Hunting Trip 2009

If some of the pics were cut off in the slideshow click http://s230.photobucket.com/albums/ee240/jgf_gratiot/?action=view&current=49b4c8fd.pbw to see in a little larger format. Another EARLY morning departure for North Dakota turned out to be another great trip. Despite the harsh winter, we still found good numbers of birds. There was a LOT of wheat still standing which made the hun hunting pretty much non-existant, but sharptails were in good numbers, although some coveys seemed a little smaller than last year. Scott Borgeson, Dave Terhaar, and I met up with Scott Berg and his friend Joe for a good week of hunting. We had dogs on the ground from sun up to sun down everyday, made a trip over to Columbus to watch some of the All-Age qualifier, and managed to get all the dogs plenty of birdwork. We also met some locals who were extremely friendly and went way out of their way to go hunting with us for a day and call a few people to get us on some more land. They were fun to talk to, as the lifestyle out there is much more laid back, and they just enjoy talking to people. One gentleman said he got snowed in last winter, had 12 phone calls all winter, half were of telemarketers, and he would keep them on the phone as long as he could just for someone to talk to. One of the better memories out there came a few days in the trip when Dave had his pup Rogue down, and I had my pup Diesel down, and we split apart a little bit to try and get some birds worked, and about 10 seconds from one another, they both went on point, we both flushed, being a couple hundred yards apart, and both dumped birds for the pups in sort of a hilly area, where the birds went down about a hundred yards away, and both went and retreived to hand. There were plenty of other memories, but when pups do that it always leaves a smile on your face. We had a wide range of dogs from 6 month old pups to derbies, young shooting dogs, prime shooting dogs, and retired shooting dogs. The forecast was supposed to be somewhat cool all week, but later changed, predicted to be in the 90's the later part of the week, so we packed up and headed back to the motherland; upper Michigan. We found some new covers, hunted familiar ones, and averaged really good flush counts. All in all it was fun to kick off the season, get the dogs dialed in for the fall, and realize how bad my shooting can get at times!

Labor Day Weekend Trial, a kickoff to the fall!

Labor Day weekend marked the first trial of the season for us as I have just been training and working. Erin, the dogs, and I went to Allegan to the Southwest Mich. Field Trial, and had a good time even though it was hot, around 83 when we left. Up next, North Dakota bound or bust come next Friday early morning. I will post a slideshow of the trip when we get back and I have time to sort through everything.

Fricke N Freddy posed with me got 1st in the Open Walking Shooting Dog, coming in 2nd was Kara (Pippilongstockings) with Scott Borgeson, and 3rd was Terhaar's Elvis with Dave Terhaar.

In the Open Walking Derby, Fricke N Coco, posed with me was 1st, followed in 2nd by Terhaar's Ivy with Dave Terhaar, and 3rd by Dolly with Bob Kluger, not pictured, who headed out early thanks to a five hour drive.