Alaskans on a hunting venture

[Richard Flanders]

I'm finally home and able to manipulate photos for posting on the trip Trigg and I took to hunt outside of Alaska. It was quite the trip. We hunted grouse waterfowl with Bob Brown and his friend Brett in Alberta, grouse in Saskatchewan, and grouse and woodcock in Minnesota at the RGS annual hunt. Here are some pictures of the fun we had. They start out in Alberta and show Bob, myself and Trigg with our first mornings take of geese and mallards and the double banded mallard. We're holding three damascus 10ga guns here, two hammered Parkers and a hammerless Westley Richards style made in Toronto in 1880. Next shows Trigg and his GSP Shine with grouse in Saskatchewan and me with the one bird I managed a decent shot on, and finally some of the RGS shoot in Minnesota. The woodcock was my first in 43 years. One shows Trigg and Shine... can you even see him??... in heavy second growth cover which is incredibly abundant in Minnesota as they log much of the forest for the pulp mill in Grand Rapids. Surprising to me, we actually kicked a lot of birds, both woodcock and grouse, out of that kind of cover and even more surprising, managed to hit them upon occasion. If we really kept score however, the birds won by a large margin.... There's one of a partially albino woodcock that created a lot of interest being held by Dean the huntsman and dog kennel owner. Trigg had him on day 2 and had nothing but good things to say about him and his dogs. Trigg and a local serious bird hunter and trap collector Jerry Snetsinger are shown on an old logging road as we hunted in wet snow one day. We covered a lot of miles and pushed a lot of birds on this trip.

[Trigg Davis]

The Huntsman with the Albino woodcock is Dean Fries who has Clearcut Gordon Setters in Minnesota. Dean has a nice web page which I have looked at in the past. Dean did an eceptional job for me and my partner in the RGS hunt, and it was a joy to both talk to and be with Dean. I would really appreciate the chance to hunt with him again. I got the first Woodcock of my life that morning I was with Dean though Shine and I were alone and out of sight when we found that bird. Dean did yell over to see if I got whatever caused me to shoot and I was happy to be able to say yes.

Trigg

[Dean Romig]

Sounds like you all had a great hunt. Thanks for the pictures too.
That woodcock is at the taxidermist as we speak, right?

[Dave Miles]

I like the pictures of the German Shorthair.
The only way you can control those things is with a Garmin Astro tracking collar, an E- collar, and a check cord!
Kind of an inside joke for Anderson.

Nice pictures Richard.

[Richard Flanders]

He had all of that + a bell on him all the time Dave! How did you know??!! We should have tied a cement block onto his check rope for the first few days but he eventually figured it out, slowed up and hunted quite nicely. Too bad I didn't get a shot of him with his blaze orange "tux" on.... it was great. I think I heard something said about the woodcock heading for a taxidemist. He'll have some serious repair work to do; there wasn't much left of much of his head... That shot of Trigg in the dark is a classic. Our young guide didn't believe us when we told him we wanted to walk and hunt ALL day.... he believed it after the first day and we never brought him back home until well after dark for four long days.

[Dean Romig]

You could always take the head off of another bird and patch them together.

[Richard Flanders]

I bet they figure out something Dean; it was quite the attraction in the tent where the biologists were weighing and sexing everyones birds.