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.
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.
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.
Can’t wait to follow Dusty and Heather over the next few years. Will be just about the time ready for another October setter.
Happy Thanksgiving Cliff and Lisa!
Some GREAT looking dogs. Thanks for sharing your comments on your WI hunting trip.