Gun Dog Forum

I took my hound up to his first CH this past weekend, the Region 9 Amateur All-Age CH in Idaho. It is ran on wild birds in some amazing country, and Woody beat the odds and took RU in his first CH. The good Doc did an amazing scout job and we got him around with a great find on some huns in some unforgiven country. I could not be happier!

CH Riverton's Funseekn' Scooter
RU-CH Sutherland Chukar Chaser

Wow! Now that is a serious accomplishment! Congrats!

Nice job Josh, excellent deal man, I know his mother well she was a "bleep" good bird dog as well.
Good Stuff buddy...

Congratulations, that is a big deal.

A trial on wild birds...that's a great accomplishment as CH or RU. Nice job!

Yes, Congrats! That is a big accomplishment. I would love to run my dog on those grounds. One of these days maybe...

Woody did exceptionally well considering he hasn't been run off horseback very much. Congrats Josh.

Sweet - great job Josh!

That's awesome! Congratulations

Thanks for the compliments everyone, I am very happy! He is a good dog!

great job congratulations

What an awesome start Josh. Big congratulations on Woody and your hard work.

Good job again dude! Sheesh, I was just along for the ride, trying to stay out of the way and not screw things up for ya' - that's pretty much my scouting motto.

I'll brag on his find a little bit - Impossible to comprehend the difficulty of his find if you've never been in that country - the sheer physical demands on a dog (and horse) just to get there in the first place can't remotely be imagined unless you've been there/ran dogs in that country - the unrelenting climb from essentially the lowest point of the course, the bowling ball sized rocks beating the dog up on literally every step of the way, add some afternoon heat...then after the find he had to be patient, wait to get found, then be more patient while judge and handler thrashed their equine beasts from canyon bottom to the top of the adjacent ridge. My horse, JR, was absolutely shot to be much scouting help by that point (I scouted Ben-jammin earlier in the day and did that climb twice while thrashing after him). We were literally at a crawl just to get to the high ridge where we'd last seen the dog without going arse over tea kettle into the boulders off the mountain, then I spotted Woodrow standing a few hundred yards in the sage to the front. I had to ride back down off the ridge to where I could just see down into the canyon where the field trial party was pressing forward, get some attention, do some arm waving to give them some idea which way to go find him, get them coming up the mountain, then go back up the ridge, sneak around, find the dog again, make sure I wasn't hallucinating and he was actually still there pointing - I spotted just the top half of his head and his tail above the sage from a hundred yards away, jumped off my horse, hunkered low so as not to put birds up and waited easily 5" just for Josh and the judge to become shapes over the horizon (everybody else gave up on coming up to watch). Wild bird trials you've gotta be incredibly careful as a scout not to put birds up before the key players are there - when they gained the ridgetop, I directed them with some "go left, go right, go left, your other left, stop...get off....50yds in front of you" then they spotted him - then I mounted back up, bumbled, stumbled over the rocks to go watch just as Josh put a hungarian up that went right over the dog's head, bang, all in order, let's get the helloffahere. Was pretty cool, not sure at all how long the dog was standing there...in actuality, it's largely the way it goes down hunting birds/training dogs in this country all the time minus the luxury of having use of the tracker/GPS to do the scouting for you. Anywhooo, always cool when you pull off finds like that in a trial and definitely one for the memory books.

I didn't get to see Scooter go or I'd brag him up too - Rich and I went on a little walkabout for an hour or so rounding Ben up.

All that chukar hunting had to help with his fortitude. Thanks for the description.

Congratulations good job
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