8 Month Puppy - First Wild Bird Hunt

[Ken Lynch]

Yesterday, 9/24/2011 was opening day for Woodcock in U P of MI. I have been up here with people who train dogs for field trials. They have two of my puppies, Smoke and Bones, in their program. Well Bones started having issues with listening and coming when called. So he was taken out of training and sent to Obiediance School. He graduated. However, he no longer has the run he used to. So we decided he needed some time off to have some fun. Well fun he had. I ran him with his grandmother. We managed to get into a bunch of Woodcock. I ended up with my limit in about an hour. Bones pointed and held till flush 2 of the 3 woodcock limit. Grandma gets the credit for the other bird. Bones also pointed 2 others that I missed. However he being new to the game (never did any retrieves) he did not mark the fall of the bird once shot. That is where grandma came to the rescue. They worked well as a team. Grandma even gave up one bird she was retrieving when Bones came to investigate what she was bring back to me. He paraded around with the bird a little bit but did bring it to me with no damage.


"Gee, grandma, these birds smell good."


We are going to go see if we came chase more Woodcock today.

[madmurph]

Congrats Ken, sounds like you had a great hunt and are quite proud of your pup. It's always fun with a new dog.

[quackaddict]

Congrats on your pups first hunt...I imagine your as proud of yours as I was of mine a few weeks ago.

[Ken Lynch]

Well today’s hunt went even better in one way but not another. Yesterday was a cool, damp, and drizzly day. Today was a hot, bright sun shine day. The woodcock were around just in deeper cover where it was cooler and damp. The first two pieces of cover gave plenty of bird sign but no birds. In the third piece of cover Coffee had the first solid point. Bones was off in a different section not far away. I went in a flushed Coffee's bird, a Woodcock, which I got one shot off at and missed. Just after I had taken my shot and realized I had missed I caught a glimpse of a Grouse flying out of the corner of my eye along with Bones locking up on point about 15 yards to my side. As I started walking toward Bones, Grouse started taking off all over the place. I managed to bring two down. One fell where Bones saw it. He went and got it. Bones retrieved to hand when I called him to me. I am not sure if he did a stop to flush on the bird I caught out of the corner of my eye or whether he locked up on sent. In either case I will take the retrieve to hand. After all that we could not relocate the Woodcock I had shot at.

After hunting several different covers which produced several Woodcock but no shots and taking time to water the dogs at a nearby stream, I came back to the cover where I had missed the Woodcock over Coffee. This time I had all three dogs running at the same time. This time Feather nails the bird with a solid point. As I flushing the bird Bones shows up and witnesses me shooting the Woodcock and he saw it fall. Both Feather and Bones go out to make the retrieve but Bones finds it first. Feather tries to take it away from him and he dropped it. Feather did not see that he dropped it so neither came back with the bird. I ended up picking up the bird.

Later Coffee goes on point under a fir tree with Feather either backing or a divided find because they were close to each other. At the same time Bones goes on point about 5 yards past them. I could see Coffee and Feather under the tree and decided that Bones probably had a better chance of having the bird. Sure enough as I approached Bones a Grouse takes off but the cover is so dense that I could not get a shot off. By this time the dogs were over heated, so we quit for the day

[Max2]

Sounds like you guy's are having a great time out there ! Really enjoying this thread. Getting me excited about next week here where we will start.
Good stuff !

[iowahntr4]

I too am really enjoying reading about your hunts. Keep up the good work. Good looking GSP's!!

[outdoorman]

We will be hunting quail soon, here in north Georgia on private land which is stocked with pen raised birds. The third week of January will be woodcock time here in Georgia; we should have the flight birds from up north at the Piedmont WMA.

[bfred]

What a great opening weekend.
Nice having a "grandma" along to put those finishing touches on the youngin's too.
Sounds as though you've put a lot of work into your dogs and they are performing
perfectly in the field for you.
Really enjoyed your pictures and hunting report.

We won't open here 'til early November but even our first season pups seem
to know something good is just around the corner.

Nice looking shorthairs!

[pinebrookkennel]

ken
Great post, sounds like you have a nice string of dogs for that yupper cover.

[Ken Lynch]

Thanks all for the nice comments. My last hunt was today. I was out specifically for Woodcock. They were needed to round out a meal I had planned for tonight with my friends who are training my dogs. Only had 1 to 2 hours to hunt because I had a lot of traveling to do to get things ready to break camp tomorrow on my way to Iowa. I went back to beat the cover that I hit yesterday in the heat. Today was cooler and building toward rain late in the day. The first cover I hit with Bones and Coffee resulted in a missed bird that Coffee found. As I was trying to locate that bird I heard other hunters in the area so I started to extract myself from the cover when Bones went on point. As I approached him he moved and a bird went up. I did not get a chance for a shot. As I was leaving the cover I saw the other hunters where just finishing their hunt on the edges of woods near me. They were after Grouse and had moved a few but did not have any luck. They were running two Wirehaired or Griffons. Not sure which. They continued on their way and I went back into the cover for Woodcock. Found the one I had been pushing around. This time it was skittish and did a wild flush and I hit it. Coffee found it after I lead her to the general location and told her to hunt dead. Bones was a little confused until his grandma fount the bird. I moved to another piece of cover I hunted yesterday and put Bones and his grandmother Coffee down again. Got into a couple of birds but was not able to get a shot. Then finally Bones goes on point. Went in and flushed. The cover was such I did not have a shot until the bird was a long shot for a skeet chock. I took it and the bird went down. This time I got Bones into the area where the bird went down and told him to hunt dead. He and Coffee started searching around. Bones acted like he was onto something but was tracking a goodly distance from where the bird went down. He locked up then I saw something move in front of him. He broke and started chasing it. It was the Woodcock I had shot. I had clipped it wing so that it could not fly. It would flap it good wing and jump off the ground but could not fly. Bones chased the Woodcock another 5 yards before he got it in his mouth. He then proceeded to bring it back to me. In the third cover again with Bones and his grandmother we hunted another 15 minutes putting up a few Woodcock with no shots. Finally as I was about to leave the cover Bones went on point. According to the GPS he was 20 yards away from me in thick cover. When I finally found him he was being backed by his grandma. As I went in to flush the bird it got hung up in low cover. Bones broke at the flush which was about 3 feet from his nose. Bones caught the bird. The bird was young and had not breast meat. That put me at my limit and accomplished my goal of getting 3 more Woodcock for dinner. No pictures today because I was in a rush to get other things done. That it for Bones' first hunting season unless I take him out once I get back to NY. Time in cover today was 1.5 hours.