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