DC 40 First Look!!

Finally got a DC 40 yesterday and we got a chance to try it out this morning. It feels lighter (the battery in my digital scale is dead) and seemed to work fine. I think the position on the neck is going to be more critical as the the gps antenna is built into the unit instead of being up on the collar. The end to those black fabric collars is a big plus. We went through a number of those before finding an aftermarket collar that worked. I didn't have a chance to put a shock collar on the with the DC until after we ran today. It looks like it should work fine and I'll try it out tomorrow.

In other news today, we finally took Mariah back in the woods. she had been doing great out in the field and keeping track of me as I zig zagged across the field so we took her out into the pole timber where she continued to be responsive and keep track. Towards the end of the session we got into some thicker cover and had to give her a little tap to get her back in and get her to the front. We'll keep working her by herself and keeping her close throughout the fall which should give us the opportunity to handle her into birds and kill some for her.


Mariah getting her first go back in the woods.

WHY??????????

You have to wonder sometimes why two grown men would get up early every morning to go out and thrash about in thick cover that most people wouldn't go through even if the bird season was open and they were guaranteed to get their limit. Then you have a moment like we did this morning when Ker-B went on point, Jack came in and backed, then when we were trying to flush, I looked down a a little patch of bare ground, and there sat a woodcock. I step back, took out my camera. and took three pictures then had to take another step closer to get the bird to fly. We don't have the birds that we've had in recent years but it's still exciting when we get one as cooperative as this one.

And if you don't think the cover we train is can be all that thick, take a look of this picture of Ker-B pointing the above bird.

Wet Monday Morning

PA Pro Joe McCarl during his week here in New Hampshire

It was still raining at 5:45 when the alarm went off. But it stopped shortly there after and a quick check of the noaa radar showed that the rain was over for the morning, so I met Tony at the gate at 6:30. The first brace had two finds, then we ran Ginger in what has consistently been our weakest section of the cover and had five finds which was most likely caused by two factors -- the fact that the experienced dogs always seem to find the birds especially this year as they seem to be buried in thicker cover and the rain seems to help bring (or keep) birds in the cover. Abbie and Trey ran together in a section where Saturday Jack had five finds and his bracemate off of Joe McCarl's truck bumped 3 or 4 more. This morning the majority of those birds weren't in the same place although Abbie did have one find standing withing 20 feet of where Jack had been on one of his finds on Saturday. They we took Trey and Abbie into a little corner near where we park the truck and usually miss. There were four birds stacked up there.

One of the dog's off Joe's truck pointing a woodcock.

Of the three young dogs Trey continues to hunt the hardest and show the most advanced manners around birds. Trip is finally figuring out the woods and has started finding birds on her own. Tom Parker, a neighbor who has a pack of bear dogs, has taken on the task of bringing on a young pointer that I gave him. He has vast experience in the woods of our area with his bird dogs and has often tipped us off to spots he's found grouse while going to his dogs in the woods. He showed us a really nice spot the other day that we had driven by many times, we just hadn't gotten off the road and penetrated the first 30 feet that looked to dense to run a dog. Once in the cover it looked to be the perfect age of regeneration with a number of wet spots in the skidder ruts and gathering openings.

Tom Parker experiencing a different part of the dog world.