What a Great Weekend

I'm just coming off a busy & fun-filled weekend which actually started on Thursday. I hit the woods with the cocker pups, Chunk and his sister Izzy & her dad Tom D. We were able to get the pups into several woodcock and grouse. They both performed admirably. They patterned well, were well behaved and when we ran them together they didn't spend the time playing like a lot of pups do. They were all business.

Then on Saturday, Ben & I headed north with the two setters, Gunner & Gally and of course Chunk. Gunner went first but we had to pick him up early due to a minor eye injury which is not uncommon. We gave him some field first aid and TLC and brought him back to the truck. He's fine.

Next we brought out our "Go dog" Gally. She wasn't down five minutes and had a woodcock pinned. I couldn't find it so I sent her on a relocate (which we had worked on this summer with Churchie Kennel & Gun Dog Training) and she executed it to perfection. I moved in and flushed the bird and it worked out just like in the magazines. We ran Gally some more but it became apparent this covert was sparse. We headed back to the truck and headed up to the next place.

We put down Chunk at the next spot. Some kind of ground critter apparently left a lot of scent because his nose never came off the ground. We tried moving up the trail to get him out of the scent and start patterning him but he kept doing the same thing. He was acting more like one of our beagles used to than a bird dog and seeing as I wasn't after any ground critters we picked him up. Whatever it was it left no tracks but it definitely was not anything we were after.

We swapped him out for Gally and once again she was all business. It wasn't long before she had a couple of grouse finds.We only got a look at one of them, but she really performed well. The rain started coming down harder and since Gally had already been down longer than I typically like to run her this early in the season we headed back to the truck. I was pretty beat by this point anyway. We watered the dogs, checked them over for burrs and other nasties, then took a ride to scout some new areas for next time.

When we got home I had a geezer, turned on the TiVo and watched Notre Dame beat Stanford. Yay!!! Ben went out to pick up some stuff for his next morning's duck hunt and took his brother out for ice cream.

Sunday I had a gig at a local apple orchard which is always a fun time. Laurie, Ben, Gerron and Grace came to see us and pick apples. During one of our sets a little girl, maybe three years old, came up with us and danced while we played. Then while we were on a break, a teenage girl came up, borrowed a fiddle and entertained the folks until it was time for us to play again. When I got home Laurie had an apple pie waiting for me.

All in all it was a great weekend but I am whipped. I'm taking today off.