Our season got going in earnest with our annual trip to Wisconsin for grouse and Woodcock. With reports of good numbers of birds we were anticipating a good hunt. The first day didn’t disappoint. We had some good dog work, saw good numbers of birds, and ended up with Grouse for dinner. A nice start that left us looking forward to more of the same. Unfortunately it didn’t turn out that way. The next day we awoke to this:
It stayed cold and the snow crusted over which made it difficult for us or the dogs to get anywhere near the birds. Bird numbers were good but dog work was hard to come by- almost all flushes were out of trees or just heard at a distance somewhere. This combined with unprecedented hunting pressure really put a damper on our trip. While hunting pressure has been building up for several years the pandemic seems to have pushed it over the top. After 30+ years this is hard to say, but we’ll be looking for somewhere else to hunt next fall.
As always it was nice to spend time with friends, even with COVID precautions in place, and to put the miles in with the dogs. Despite limited opportunities to handle birds most of our young dogs showed us they knew what they were trying to do. We had some house keeping to do on the last day and we got some fun photos in the process.
Our camper shell has sides that open up and the girls were a bit intimidated by it.
One particularly cold and stormy day produced what might just be the highlight of our trip:
We put some venison in the freezer in November then regrouped and headed to southwest Idaho for our annual Chukar trip. After a couple seasons of limited birds on which to develop our youngsters we found enough to see all of them put it together and make points on wild birds. We knew they were good dogs – we’d seen their potential even with limited experience – so it was gratifying to see it come to fruition.
Heather came to us from Bob Mele’s Thornplum Kennel and she’s turning into a really nice dog. Here’s a shot of her pointing a pair of huns.
I can’t resist sharing this story. Heather had only seen a couple wild flushes before this hunt so I was thrilled to see her point this covey and make a couple more points after following them up. But her first point was the night before. She got “birdy”, worked down to a Juniper Tree, then pointed right under the tree. Chukars didn’t seem possible there and she was only 30 yards away so I figured she had a Jackrabbit. Two steps later a Mountain Lion jumps out of the Juniper and trots off. I’ll never walk past another Juniper without taking a look in the upper branches.
In the end we had a great season. Despite the rough start in Wisconsin we had a really nice hunt in Idaho that allowed us to make a lot of progress developing and evaluating the dogs. We couldn’t be happier with a batch of young dogs and look forward to seeing them develop further next year. Until then…
Sorry that the WI hunt turned out to be a bust. We had poor weather over in Marquette for almost all of October with either wind, rain or both. I was up there five weeks and had maybe one day a week of decent weather. We had snow in mid October that stuck around for several days and it came in quite heavy towards the end of the month.
Looking forward to a better 2021 hunt.
Thanks, love to hear from. Any puppies yet?
Thanks for the update with such beautiful pictures. Glad to hear the dogs performed well, what beautiful places to be out enjoying.
We look forward to the 2021 litter updates, hope they all go well.
I believe that was a record snowfall for WI, if I remember correctly. Surprised by your comment about increasing numbers of hunters where you go. That was true of deer hunters around where I live, but not bird hunters. Almost seems as if grouse/wc hunters are a thing of the past except for early season fair weather hunters.. Bad for the future of the sport, but good for people like my wife and me who like solitude in the woods and little competition. They have been logging the county forest (135,000+ acres) intensely for about the past 4 years. We’ve got incredible habitat basically right out our front door and it only promises to get better as young forest regenerates. Don’t have to drive more than a 15 mile radius from our house. BUT…the main purpose of my comment…What great looking dogs!! Thanks for the email and pictures.
I should have said record October snow fall.