http://youtu.be/gzEfEhD_GsA
The camera is my DSLR Eos XTI and the video is done with a GoPro HD Hero Naked. I have been asked by friends how much I like the GoPro, and I have to say I'm fairly happy with it for what it is meant to do. I have to remind myself that though at times, when I'm straining to see a phez fly away or can't see my dog on point at a distance in footage. It is a Point Of View camera, not something with a fancy zoom or many capabilities. It sure is nice to push a button and then be hands free though. My GoPro would have been best used on Clint's cap, being he was the shooter. But being that he's never worn it, I chose to be the operator. As that was, I forgot to turn it on a couple times, when I was actually close to a dog on point. That seemed to be the theme of the trip, in getting caught up in the magical moment, and forgetting to capture the electronic memories.
DAY 1—11/22/11 The 1st location of the trip is a parcel of upland with several dried up ponds, harvested crops, and a few rows of standing corn. Two hens were seen, with one being a wild flush. The second was a point by Brandi, with a bird that didn’t hold long. Brandi also had a serious unproductive point on the back half of this land, enough so that Clint was able to span quite a distance between the two of them, before she moved on. We were a little bummed that that’s all we saw after working this patch so thoroughly.
The second location of the day, was a friends “secret spot”. This was another area with a large pond that did retain some water, some surrounding saplings and tall grass, some thin tree lines, and some acres of open tall grass. Less than 100’ from the truck, we entered the saplings ringing the pond. Brandi locked up tight and held for just a few seconds. She then moved off point and a rooster erupted 100’ ahead of us, in grass so thick and tall that I almost couldn’t see the dogs if they were standing in front of me. Given that, we decided to wade through and work the grass. Another rooster came up in the distance ahead of us. Eventually we came around to shorter cover where we knew one of the birds flew to. Roxi went nuts, literally I think, tracking and baying. Sure enough, she bumped the rooster, and off it flew. Darn dog!
As we pull into the 3rd WMA of the day, we weren’t feeling optimistic, having seen so few birds for the day. This was another secret spot that was generously shared. We got 100’ from the truck and Brandi dove down into a low spot with tall grass and saplings. She wasn’t in there 5 seconds when a rooster wild flushed. Not much she could have done about it, having almost no wind that day and just entering thick cover in a patch of bottoms. That gave us hope though. We followed the perimeter fenceline outlining some shallow ponds, saw a group of ducks take to the sky, and wondered what the dark spots we saw at a distance were. As we approached, it came into focus, and they would be the first of many muskrats we saw during the trip. We continued to follow the fence and came to a tiny bean plot and turned the corner into brome grass with a meandering creek running through it. Brandi crossed the creek a few times, so we felt fairly confident that we weren’t missing anything in the tiny strip of ground between the creek and fence. The creek sides were straight up and down and several feet tall in spots, so it was more than we wanted to entertain at the end of the day. Brandi had it covered though and locked up on the edge of the creek, on the opposite side as us. Clint made his way over, but there was no way to flush, so the wait began. The nervous rooster buckled in the stand off and popped through the laid over grass at the creeks edge. I’d say it took to the sky, but it never got much lift before it leveled off. Clint knocked it down with his 20 gauge and it was time for the retrieve. Brandi, not being steady to wing, moved when the bird took off. In her pheasant frenzy, she forgot about the creek, and Clint says she pretty much fell in. She completely missed marking the bird or even knowing it was downed. She worked the area fair at first, but then turned it into a field search, expanding farther than we needed. We cut Roxi loose and she went on point in the area we visually marked. Clint parted the grass in front of her and dug out the rooster. The bird looked completely unscathed and he wondered if it was even the same bird. But as he flipped it to his other hand, it had an obvious broken wing. Tickled pink with our find, we moved forward. The creek then cut the corner of the WMA off. Being there was another bean plot in that corner, we decided it would be worth it to cross. So I scooted down the bank and hoped the handfuls of grass would hold me as I climbed the other side. Both across, we started out again and several hens broke loose. One came out from under my feet, for quite a startle and a 4 letter word. Birds are blowing up all around us. We evidently put a covey on the run, and there was no holding them in a one acre bean field. So with the excitement of little kids, we started counting the birds and hoping maybe one of the dogs would get lucky. No such luck and most of the birds flew across the road. It was a wonderful ending to the day though. Brandi put in 19+ miles & Roxi 14+. Even though they are both OUR dogs, we call Roxi Clint’s and Brandi mine, so I gave him a lot of jabbing about the miles his dog put down.
DAY 2—11/23/11 I had a bad feeling about this day. When we checked in the night before, the Innkeeper suggested 4 spots based on what he’d heard. How many lodgers he gave those spots out to, or how reliable his information was, I don’t know.
The first location was a whole lot of dried up marsh, and with only seeing one rooster wild flush way out into the reeds of the marsh, we opted not to fight the cover and move on.
The second location yielded a rooster just 15 minutes in, but it was running along the harvested corn side of a fencerow. Clint had thought he heard something moving near him, on the eroded lower side of the fence, and sure enough—he was right. We probably spent 30 more minutes with nothing to be seen. Then Brandi locked up on a pretty solid point. Roxi not seeing her, and then not caring to honor, broke into the scene. I don’t think Brandi moved on because of her, but she did change her mind about holding. Seconds later, a rooster flushed about 150’ ahead of us.
Onto the 3rd location. Yet another location of a mostly dried up marsh and waist high prairie. Knowing it would be hard to beat the birds at this location, we stuck to the perimeter fence against the harvested crop fields. Quite a few tracks could be seen in the first crop row, so we knew there had to be a bird or two in there. Before we found any birds though, Roxi found a snare trap. The dogs were fortunately very close to us, with just having recalled our little fenceline trespasser Brandi. We started to move forward from watering them up, and Roxi went forward several feet and then started backing up. Other than her maybe thinking she needed to be in heel position, her actions made no sense to me. The cable was so tiny, that I didn’t see it immediately. Clint was able to work the toggle loose. Roxi was wearing a couple collars, and gave to the pressure, so the noose never got that tight. It did set me a back though and remind me of the scarier stuff we might be hunting near, such as conibears. Later, a fellow hunter would tell us that he’d seen a conibear the last time he was in the region. It all reminded me that I really need to practice releasing one of them again. On the walk back to the truck, Brandi started tracking in a circular fashion in the tall cover and a rooster flushed about 75’ out. Inspired, we went back and worked some more cover. Another rooster wild flushed, but we suspect it may have been the same one.
We were done with the Innkeepers suggestions by then. It’s not that they didn’t produce birds, but the results weren’t any more spectacular than what we got with me playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey with the Sportsman’s Atlas. We drove to our 4th location of the day. Way too much short brome grass here to provide the cover we were seeing birds in. We did cross a ravine though, in hopes of something better on the other side. That didn’t last long before we were in weed sticks taller than my 5’9” stature and heading towards timber. As we again crossed the ravine in a different timbered spot, a hen burst from the absolute bottom. With the summer foliage having melted in the cool fall temps, we probably could have seen her running way in advance, if we’d known where to look.
Shooting hours were almost over by now, but we had passed an area not on the map, that Clint really wanted to check out. It had an acre or two of standing beans, which usually holds promise. We started working the plot with the right intentions, which was to work the dogs on the edge, crossing the wind that came from the prairie grass into the beans. Our mistake, which we realized just before it came to fruition, was ignoring the patch of weeds that flowed into the bean field. The patch was probably only 50’ x 50’, but as we discussed after the fact, we had a bad feeling as we saw Roxi rip through the middle of it. Sure enough, up came a rooster just a few feet downwind of her. If we had had our thinking caps on, we would have steered them farther out into the beans, downwind of that patch, and had a chance. Lesson learned. Another hunter was some distance afield, with what looked like a golden retriever near him. He took a shot at a rooster, missed, and proceeded to rework it 20 minutes later. Brandi did 23+ miles for the day and Roxi was close behind at 22+ miles.
DAY 3—11/24/11 We head out to again work the bean field at the last location from the day before. Despite working it much more wisely this morning, it yielded zero birds. When we got back out into the tall grass prairie, Clint heard something rustling ahead. The dogs were far out front on the upwind side, when the running rooster took flight in front of him, so he took a safe shot and missed.
The second location of the day was a random smaller parcel I picked out of the atlas. It was county ground, and I immediately liked the valley marsh, paired with it’s long borders neighboring harvested crop ground, and cedar tree groupings. We got 100’ from the truck and 9 roosters burst from one spot between the marsh and the croplands. That would foretell a little bit about how it was going to go at this place. Not sure that many hunters have hit this spot, but the birds were the spookiest we’d seen. Some would be spooked by noise and some would be spooked by the lack of noise. At one point I stopped to take off my jacket and put it in my vest. It took me a couple minutes to remove camera gear, the jacket, the vest and then regear back up. Clint was up the hill with the dogs on the property boundary, while I had been cutting the corner when I stopped. We’d exchanged some conversation, that wasn’t all that suttle with the gusty winds we had to top. All put together again, I moved 5’ to have a hen bust 10’ off my right flank. I’m guessing she’d been there all that time, during all my ruckus, but as I quietly moved off through the knee high grass...she panicked. We ended up harvesting 2 roosters, with one being a wild flush and one being pointed by Brandi. She locked up hard inside some tall grass on the very edge of the cattails. It didn’t make for a pretty photo, with her buried in cover and only her rump sticking out. But watching the rooster jump skyward and knowing she was spot on, made up for that. All told, we counted 35-40 birds during that 2 hour outing, with much of those being covied birds wild flusing in the distance. Being we didn’t tackle going into the acres of dried up cattail marsh, I can’t imagine how many more birds this place held. After that, I wanted to find another location, but Clint talked some sense into me. We had carried a little over a gallon of water between the 2 of us afield, but it wasn’t enough for 2 dogs on a 65 degree day. They survived but had taken a beating working the cover, and little Brandi looked like she was stoned. He would later tell me that I looked like I was about to cry when he suggested we’d done enough, and I told him that yes, I think I have an addiction.
I would later suggest that more dogs would be the answer, and he said he had wondered how long it would be before he heard that one. At any rate, that was a good end for the day, and we took our trophy photo and practiced some retrieve work with Brandi. The roosters were cleaned, with the biggest having a 5/8” spur and a 21” tail. Not a record maker, but a nice one to be sure. I have Brandi down for 10+ miles for the day and Roxi close behind at 9+ miles.DAY 4—11/25/11 The last day would be a bust for the most part, but we didn’t put much effort into it. The dogs were absolutely beat. Thanksgiving night of day 3 , I was a little distraught, wondering why Brandi was limping so badly on a rear leg. When we’d gotten back to the hotel, after the 35+ bird escapade, she was looking tired but sound. When we all got up to leave for dinner, hours later, she was limping horribly on a rear leg. It was dark out, and we were all but in the truck leaving for a restaurant, so I figured we’d check it out when we got back to the hotel. That was a mistake, as I surely didn’t enjoy my Thanksgiving dinner as I focused on my usually tough as nails dog. When we got back we laid her out on the bed and discovered she had some pretty swollen nails beds and toes on that rear foot, with what even looked like a tiny white streak between the toes. That allayed some of my worst crazy thoughts of a dislocated hip or an ACL injury, but I knew I needed to prevent further infection. So I ran to a store and bought some hydrogen peroxide. I doused her toes with that, patted them dry, and then put Neosporin on the worst areas. I can only be to blame for this, as I had boots but should have used them sooner. On day one the dogs got by fine without them, on day two I booted Brandi’s front as that was the only area showing wear, on day three I booted both dogs fronts...ignoring some minor injury to the rear toes. That bit me in the butt, as I had dogs with really great looking front feet and really sore hind feet at the end of day three. Lesson learned. And while the boots were a little time consuming to put on, and not so pretty in photos, they definitely did their job and we never lost one.
So we headed out around 2pm on day 4, hoping to have given the dogs enough rest, and get a little hunting in. Location one was a new spot that looked promising with a standing corn plot, cedar trees, and a creek cutting it’s middle. Dogs did great physically and showed no signs of being tuckered out, however we only saw one wild flush during our hour afield.
Knowing this was our last day, we headed back to the infamous 35+ bird area. We knew we didn’t have the time, nor would the dogs be physically ready to work the entire area, so we headed for a cedar treed corner that had had several birds in it the day before. We were too hurried and didn’t work the dogs downwind enough, and a covey of 4 took flight in front of us. We would see one more hen wild flush after that, and walk back empty handed for the day.
My thoughts on the trip are many. Too short to be sure, is one of them. A friend asked if I was happy to be home, the day after we got back. I found myself blurting out “No”, like a little kid. Again, I probably have an addiction.
I wish we’d ended day 4 on a better note. I kind of like the last memories made to be the best. Did we bag a lot of birds? Obviously not. Given all the variables...I think we did okay. Brandi really showed herself. Roxi didn’t have her best moments and seemed abnormally wound up. She’s definitely got a nose, and has proven she can point wild birds, but her lack of experience showed on this trip. She didn’t cut her teeth on wild pheasant like Brandi did at months old. It has also become obvious that Roxi needs some honoring work. All in all, it was a great time spent with the husband and the dogs...and I am scheming how to get another trip in yet this season. 
All in all a great trip and great experience for the dogs. The best part was Abby put the young pup in his place. I think even Mary would agree to that. 
And I didnt post a pic of the other dude, cuz he wasnt suppose to be there. So that just left Under dog and Chosen one.
Evidently it's time to mop up the crimescene. 
