Saturday was spent hunting through the sage brush on some land that my father owns. The birds were really hard to pin down. They were running way out in front of us. Cooper isn’t experienced enough yet to really do well in the Sage Brush. Not many dogs are. There were 3 of us hunting. We really could have used a couple of more guys and another good dog to work that sage brush properly. We had a spot where we could see some birds some 60 yards away. We were trying to work the dog into that spot, we wanted him to come in with the wind blowing at him so that the scenting conditions were good. As we were working around so we could approach the spot from the right angle, the farmer that leases the land pulled up and backed his horse trailer right in to where we were headed. Up flushed 25 to 30 birds. There were several roosters. They were way to far away to get a shot at them. It really excited us to see that many birds come up at once. I wished we could have flushed them before the farmer got there. They headed straight for the sage brush. We spent the rest of the day working different patterns through the sage brush trying to pin them down. In the end we had bagged 3 roosters. One real nice one and two youngsters who must have come from a late hatch. Their feathers still weren’t fully developed into their pretty rooster plumage. We put some serious miles on our boots out there. It was a great time.
Not sure what to think about Cooper’s performance. I need to get some training birds and get working with him more. He only pointed one bird for us, it was a very nice point and he held well. I guess the birds were just running too far ahead for him to pin them down. He did hunt well for the downed birds and retrieved every one of them to hand. We took several breaks throughout the day and he ran hard all day. Cowboy came along and we let him out to run and play several times. I am still not ready to shoot a gun over him. He did not show any signs of being concerned about gunshots that were in the distance.
We spent the night at a hotel, got up early and headed out for day two. Sunday we cheated a little (ok, a lot) and went out to a hunt club that is owned by my Brother In Law’s, Sister’s Husband (if that makes sense). We didn’t have them put any birds out for us, we were just after birds that the other hunters hadn’t found. We bagged 4 really nice roosters. Again, I am a not sure what to think about Cooper’s performance. He acted like his nose wasn’t working. Maybe he had a cold, I don’t know. He gave us no points this day. His retrieves were all very nice and to hand. The reason I say I think his nose wasn’t working is on one of the downed birds, he ran over it and almost stepped on it 3 times before he picked it up. It was strange.
Cooper is a better dog than he showed this weekend. I fear that he has started to think that his job only job is retriever. I realize that most of the time we were hunting birds that were real runners, so I am not too discouraged. I am going have to start only shooting the birds he points. It is hard to do this when you have other hunters with you, they don’t understand. I need to get out with just Cooper and me for some further training. This was his first wild bird hunt. He is only 15 months old, I don’t know how much I should expect from him at this point. I just know that he has done much better for me on other hunts. Back to the drawing board….errr uh check chord that is.
Here is a bunch of pictures I took from this weekend. It was a great time with good friends. A trip that will be remembered for a long time.
