Author: susank456

I love to be outdoors, hiking, pheasant hunting, playing with my dogs. And I love to take pictures of the things I see and write about my experiences. I don't take life too seriously, I poke fun at myself and just about everybody else. I've gotten selfish as I've gotten older.

Great White Hunters?

This year we have been experiencing a real winter, with cold temperatures and snow.  Mitch told me this would be “real” pheasant hunting (you mean all the other times weren’t?).  This was going to be a short trip, just a weekend trip with an overnight stay.  So I didn’t need to pack my whole wardrobe, I was reminded.  But I would need to think COLD and pack “warm”, in other words, my whole wardrobe.  Can’t have too many layers. 

When we got to Todd’s preserve there was another group of hunters just heading off in the direction that we normally went.  Todd came walking over to us and we caught up on what had been going on since November.  The morning was cold with a strong wind out of the north and there were heavy clouds, looking like it could start snowing soon.

Todd said, “I’m going to take you to a different place to hunt this morning.  It’s over by my house and there are lots of pheasant and chukkar that have escaped and are just hanging out around in that area.  I want to get that area cleaned out.”

It didn’t matter to us where we hunted as long as there were birds, and this sounded like it would be just too easy, so we said sure.  We loaded the dogs back into the car and followed Todd over to the property close to his home.  Mitch pulled the station wagon in and parked alongside Todd’s truck.  We got out and surveyed the area.  We had never been to this area before and felt kind of special, like we had made it to the inner circle or something.  There was about 200 acres of more land that Todd owned.  To our left was a corn stubble field, in front of us were small hills and down over the hill was a wooded area.  But Todd wanted us to work a small wooded draw off to our immediate right.  It started at the road and went back into his property about the length of a football field.  It wasn’t very big at all.  Along side of the draw on the left were old junk, parts of some farm machinery, tubes that looked like they were part of a silo and various other sundry items.  On the right side of the draw was where he kept some cattle at the edge of his family lands.  So we had to be careful about shooting in that direction.  Down in the draw we could see a winding creek and open ground with no cover except for the tall trees growing out of the draw.

Mitch was clearly skeptical and we were both a little disappointed.  We thought that we were going to “hunter’s heaven” and here we were standing at the edge of what looked like a huge waste of time.  But outwardly Mitch didn’t show any of his disappointment to Todd.  Todd told us to start at the street and work our way to the back and we could go to our left and work the cornfield and after that we would go farther into the fields.  Todd suggested that one of us stay up top on the outside edge on the right side of the draw and the other one go down in the middle and work our way back.  Todd said he had some things to do and would come back by in about an hour and see how we had done.

Maybe One Day

The official word from the Conservation Department has been that there are no Mountain Lions around here.  That maybe, even though there have been photographic evidence and a few that have been hit by cars, those must have been traveling through on their way to someplace else.  Where, I’m not sure. But I would like to think that there are Mountain Lions around, it would let me at least pretend that I might get to see one someday.  Bear in mind I don’t want to be a statistic, but I would like to get a picture of one.  Not likely that it will ever happen, since I usually walk the dogs at 4:30 in the morning.  My camera is not that good. 

Today when I took the dogs down to the woods by the house for a snow romp and some much needed exercise for me, the dogs promptly found skeletal remains of a fairly large animal.  Charlie came carrying a joint.  It was part of two bones connected with a joint, maybe an elbow or knee.  Each bone section was about a foot long.  AJ found part of a spine.  The remains looked like it had been a good sized animal, bigger than a raccoon or opossum.  Maybe a young deer.  I’m also guessing the animal that killed it was fairly good sized too.  Coyote, Bobcat or maybe just maybe a Mountain Lion.

My Snow Dogs?

I’ve noticed that this year the dogs aren’t as excited about the cold and snow as in years past.  The trio would wrestle and play, eating so much snow that I would have to stop them for fear of an impending stomachache.   AJ was and still is content to stay fairly close to me and be ever watchful.  Charlie used to run as fast as he could through the snow with his head down scooping up as much snow as he could, dining and dashing, so to speak.  This year he has started lifting up a paw to shake off the cold and not showing the past interest in “snow to go”.  Orso is still young enough to want to run full steam at either AJ or Charlie and slam the closest victim to the ground, which usually provokes a sharp growl and a biting snap followed by a show of contriteness on Orso’s part.  Then it’s game on, but it doesn’t last for nearly as long as last year. 

Yesterday I was home working on getting ready for this year’s taxes, and thought that I should take the dogs for an outing, but when I looked for them, all three were snuggled down on the bed, sound asleep.  They have definitely embraced the indoor life.

Smell Your Dog’s Feet

My dog’s feet smell like Fritos.  We don’t buy Fritos, so I have no idea why they do.  Go figure.

Second Hunting Trip

Be careful what you wish for – you just might get it.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that and how many times it has come true.  When we went hunting in November the weather was warm, too warm and dry for pheasant hunting.  We still had a good time, but hoped for colder weather when we went again in December and boy did we get it.  The first morning was 10 degrees with 25 mile an hour winds out of the north.  Talk about brutal!  After the first half hour, my fingers finally quit hurting from the cold, even though I was wearing silk glove liners under my shooting gloves. I had on so many layers, I looked like a little chunky monkey running around out in the field.  I had on a turtleneck and a shirt over that.  I wore a hunting vest AND a heavy field coat with an insulated liner.  I wore field pants and over-pants over that.  I even wore a bandana across my face to keep my face from freezing.  My face and hands were the coldest.  The rest wasn’t so bad.  Until I faced the north, then it was misery.

The dogs worked extra hard trying to pick up a scent and nail down the bird.  Pheasants would rather run than fly when it’s super cold and windy, making it really hard for the dogs to track.  AJ was dead on this time.  I think he is at his best when the weather is at its worst.  He worked back and forth making zigzags in the tall prairie grass chasing a bird for more than a half hour.  The bird finally flew when he ran out of cover.  As Charlie gets older, he just gets better.  At six years old, this was his best year ever. He picked up scents and would sound like a vacuum cleaner sucking up and sorting all of the smells out there.  Mitch and I shot eight of the eleven birds taken.  We did pretty good.   As Mitch always tells anyone who asks, you get more birds when you stay with the dogs.  They know where the birds are.

Another Hunting Trip

We just got home from pheasant hunting in Central Nebraska.  There were ups and downs with the trip.  We even made a few discoveries.  We bagged eight birds.  That was an up.  The weather was way too hot, 75 degrees with 25 mile an hour winds.  That was a down.   We walked through prairie grass fields that were six feet tall plus in spots.  And so dense I couldn’t see the dogs with their neon colored bandanas through the tall thin reeds right in front of me.  When one of the dogs would flush a bird, it would hang suspended in the sky for just a split second before it caught the wind and take off making that whump, whump, whump, sound like a helicopter.  They were very hard to hit in the high winds and when one was shot, the pheasant were hard to find in the dense grass.

Charlie was the star of the hunting trip.  This was his best year ever.  He didn’t range out too far, stayed in close and checked on us frequently to see where we were in the tall grass.  He flushed two birds right off and retrieved both of them.

One of our discoveries was that not all hunting dog breeds are hunters.  Mitch has had such high hopes for Orso, our chocolate lab.  Orso, the water dog that doesn’t especially like water, doesn’t retrieve and doesn’t use his nose to hunt.  He is four years old and has absolutely no interest in pheasant hunting.  His idea of pheasant hunting is chasing after Charlie and AJ in the field to see what they are doing and then running back full bore into me to make sure I’m still there.  Try walking on uneven terrain carrying a seven pound shotgun, wearing an ammo belt full of shotgun shells and a quart of water and have a ninety pound dog bash into you. 

Mitch shot a pheasant and before picking it up called Orso over to find the bird, hoping he would show some interest in the dead bird.  Orso walked up to the bird, put his paw on it and preceded to start pulling feathers off of the bird.  A huge no-no.  Then it even got worse.   I shot a bird and called the dogs to find the bird.  After not getting the retrieve as quickly as I thought they should, I ran down the hill to where the bird dropped and there was Orso and now AJ pulling the feathers out of the bird.  Orso was teaching bad habits to our best hunting dog.  That was definitely a down.  Needless to say, Orso is not going on any future hunting trips with us.

A Short Insight to Charlie

We got Charlie as a puppy and with us has never known a day as an outside dog.  His daddy was a great big chocolate lab and his mom was a little German shorthair.  Needless to say he was an accident.  Charlie is small by my standards.  He weighs about 65 pounds (5 pounds too much) and favors his mother in appearance.  Long shorthair ears, short hair and pointer shaped head.  Charlie got his chocolate coloring from his dad.  He was such a happy puppy that loved all things.  He would run through the house with his ears flying back.  He had this wide eyed look of wonder,  until he was attacked twice by a neighbor’s dog.  Since then he has hated that woman and all of her dogs.  Her dog set him on a path of animal aggression  so bad at one point, we considered euthanasia.  We contracted a dog behavioralist who helped us learn to spot the signs of aggression and how correct them.  But we still are very vigilant with Charlie around other dogs and people.

As a hunting dog, Charlie is an excellent hunter.  He has a great nose, a beautiful point and fast as the wind.  Plus he has the energy to boot.  We have to continually call him back because he will range out too far and flush a bird almost in the next county.  He makes me look good in the field by his intensity in searching out the bird.  The dog never stops hunting.  Even at home on walks, he is always on the hunt. 

We have a hunting trip coming soon and have been working to get into “hunting form” again.  This past summer was such a hot one, we let the refresher training slide.  I think Charlie will be in fine form, with the cooler weather, his energy level has increased.