Old hunters

A question on another upland bird site was posted this morning. It was phrased in a way to find out how many hunters still upland hunted after age 70. I was tickled to see how many of us there are. And the coolest part of it was how many answered that they were still hunting mainly because of the dog hunter relationship. I know that my dogs have always been the main force behind me getting up into the mountains more.

Take today as an example. I didn’t sleep well last night and had a bit of a head cold. A great reason to lie around the house. I was watcching t.v. when Grady jumped up on the couch with me. He just looked at me. I mentioned to him that I wasn’t feeling like going out today. He kept looking. I told Barb that Grady won, and I was going to take him for a short hike and try out my new GoPro. About 15 minutes into the hike, I was feeling much better and enjoying Grady sprinting across the hill looking for birds. Suddenly, I was having a blast on the mountain, just like I had been doing for years. I just needed that motivation.

By the time I got back down to the truck, I had covered just over four miles, and Grady had covered 13. I gained over 1400 feet of elevation. Not much difference from most of my hunts this year. We didn’t see many birds, but Grady had 6 points to help in the excitement. Two of them turned out to be false points. There was a lot of heavy breathing and more stops than in the past, but I got there. And I had a good time.

As an older hunter, I think we ought to be more impressed with what we can still do rather than depressed at what we can’t. It might take some ibuprofen or Advil to help with the aches, but watching the dogs do what they do is well worth it. It’s hard for me to imagine a life that doesn’t include me and a dog on a mountain.

Here’s Grady and me doing our thing a few days ago. In this first video, I made the mistake of coming in on his left. He made up for it by circling around behind me to keep me to the right, as we usually do.

This video and the next were taken with the bulky camera I have strapped to my chest. When I film with it, I don’t have a chance to shoot. This next video is Grady pointing chukars. I had no idea why he broke and relocated like he did. But he held tight as two small coveys busted. Two seconds after I turned the camera off, three more chukars flushed from right in front of us. I knew then why he stayed on point. In a hunting situation, I probably would have blown it by shooting at the first flush.

These next two videos were taken with a GoPro. I could have been shooting a gun while filming if the season were on with this camera. But I’m going to have to do some tweaking.

This last one is another pair of huns. It seemed so plain with the naked eye for me to see Grady relocating a few times on these birds, but it doesn’t seem so clear on the video. I’ll try to work on that.

Things are coming together pretty normally right now. It seems like most of the huns are paired up. Most of the chukars are still in coveys, but I’m finding a few pairs. I’m not seeing the carryover like in the past, but that’s probably because there weren’t as many birds out there this season.

Good time to work those dogs on birds right now. Keep those mutts in shape and work some of that fat from your bellies as well. Have fun.