New tricks

I’m sure everyone who hunts with dogs can talk of new tricks their dogs learn to help us be more successful. No matter which upland bird we hunt. The more we hunt particular birds, the more our dogs learn how to handle them. Grady, like my past dogs has become very good at figuring out how to get me more shooting. He has chukars and huns figured out. I mentioned in a previous post about him waiting over the ridge for me and than Hustling over the next ridge and creeping over the top of it. I would head that way and before I could get to the ridge he disappeared on, my alpha would say he had treed his quarry. I have my alpha set on treeing mode so that I know he has been on point for 45 seconds. That’s just my preference. He was still over 100 yards away and this is what I came over the ridge to see.

This picture is zoomed in from about 80 yards but I knew that he had gone around and stopped the birds, pinning them down between him and me. They held for a good shot and Grady was happy to get a bird in his mouth.

Shortly later, I watched him make a big loop and come back on some birds. He had either seen the birds running or smelled them from a distance. This point was with the wind at his back and once again zoomed in from a distance. As open as it was, the birds held about twenty yards in front of Grady and flushed at about fourty yards from me.

Once again, We were both tickled to put a chukar in my vest.

This has been a very different year and I’ve never seen the birds so skiddish. For the most part they’ll fly from the opposite ridge as soon as they see us. But Grady has figured out a way to get them to hold. That only comes with hours and hours of being in the chukar hills. And being there with a purpose. He knows what we’re trying to accomplish. There is no way to train for that experience.

Now quail are a different bird. Once in a while we will run into a covey of quail in a draw and he’ll point them at first but as I approach he starts yipping and watchung them fly in every direction. I’m sure if I hunted them more he’d figure them out but they aren’t what we are out there for.

Grady and I had a fun day and could have got our limit of birds if I’d shot better but we were pretty happy with what we came home with for how wild these birds are this year.

I might have done a little learning yesterday also. I don’t plan on going out and testing my theory soon but here’s my lesson learned yesterday. Grady and I took the 2 1/2 hour drive to the reservoir for a hunt with less than 30 percent chance of percipitation. It didn’t look bad at first and I got a couple of points before we got a couple of miles up the ridge. We had no idea of what was coming in from the west.

We were headed for a spot that held lot’s of birds in the past but was quite a ways from the road. The clouds started getting pretty dark as they came over the ridge and after Grady picked up our second bird I knew we’d better head back to the truck.

The clouds were moving fast and there was some thunder with them. I had never hunted chukars in a lightening storm before but was now stuck in one. Grady wasn’t too thrilled with the blasts of thunder and was staying pretty close. None of my dogs have liked being wet in the cold and hunting and I assumed Grady was the same. But as soon as the lightening subsided he started ranging out and hunting. It was still raining pretty good and all I wanted to do was get to the truck. I was through for the day. But no matter how cold and wet we are, we have to honor our dogs points. With my camera hanging in the dry bag over my shoulder, I moved in on at least a half a dozen points in an area we had already come through. Shooting through the rain dripping off the brim of my hat I somehow had a limit of chukars by the time we got back to the truck.

Grady had retrieved every bird to me but on the last one he stopped and stripped all the feathers off the chukars neck and breast. He ate the head. The breast meat was fine but I think he might have been ready to eat it. I don’t know if he was just getting that cold or what, but it was something he has never done before.

Soaked we were ready to jump into the truck and get the heater running. Everything was soaked and I threw it on the back seat floor with no plans of taking success pictures. I turned the seat heat on both the passenger and driver seats where Grady and I would eat our lunch on the way home. Grady and I discussed our outing and figured that chukars will hold tighter in the rain. We also figured we didn’t give a damn. We’ll take flighty birds in the sun over tight holding rainy day birds.

We finally got comfortable and drove the long ride home. After taking all the wet gear out of the truck I decided to take a success picture for a rainy day memory.

I have to say, I think those chukars will taste better than the ones we got the other day. Birds earned the hard way always do.