We made our annual Grouse and Woodcock trip in October. We started in Wisconsin visiting some of our regular haunts to see if the pressure was a fluke last year. Unfortunately it wasn’t. Two patches of really nice cover with zero birds and another five truck caravan of “hunters” racing up a dirt road was enough to confirm we need to find new places to hunt. So we spent a lot of time exploring parts of the region we’ve never hunted before. It paid off.
Cliff and Piper With GrouseLisa With Autumn On Point
We had a good trip with decent numbers of Grouse and nice dog work. Woodcock were few and far between this year, maybe due to warm weather and not much migratory movement yet(?). It was also nice to see old friends, as usual. All in all it was a very enjoyable trip.
Of course the real highlight was the dog work. We didn’t have any puppies this year but we have a batch of young females we’ve been developing over the past couple years. We need to add them to our web site so we took plenty of photos. We’ll share some of them here.
“Autumn”
“Dusty”
“Ginger”
“Heather”
“Tillie”
Once we get through November, A.K.A meat procurement month, we’ll look forward to chasing Chukars in Idaho for the rest of the winter.
The pups have moved outside and they’re beginning to explore the yard. The weather was cold yesterday so they didn’t last that long but here’s a short video.
Thistle’s pups have turned into puppies and are playing with us and each other. They’re almost ready to move to their outside quarters. Here’s some video we shot this evening.
Thistle and Feather both whelped their puppies over night on the 17-18th of June with about four hours between litters. Needless to say it was a busy night. Thistle had nine pups (6 males, 3 females) and Feather had four (two males, two females). All are doing great. Thistle’s milk supply wasn’t quite keeping up so Feather volunteered to help out by adopting two of her pups. Here’s some video we shot today.
Here’s a short video we shot of the puppies eating lunch today. They’re all doing great and adapting nicely to their new digs out in the kennel. Enjoy.
Blaze whelped her litter on March 26. Only two pups, both males. They’re doing great. What a difference from the last litter – they always have fat bellies. Here’s a short video.
Breeders of Classic foot hunting English Setters from Ryman and other close working bloodlines.
