Tag: hunting

Who Takes a Cell Phone Hunting?

First morning of the annual “Great Pheasant Hunt” was a crisp sunny morning about 38 degrees with 20 mile an hour sustained winds out of the south.  This made it a challenge for the dogs trying to catch a promising scent.  The windy conditions made it a challenge for us too.  The dogs quickly disappear in the six foot plus tall prairie grasses.  So we have to stop, watch for movement of the grass and listen for the sounds of someone or something moving in the dense grasses.  This is to determine where my fellow hunters or the dogs are, which direction they are moving and which way I will go. 

We hadn’t walked fifty feet when a pheasant bolted for the sky catching us all off guard.  We watched its’ flight and marked where it landed, so we would get a second shot (literally) at the bird.  Moving on, we headed in the direction of where the pheasant landed, the dogs were almost out of control with pent up excitement and finally getting to do what they’ve waited a year to do.  Within twenty feet of where we had marked the bird’s landing spot, AJ was dead on the bird.  It took two shots, one from me and one from Mitch to take him down.  First morning jitters, I hoped.

 We started up the hill spread out to cut off any retreat of a wayward bird and to not shoot each other, intent on anything that flies, and ready to shoot at the first sound not belonging to one of the dogs when there was a melodious sound of a CELL PHONE RINGING!!!  Who brings a cell phone hunting?  I understand the safety factor of having a cell phone with us in case of an emergency, just like carrying identification so they can identify the body.  Not only did he answer the call, but went on to have a lengthy conversation with the caller.  The temptation to shoot the offending party was great but I refrained. Willpower…does a body good.

Ready to Go – First Morning of the Hunt

 

Color coded bandanas help keep track of who’s who in the field.

Happy Birthday Charlie

Charlie turns seven on Halloween. His date of birth sort of says it all when you describe him. He is the sweetest most lovable psycho dog anyone would ever want to own. One minute he’s sitting beside you looking up at you with the softest expression then a split second later his face changes and no one is sure who’s inside there looking out. It’s pretty unsettling to anyone who comes over.

 Charlie is animal aggressive thanks to a dog attacking him as a puppy owned by a woman that lives around here once in our yard and another time on an encounter while walking him. That pretty much set the tone for all other dogs in Charlie’s mind. We have to be very vigilant around other dogs. It has taken months of hard work to get him to play with our friends’ two dogs. When their two dogs and our three get together, we are all on guard for any change in the force.

We have our first pheasant hunting trip coming up shortly and now that he’ll be seven, we’re hoping that some of his exuberance at being out in the field doing what all of his instincts are screaming his brain to do (better known as running around in the field totally out of control, flushing birds a mile away) will be diminished. Not likely! But we’re holding on to hope. What can I say, I am a Pollyanna.

This year we’re going hunting with middle aged to senior citizen dogs. AJ is eleven, Charlie will be seven and Orso (non-hunting Lab) is five. Mitch is still optimistic about Orso. I don’t hold out much hope though. Maybe we’ll get to work the fields at a more sedate speed instead of the 4mph walks I’ve done in the past.

Fast and Deadly Charlie

Charlie once again proved that he is a fast and deadly hunter.  I’m not sure how I feel about it.  I let the three dogs out to do their business and Charlie shot up the steps, and disappeared behind the car before I could run up the steps behind him.  As I walked to the back of the car I heard a squeal and found Charlie flinging a squirrel to the ground.  Evidently he had run it down before the squirrel could get to the safety of a tree.  I called him off the wounded squirrel before he and the other dogs could finish it off.  The squirrel laid on the ground panting heavily for a few moments before getting up and scrambled to the closest tree, barely escaping death. 

I took the dogs back inside and checked Charlie for any wounds from the squirrel and found a couple of places below his right eye that looked like the squirrel had scratched him trying to get away.  I cleaned the scratches up and put ointment on them.  He looked up at me with a quizzical look of his face.  He wanted me to proud of him for his quickness and precision at snagging his prey and a part of me was.  I’m proud that he is fast and doesn’t have any hesitation when going after prey.  When we’re pheasant hunting it’s important that the dog is willing and without any hesitation, rushes into brush, tall grasses and plum thickets to flush and retrieve birds.  But at the same time I was appalled that he ran the squirrel down, grabbed it, flung it to the ground and if I hadn’t stopped him, he would have gone back in for the kill. 

Does that make me a hypocrite, it’s okay for us to hunt and shoot pheasants (we do eat them), but not let the dogs do what comes naturally to them?  It’s not like squirrels are on the endangered species list, and are terribly destructive, but somehow my sense of fair play was bothered by it all.  I felt bad for the squirrel and at the same time was proud that Charlie had once again proven that he will be an asset when we go pheasant hunting this fall.

Charlie Just Can’t Believe His Eyes

Charlie Always on the Hunt

Road Trip (first excerpt)

Mitch bought the Buddy Mobile, a 1978 Chevrolet Caprice Station wagon in 1999.  He bought it to replace his 1976 Chevrolet Suburban which had 300,000 miles on it and was very tired. We used it to haul Buddy, our yellow lab, around town and for all of our gear for hunting.  It was a good reliable wagon that got lots of abuse.  Mitch replaced the engine in it in 1995.  It was like a Timex watch, it took a lickin and kept on tickin.  It went through two engines and about 3 tons of dog hair and drool.  The air conditioning went out a few years ago, so in the warm weather with all of the windows down, the dog hair would swirl around like a mini tornado inside the car.  No matter how many times we would vacuum and clean the car, there was always dried dog slobber and nose prints on the windows.  There was also the aroma of “Eau de Dog” in the upholstery that no amount of little green trees could eliminate.

People would point at the dog heads hanging out of the windows as we drove along.  Sometimes I wasn’t so sure that people weren’t also pointing and laughing at us.  The car definitely was distinctive.  Well it now had over 300,000 miles logged on it, so we decided it was time to retire it and buy something newer for the dogs and hunting.

After I gave the go ahead to look, Mitch went on an online search for the best fit for the money.  He searched cross country and even got into online auctions on E-Bay.  We ended up as the high bidder on a 1995 Chevrolet Caprice Classic Station wagon.  Much newer, only 15 years old instead of 31 years old.  We are definitely moving up in the timeline.  Oh, did I mention that the car was in Boston, Massachusetts?  Since we live in Missouri this meant “Road Trip”.  Because I like to multitask, we decided to combine flying to Boston to check out the car and if it met our needs, then we would turn the drive back into a mini vacation.  I had Mitch pick up travel books from AAA for all of the states that would be on our journey home.

Pheasant Hunting Watching the Dogs Work

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.