Bitter Sweet

My granddaughter (along with her mother and father) left yesterday morning after a five week visit.  At two years old she's quite the character -- she goes out with me (in a backpack that a parent wears) when I run the puppies here, rides the four-wheeler when I'm planting pigeons, and imitates the way I "sing" to the dogs.  She'll be back in September for a few days when her mother comes for a friends wedding and then I'll spent time with them in Kentucky this winter.  They have friends who have a 400 acre farm about 15 minutes from the house and I'm going to be able to use an old tobacco barn for a kennel and have room to work the dogs on the days I can't go over to the Berea trial grounds.  All of you who are grandparents can empathize with my wish that the lived closer but that's rarely the case in this day and age as there are no jobs up here in the woods for a pair of college professors.

Brandy, yesterday on a pigeon.

So, it was back to work with a truck load of dogs this morning -- and it was a good morning.  Brandy is just off IR after being treated for heart worms and only got a 15 minute run.  She came close to "Dog of the Day" honors as she had three nice woodcock finds.  Sam was next out of the truck and carded two small broods (or more likely, two halves of the same brood as the finds were pretty close together) and a woodcock find.  Glow was out next with a woodcock and a nice brood of grouse that was probably 6+ birds.  "Dog of the Day" honors haver to go to Birdy who had a woodcock and two broods of grouse.  One brood was about three-quarters grown and the other was quail sized.  Glow and Sam's grouse were closer to full grown.

Birdy, a couple days ago on a pigeon.

The last dog out of the truck was Spiggy who found the biggest brood of birds I've seen since early in the season.  There was somewhere close to double digits as the 1/2 size grouse kept lifting in bunches.  She also had a woodcock.  And this was in a cover that I've driven by many, many times and never gone in.  It's just reaching the early stages of being good cover -- lots of skidder roads loaded with ripe raspberries lined with thick clumps of hardwood whips, as well as an edge of more mature woods.

The total for the morning was 7 woodcock and somewhere around 30 grouse including one single that I walked up.  The numbers should continue to improve as we make our way through August and into September.