Well the annual pilgramage to my home in Montana finally has come and gone. This year there was renewed friendship from fellas I have hunted with in the past and some new hunting partners that had been friends for awhile but had never had the chance to hunt together as of yet so that was equally as much fun to dive into the sharptail cover with each. One such friend was Rick Hopkins of Walnut Hill Kennels in GA. He had an impressive load of dogs with him including Fritz the champion of champions! Rick I enjoyed it! The other was a longtime friend Darin Gardner from UT. We had not hunted together for a number of years now and we enjoyed a couple of days together and few others that rounded out the trip. My personal highlight of the trip was finally getting to put my youung Zip dog down in front of those horses and try her luck at the Sharptails that call that area home. Some of you may have known but since I have owned Zip there have been some ups and down with this magnificent little dog, I trained her myself last winter and spring and pretty much had her finished when I stopped by Rick and Brenda's one afternoon while having vehicle problems and they seen her go and they made me feel real good about her when I left there, then tradegy happened a few days later when a horse kicked her in the head and broke her neck, she was paralyzed for a couple of days and we did not know what the outcome would be, but four and a half months later she got a ok from the vet and off we headed for Montana. To say the least I could not have been happier with the way she rounded out the week she ran bigger and bigger each time out and was a real bird producer and standing them all thru WSF it made my heart feel good that the little gal survive all the adversity and still come out on top! One partucular hunt She was on the ground for around and Hour and 45 minutes to two hours she had thirteen covey finds, we shot two limits over her and the Garmin said she had covered 16 miles how could I not be pleased with that performance it is amazing how much ground those dogs cover according to those gps's if it was correct. But all in all I saw alot of good work from a number of dogs including JW's dogs and Rick's dogs is was a really enjoyable time if someone would have told me a few years ago that I would be blank pistoling as many birds as I killed I would laughed at them but that is exactly what happened we did alot of training/working dogs and it was as much fun as killing them! But we did manage our limits everyday as well I still enjoy eating them as well!
Zip standing a covey:
Doug and Dave dismounted and heading to Zip standing:
Tim and Myself with Zip
AP not to be outdone:
Stormy and Jackie (Rick's)
AP with Mikah backing:
AP pointed:
Mikah pointed:
Mikah pointed with AP backing:
Mikah:
Sharptails in stubble: (now known as Rick's SPOT)
Sage Goruse feeding:
Jason Brook's Dixie dog:
Local wildlife:
Scenery:
Heading out for the last day, Chad Mike and Myself
Gettin' back with full game bag's and tired dog and horses:
Tim on Chief:
After we found the old car covey we opted for a quick photog:
DGFavor all you can do is smile because you and Alex created this horseback mounted sharptail hunting monster now stay out of all my spots next summer them birds were a little twitchy, from them GSP's sneaking around there for the last month it was a good thing I had some bird finding GWP's!
To everyone involved in this hunt I truly enjoyed it I could not have had a more enjoyable time than sharing it with my brother and good friends!
Has nothing to do with luck just boot leather and a fine GWP...
