lytle. It was stories that he had written over the years for 3 different magazines: Field and Stream, Sports Afield and Country Life. This book went back to the 1920’s and 1930’s. He was griping about how the singles from a covey of quail didn’t act like they did just a few years before. This was almost a hundred years ago.
I can remember having quail fly only 75 yards, spread out and hold for the dogs. Some times you would find another covey before you got to the singles. But that was when I first started hunting quail, back in the late 1960’s and 70’s.
Lucky just waiting.
Many times the quail would flush down a fence row. The dogs would work down the fence row and with a hunter on each side not many got away.
Today, most people who have hunted quail for several years know that the singles don’t act like they should or at least like some of them did in the past. Now I find out that Horace Lytle was having the same problem almost a hundred years ago.
Several years ago I was hunting in north east Kansas. As I came up a draw I saw a covey of quail flush out of the end of a finger that came off the draw. They flushed at least a 100 yards ahead of the dogs. I watched the covey fly to the top of a hill and spread out in a pocket of weeds that had been left by the farmer.
They spread out so well and the cover was really good, so I thought, “I’ve got you”! That pocket of weeds was only about 30 yards by 100 yards and I went over it 3 or 4 times and never saw a quail. I got a couple of points but the dogs knew they were just hot spots and moved as soon as I got close.
Another friend, Dennis Garrison, told me about hunting in south east Kansas. He got a covey of quail up and watched it fly through a hedge row. He just knew the birds were just on the other side. When he came through the hedge row several guys were eating lunch on the back of their truck. They told Dennis that the birds had come through the hedge row, flew down the hedge row and crossed back through it. He never found them.
Dolly She doesn’t seem to be 11 1/2 years old.
If you have a young dog and can get a covey to act half way right you can make a bird dog out of them. A lot of years ago I took Lady near Hale Missouri. She was about a year old. I parked near a harvested soy bean field that had just a small pasture near by. The pasture had been grazed down but there was a small ditch with just a little more cover than the open areas. Near the soy bean field was a spot about 20 feet around that was head high horse weeds. Lady started around the horse weeds and went on point.
When I walked in a large covey of quail flushed and flew down the ditch. I killed at least one on the covey rise. The birds had flown to the south and we had a north wind so I took Lady way around and brought her back into the singles with the wind in her face.
Those birds were spread out perfect. The quail held and were spread out so that each time she pointed a single quail flushed. I killed a limit of quail out of this covey and she pointed and retrieved each one. After that she was a bird dog.
When Dolly was about a year old we did almost the same thing. Don Bowlen and I were hunting in north east Kansas. We had put on a lot of miles and not done very well. Actually, we hadn’t killed a bird. About 4:00 pm I stopped at a place and Don said he was too tired to hunt another place. I started to go on home but he insisted I go. It was an 80 acre place. He would drive the truck around and pick me up on the other corner. Only 3/4 mile walk.
I only turned Dolly out. We went down a good fence row for a quarter of a mile then turned back west on a hedge row. She went on point just after we had turned to the west. I walked in and a big covey flushed, with some on my side. I dropped one in a harvested corn field and Dolly retrieved. Most of the covey flew on west along the hedge row.
About a hundred yards down the corn field stopped and the cover was short CRP. Dolly went down through the hedge row and the CRP pointing singles. I killed 7 of an 8 bird limit, out of that covey. Dolly retrieved most of them.
Dolly was 9 months old when she started hunting. She started off pointing birds but having 7 killed in a row with almost no time in between certainly helped make her a better dog.
I won’t kill that many birds out of one covey anymore with an older dog but with a pup, I might. We need to conserve what birds we have. Instead of counting how many birds I kill I’m going to count how many different coveys I can find and how many points the dogs make.
Lucky and Dolly in the shade.
Betsy being pulled along.
Dolly