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Re: [working-gundog] Man or dog?
I just returned from our annual pheasant hunt. Several
of us drove over to West Texas for our "yearly pheasant and quail hunt".
The weather was wonderful. The day highs were in the
50's. Not much breeze on Thursday but a little on Friday and
Saturday.
We hunted Sunday morning until about 11. The wind
REALLY picked up then. Luckily we were on our way home when it
got
really bad.
The pheasant numbers were really down this year. Many
of the places we found birds last year had no birds this year. We
had
to resort to looking for new hunting places. Luckily we
found several where there were plenty of birds. The bobwhite numbers
were
good. We had some really quality dog work on them.
There were four of us hunting and we were putting around 10 to 15
roosters
a day in the air. We only averaged about two birds per
hunter per day but the quail hunting made up for it. The local reports
we
heard was that they not only had a dry spring, but that
they had some really bad hail storms in the summer which really
affected
the bird numbers. The cover was moderate
compared to last year. Between the four of us we had
four GSP's. We rotated dogs
and hunted two dogs in each area that we hunted. That
way we had one dogs for each two hunters. We hunted five or six
areas
each day. By the fourth day all of the
dogs were rather wore out. The heavy cover in many of the places we hunted
left the dogs a little
scratched up.
All in all it was a great hunt. This is our fifth year
of going to West Texas and Eastern NM in December. The weather was
great,
the dogs worked well, and the company was
great!
I hope all of you have a great holiday
season!
Terry Chandler
Terry and Janet Chandler
Rugerheim Kennels
German Shorthaired
Pointers/Horses
Las Cruces, NM
575-382-5231
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