Tag: pheasants

Stinky Dog

What is the attraction to dogs with dead disgusting thoroughly gross smelling animal carcasses?  And it’s not only animal carcasses, it’s animal poop, urine or the likes that dogs love.  Charlie especially.  The more wretched the better.  I’ve lost track of the number of times Charlie would be off exploring on our walks, then come racing back to me with a proud expression of excitement on him, as if he’d won the lottery.  He would smell so bad I would barely be able to get close enough to put the lease on him and take him home for a bath in the basement garage.  Because no dog will come into my house smelling like that. 

This hunting trip was no different.  Monday, last day of the trip, Mitch and I were working a small stand of tall prairie grass, about the width of a football field and the double the length.  Perfect for four hunters, but also manageable for two.  We’d made the trip from one end to the other without any success and decided to walk back through one more time, just to give it a complete sweep.  I was in the middle of the field and Mitch was close to the south edge, when I heard Mitch hollering at Charlie, “No Charlie, get up.  Quit!”

I asked him what was up and Mitch told me that Charlie had found a deer carcass and did the stop, drop and roll.  He came up thoroughly pleased with himself.  Charlie came running over to me for a whiff.  Lucky me.  Both Mitch and I said simultaneously, “You’re getting a bath today, Buster!”

Feeling sorry for the dead deer and sorrier for me, because I was the giver of bathes, I restarted working the field.  We hadn’t made it twenty feet when Charlie came upon more remains of another dead deer.  Thinking he’d hit the jackpot, Charlie dive bombed head first into the disgusting pile of bones, fur and flesh.  I yelled at him to stop, but he was in stinky dog nirvana.  I finally had to use his shock collar to get him to stop.  Charlie was so proud of himself, he strutted up to Orso with his head high, as if to say I am the king of stink!  Smell me I smell absolutely wonderful. 

What a stinker, literally.

Hunting Pictures

Mitch adjusting his shell belt – getting ready for the morning hunt

Charlie is barely able to contain his excitement – eager to race around looking for BIRDS!

Prairie grass and Cedar trees – Pheasant haven

Learning Something New

This year on the annual “Great Pheasant Hunt” the weather was more cooperative.  Saturday was sunny and chilly around 38 degrees to start the day.  Too windy, with sustained winds around 20 miles an hour, but it was dry, no rain or snow.  Not too bad all things considered.  AJ and Charlie were beside themselves with energy and excitement for the upcoming event.  Orso was just along for the ride, as usual.  No interest in hunting, just happy to be with us. 

Even though we’ve been pheasant hunting for decades, Mitch for almost five decades and me for twelve years, every year we either learn something new or a better way to prepare for hunting.  Because we don’t get the opportunity to go hunting as often as we would like nor do we work the dogs as much as they need to stay at the top of their game, the first day has always been very chaotic.  The dogs have so much pent up excitement at finally being able to do the one thing they were bred for, hunt birds.

Fifteen minutes into our first morning, we always tell each other that next year we need to come up a day earlier than everyone else to wear the dogs out a bit and never do.  This year was no different, but now we’ve added a twist, next year we plan on getting set up about an hour before the others and work the dogs away from where we plan on hunting, so as not to chase off any pheasant that may be loitering in the area.  We definitely don’t need any more handicaps. 

This brilliant idea came to me watching the dogs the second morning totally out of control running through six foot plus tall dense prairie grass, losing sight of them almost immediately.  I stomped down the hill and up to Mitch, poor unsuspecting soul, and said, “I have a thought.  This area is too hard to manage the dogs with all of this energy.  We need to slow them down.  I think that we should take them across the draw to the open hilly field and run them to burn off some of their exuberance.  What do you think?”

Mitch was experiencing as much frustration as I was and quickly agreed.  We both knew that there were birds laying low in dense grasses and didn’t want the dogs to scatter them.  So we called everyone out of the prairie grass, called the dogs and regrouped.  As expected one was missing.  AJ was nowhere to be found.  I told Mitch to hold on to both Charlie and Orso while I tromped off to find AJ.  Orso, thinking he was going to miss something immediately started wailing so I told Mitch to let him come with me.  I found AJ heading back to the cars having lost us.  After getting all of us together, Mitch explained our plan and off we headed across the electric fence that we always forget to unplug until one of us remembers the hard way.  Everyone else that hasn’t touched the fence yet laughs at the victim, really glad it wasn’t them. 

Even though it was only 40 degrees, the dogs found the pond at the bottom of the dam a refreshing swim.  Brrr.  Hydrated and renewed, the dogs bolted off up the open ground.  We started yelling, “Whoa!” as soon either Charlie or AJ got too far ahead of us.  The plan was to keep both of them working close to us.  Orso wasn’t a problem never straying too far ahead, as I constantly clomped him in the jaw with my heel.  He prefers to let me clear a path, less effort on his part. 

After walking and working the dogs from one end of Todd’s land to other, we succeeded in taking some of the out of control excitement out of them.  We decided it was time to head back to the tall prairie grass and give it a thorough sniffing.  The dogs worked wonderfully and rewarded us with two more birds.

Who says you can’t teach old dogs new tricks?

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.

Pheasant Hunting Watching the Dogs Work

Great White Hunters? (final excerpt)

Mitch waited until Todd left and said, “There are never any birds in these places.  My father would take us into the woods all the time and there were never any birds in the woods.  Oh well, let’s go and get this over with and then we can head over the hill and down into the back side of this field.” 

Against Todd’s advice, Mitch decided that we would both go down into the draw.  The draw had a mixture of snow and frozen mud.  There wasn’t really any easy way down the slopes into the draw.  The good news was that there was a wide open area with very few trees that I could use to slide down to get in the middle of the draw, because I could tell it was not going to be a question of if I was going to slip and fall, but when.

Once down in the draw, we both started off toward the other end with the dogs going back and forth, in and out and not having the trouble I was having keeping my balance.  What looked like snow up top was actually ice-crusted snow up close.  Carrying the gun, not falling on my butt and dropping the gun was immediately more important to me than “no birds.”  Not too safe, huh.  Mitch got up ahead of me about twenty feet and saw what Todd was talking about.  At the backside of the draw, there were birds everywhere.  There were chukars and pheasants just milling around the tree line and the junk farm pieces.  He couldn’t get close enough fast enough.  The dogs were on the birds making them scatter and fly.  Mitch started shooting his gun at the birds and nothing was dropping.  I was down in the bottom of the draw trying to get up the slick icy sides of the slope.  As I was crawling up the hillside, I could hear the gunfire and the birds cackling and the whump whump whump of their wings flapping and Mitch cussing and yelling for me to get up there and help out, and I couldn’t get up the hill.  Just as I had crawled almost up to the top, the shotgun sling slipped down my shoulder.  As I grabbed a tree root to pull up on, the shotgun slid off my arm and slid down the hill back to the bottom.  I looked at the gun at the bottom of the hill and then turned my head back up to where I had almost reached, just inches away from level ground, debating whether or not to slide back down to the bottom of the hill.  I was seriously considering just leaving the gun down there, but I couldn’t, it had been a Valentine’s Day gift.  Still holding the tree root, I turned and sat on my butt.  Then I let go of the root with one hand and pushed off with the other.  Sliding down the hill with only lycra running tights and canvas field pants as a buffer between my backside and crusty ice. 

Mitch was still shooting at birds and screaming, “Susan get up here!  Where are you?  I can’t do this by myself!”

Digging my heels in to stop my slide at the bottom, I just missed a close encounter with a large tree stump.  I yelled, “I’m trying, but I can’t get out of here!”

I picked up my gun and crawled upward again.  I realized that day, that not giving up is essential to hunting.  By the time I finally got out of the draw and topside, all of the birds were gone.  Mitch didn’t hit anything.  Oh yeah, we sure cleaned out the birds for Todd; they flew over the road to the neighbors land.

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.

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.