Pups and I just got back from a hunting Mid-Coast and upper Maine (East of Bangor). *Bird numbers in one word were "spotty". *We found some pockets of birds, but the idea that you could roll up to a nice looking clearcut and birds would be thundering in all directions didn't happen for the most part. *We did have some good days which offset the bad days (which were many). *
We had one stretch of two days were we moved 5 birds (3 Woodcock and 2 Grouse) total with 6 hours of boots on the ground each day. *(Not even a good day in Virginia frankly). *We did have some nicer days with the best being 6 Grouse and 29 Woodcock moved (a very good day) in a perfect looking 100 acre clearcut.
My Little Lew, 10 month old Sophie got her baptism by fire. *After only pointing planted quail and bumping a few local woodcock in my home state of Va I was anxious to get her up where she could roam freely and learn how to use her nose. *I found her getting better with more and more bird contacts. *She bumped far more grouse then she pointed, but she pointed a few and I killed one of those. *Woodcock was much better and she probably had over 20 rock solid points over the 8 days. *Bumped more then a few of those as well, but progressively got better during the week and once she locked up she remained locked up until I flushed the bird. *I was certainly pleased with her first trip hunting wild birds. *Retrieving is non-existent at this point, but she will repoint any bird she comes across while hunting dead.
For me personally I discovered shooting Woodcock over a pointing dog is feast or famine. *I can only equate to trying to swat a fly in a phone booth with a pencil. *Once the bird flushed at 10 feet away in 1.5 second he will have cleared the top canopy and was gone. *If one connected in that first 1.5 seconds, the results could be pretty spectacular from the feathers in the air perspective, but not table fare certainly. *I found it far easy to shoot the Woodcock that were put up by my golden because I was further enough away to pick an opening where the bird would be flying through and having a 25 yard shot as compared to a 5 yard shot seemed like a piece of cake.
I'm sure that will improve as I get more used to shooting over a pointing dog (I hope).
I carried my late fathers Winchester 101 20 gauge on bad weather days (there were three of those). *Dad bought it in 1963 when Winchester first start importing them. *He only shot a few birds with it over the years, but he did carry it some so it was nice to take it along and knock down a few birds with it. *The rest of the time I carried my little 20 gauge custom Fox.
A few other things. *Took a nasty fall on some leaf covered rocks and destroyed my little camera which was in its case on my belt at the time. *Probably saved my hip bone from a nasty bruise, but the results were ugly. *Hard to take pictures with the view finder shattered, but I took a few and they are below.
Lastly, more porky's then I have ever every encountered. *My dogs were eyeball to eyeball with 4 different ones. *One particularly large one was in a serious confrontation with my Golden and that was about to end up being pretty bad for Gracie if I hadn't gotten between them. *Might have ended up badly for me. *That particular porky had an serious attitude.
The dogs both held up moderately well considering we were out there for 8 days of hunting. *Sophie arrived with a UTI somehow (she had been boarded at the vet for a week prior to me leaving as I had been in Florida), and within the first 8 hours I was headed for a vet to get her checked out. *Antibiotics seems to work almost instantly (thank God). *She also ended up with a nasty bloody tail tip after a few days and I ended up putting antibiotics and vet tape on it (orange vet tape on her tail sure made it easy to see her in the field). *After the first couple of days I vested both of them as they were getting beat up and I thought it might afford some protection from the Porky's if something bad happened on that end. *Both of them had zero problems with the vests.
Had more then a bit of a problem with my Astro losing contact with her or showing that she was one place while she was another. *I had updated everything before I left, so it was frustrating. *I ended up using a Lovetts add on beeper on her for a few days and I found in the thick cover where we were hunting, to work extremely well. *Also seemed when she was on point to recognize the fact almost immediately and point alarm would go off. *I watched her go on point with the Astro one time and I was half way there before the Astro alarm even sent me the notification (probably 12 seconds total) tone.
Gracie my Golden was rock solid except from having the usual hard mouth on Woodcock. *She however, can certainly find birds as well as any dog I've hunted over and follows direction well. *I limited her to about 90 minutes of hunting per day as she has a carpal that flairs up on occasion, so Sophie got the lions share of the work.
Guess that's the report for now. *A few bad pics are included. *PS. *More apples then I have ever ever seen in Maine. *There are so many apples that at least right now that they aren't concentrating the birds because there are too many of them everywhere. *I hunted one abandoned 5 acre apple orchard twice and flushed nary a bird out of it either time and the apples on the ground hadn't been pecked on. *I was amazed by that.
First photo is what Grouse Camp is supposed to look like.
[
10-23-2015, 11:57 AM
Linear Mode
