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A close friend of mine and I went hunting to some of
our "honey spots" yesterday. Places that only he and I hunt that we have
a
pledge between us to not show anyone else. Neither of
us take anyone there for fear of these special quail spots getting out to the
public.
You know how it goes. You take one guy, he takes one of
his friends, i.e. the whole county soon is hunting there. These locations
are
quite remote. You need a quad or a horse to get to
them. You can't get to them on foot or by a vehicle. WHAT A DAY IT
WAS!!!
We found over 20 covies of quail. All except one were
scale quail. The one were gambles. We had some exceptional dog
work.
The birds were holding extremely well probably due to
the fact that they had seen very little if any hunting pressure.One of the
dogs
I took was a young dog that had been in my
summer training program. He had experienced only planted birds and had not been
worked on wild birds.The first couple of covies
we found I was really disappointed in him. He had several "bumps" and stop
to flushes.
It seemed he was not using his nose very
well. On the third covey he came on point. He was almost twisted in two. His
body was
curved in a U shape. His head was low with his tail
straight up in the air. I yelled at my buddy to take a look at him. "What an
awesome point" was his reply. I slowly walked
in front of him and 5 quail exploded out of the bush he was pointing. I was told
later
that at least a dozen birds flushed behind
he. But I was focused on the birds he was pointing. I carefully drew down on the
birds
and dropped one. I could have made a double but
I wanted it to be simple. His first point, one bird down. I walked back and
tapped
his head and sent him for the retrieve. He
went out and pointed the bird again. It was not totally dead. I walked over to
him and
tapped him again and gave him a fetch
command. He quickly grabbed the bird and came over to me and handed it to me. A
perfect
scenario!
After that he had several really nice points and
retrieves. The light went on! He had the wild bird thing down. .
.
It was a great day. We had lots of birds, lots of fun,
and got in some great dog training. We traveled a total of 50 miles in our
Ranger
looking for birds. We had four dogs with us,
and we wore out all four of them. Two youngsters, and two "old
timers".
Happy hunting to all.
tc
Terry and Janet Chandler
Rugerheim Kennels
German Shorthaired
Pointers/Horses
Las Cruces, NM
575-382-5231
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