I must admit, I found myself being a less than stellar trainer this off season. When the final shot rang out from last year I was tired. Lexi and I took a good 3 months off from birds. She had progressed throughout the her first full year in the desert and had started to stick the occasional Gambles and I was tickled to death.
As June began to turn to July I decided I had better start to do a little work with her again. I figured we might as well have some fun so I signed up for the next NSTRA event and off we went. We had a great time and she had a respectable showing considering she wasn't even 2 at the time and neither of us had any idea what we were doing.
I'm lucky enough to live a bit on the outskirts of the greater Phoenix area with a number of open areas to be able to train on. With only 2 weeks remaining until the Quail season opened Lexi and I began running these areas hard. Development has started to encroach on some of the favorites we like to train in but, the local 'training' population of Gambles Quail has remained very strong this year.
Lexi is still learning to keep her distance but, she is young and it is pretty tough for her to do sometimes. That and these little buggers like to RUN! And they will run right under her! They use the little washes as escape routes. A full covey of nearly 20 birds ran right up the little wash in front of her not 10 feet away! She did great...that time. You can see one in the left hand portion of this picture looking back at her.
As young dogs do she could only take it for so long and had to try to chase. All in all she did a great job. The light colored bushes in front of her held about 10 birds. They shot out of the cover like a Roman Candle...one at a time about 3 seconds apart. It was the craziest thing I have seen them do.
Well, the time had finally arrived. October 4th, opening day Friday. I don't work until mid morning so I was out the door before dawn to one of the closer spots that has held a bird or two in the past. Last year there wasn't much here but, the year before there were quite a few. Since we only had about an hour to hunt we decided to stay in the flats. Some of the desert waking up...
I love the tall Saguaro Cacti with the Superstition Mountains in the back ground.
Now running a dog in the desert is a bit of a tricky thing until they learn what they can and what they can't step on. It took both Lexi and I a few minutes to remember to watch where we step but, once we remembered we started to hunt. It didn't take long until we found our first little covey of about 10 birds. Lexi rounded a tree and they flushed. We watched them fly a little ways and off we went to try to track down a single or two. There was virtually no wind at the time and we couldn't pin anything down. So on we walked. It didn't take long and I saw this.
Oh Man! This was the sight I had been wanting to see this morning! I was in a bit of a hurry so the camera went back in its pouch and I made my way over to Lexi's point. I was about 10 feet behind her still when the whole desert floor started moving. They were running everywhere and Lexi was rock solid! I took two more steps forward and it happened...two Quail had had enough and took off angling to my right a bit. I pulled up and fired hitting the left bird but, not hard. I stayed on it and finished it of before it could hit the ground running and give us the slip. Lexi was on it and made the retrieve.
We were about 15 minutes from the truck and had about 10 minutes left that I could hunt. We made a beeline back with no finds but, it had already been a great day in the AZ desert.
Chip is 3 years old and I look forward to bringing him out there one day. Thanks again
