Conditions: 60F, 30mph sustained winds, muddy as heck, last week had 1ft of snow so you can imagine.
My plan is to walk up 1 hog back, let Cage do is thing, hit the connecting ridge on the top and come back down another ridge right back to the truck, about 1 1/2 hr hunt. As I get to the top of the ridge my Garmin beeps and Cage is on point 604yds away.................back down hill, on the side of the ridge I just topped, at least he's to the front. As I approach I notice his tail which automatically tell me the birds are a long ways off.
I guess this is the draw back of having a broke dog, your not going to kill alot of birds this way, but like I mentioned it's 30mph winds. I relocate Cage, he moves up about 60yds and slams them. As I move about 50yds down hill the birds take flight about 30yds below me. Into the wind and off they go, don't even get a shot. If your doing your math, yes the birds were about 140yds away from Cage's initial point. Not good work IMO, birds weren't pinned, that's why they flushed early. But that's Hun hunting in the wind .
I release Cage and up the canyon he goes hitting the ridge line above the wind. After making a trip around the top and back down the lower side of the canyon he goes to the head and is gone. Shortly after, my Garm alerts me he is on point, 328yds.
I know where this birds are at, about 50yds in front of him. If I was killing I would have approached differently but got this picture. Again the wind is playing havic with his confidence, but he is about as honest as they get, he's not going to move. The birds are up and gone. Probably should have dropped one but that's my fault, Cage stayed steady throughout, good work.
After working over the saddle onto the main ridge I see Cage heading into some birdy looking stuff, within a few moments I'm alerted he's on point about 370yds.
Yes, that's right I managed to get one. Again I can't stress how fast these suckers get up and gone when they have a winded added take off.
This was the only piece of work I saw. After retreiving the bird to hand Cage bolts off and about 100yds up the hill spins in mid air and slams to a stop. He came in cross wind on these birds, like I mentioned earlier he is honest he sticks them how he smelled them.
These birds should have been dead, no excuse not to get a double out of this covey. They were pinned hard, basically flew up my pant leg. See the difference of a bird dog pinning birds and just pointing them........I missed though, probably shot above them as they took the wind down hill.
It's a little while in between points after this so Cage starts running bigger and bigger. He finally sticks some birds at 548yds. They were across the fence on some private ground so I just flushed and let the birds fly. I would have missed anyways.
Saw about 50 head of these guys. They weren't to concerned about moving on so I took the picture.
At this point I am heading back down the oppsite ridge I came up on, back to the truck. It's been a fair hunt so far, had better days, but under the conditions I am happy. The dog is 19 months and has alot to learn but days like this only help. About that time I hear that beep of cage on point. He's 354yds to the front.
The birds were about 80yds down hill. Never got a shot but glad to see the dog still hunting hard and going away.
My Garmin read after the hunt that Cage covered 15.18miles running at 10.09mph. All in all a pretty good Sunday morning hunt. All the passes are snowed up so can't hit the good bird areas but I think I can live with this. I would have liked to taken some pictures with a little better tail but it is what you get. Hunting single quail it's poker straight but better then pheasant were he looks like he is from England. Let's see everyone else's Sunday hunts, pictures please, we all love pictures.
