Negligent would be an understatement

I just realized I hadn't posted anything, not one word, since Sept 2. Ok, I actually realized it a month ago but just got around to doing something about it today. It's not like nothing's been going on or so much has been going on that I haven't had time to talk about it. Lots has been going on and I have had time to talk about it, I just spent that time doing something else.

So here's the last 3 months in review....

Dove Season(s)

The first dove season was the best we've had in years. My freezer is slap full of birds, partly due to more targets and partly due to me shooting better than the recent norm. Over the summer I did a little work on my gun mount (thanks for the tip Chris Batha), mounting in front of a mirror about 100x a day. It's easier than it sounds and it's made a world of difference.

We're not really sure why there were so many more birds, but our best guess is that dry conditions over the summer ruined a lot of corn crops, leaving fewer places for the dove to eat. Whatever the reason, we had numbers every time we went into the field and even when only a few of us showed, we figured out how to put away a limit.

Shrinks the playing field considerably

The second season was a bust. Completely. Many of you heard about the Biblical rains we had in early October, but what didn't make the news was the 3+ inches we got every week after that for the next month. By the time the second season opened the weekend before Thanksgiving the ground was soggy and the feed was rotten. Any bird that came through here slowed down long enough to see that he was gonna get real hungry if he stopped.

It's dried out some and we have a nice millet field that hasn't been cut yet, so there's still hope for the third season.

The Great Bobwhite Revival

I keep promising to post an update on this, and I've been waiting until we had a little more publicly available info in case anyone's curious, but that's been slow in coming so I'm gonna talk about it anyway. This little project now has an official name (The SC Bobwhite Initiative), a logo (I'm not supposed to share that yet), a group of 24 state and federal organizations participating, and 4 focus areas where work is under way.

To say I'm excited about this is putting it mildly.  We've been working on it for 4-5 years and to see it finally take flight is both a relief and a realization that now the hard work begins. The enthusiasm has been overwhelming, and I'm pretty optimistic.

Website should be active before Christmas (fingers crossed) and I'll post a link when it is.

About that pup...

Holy cow I'd forgotten what it was like to have a bird dog pup around the house. Even though my backyard looks like the moon it's been a joy. He spent 6 weeks with the trainer letting the genes bloom and his bloodlines are no joke. 

He'll get steadied next spring and summer and right now we're just gonna look for birds. The drive is astounding and the endurance for an 8 month old is unbelievable. He's fine with the gun and will even hold a point for a little while. Smarter than a 4th grader, too. Should be a fun season.

Shot a deer last week. First time I'd been in the stand all season and 30 mins after I sat down they walked out. Every now and then I get lucky like that. I'm not a trophy deer hunter, just meat for the freezer and that means does are top of the list. This was a nice one, almost 100 lbs. 

I've been much more productive with the camera than the pen and some of that work is on the Instagram account (@spentcartridge). Even had a shot in the Orvis Digital Hunting Book (p43) a few months ago. Having a lot of fun with that. Stay tuned.

Beating the heat (or trying)

We finally got a break from the oppressive heat and humidity today, but the last month or so has been almost unbearable. A few weeks ago I asked my wife how she'd feel about moving to Canada. "Montana," she said, "but not Canada." We'll see.

The only time we can get out and run is right around sunrise, so the dogs and I have been hopping over to the game management land not far from the house.  There aren't any quail, just doves and deer and rabbits and hogs and lots of space to run. It's fun for an hour or so until the temp starts rising.

Show me how this is done

Are those dove on that wire?

Profilin'

Even these don't beat the heat

 

You coming?

I was proud until I realized this was a deer turd

Field mice. Again.

If we can just get this look on birds someday...

It's something to do until the real seasons arrive. That and try to grow more bobwhites. Stay tuned for an update on our Great Bobwhite Revival in a couple of weeks. Things are picking up steam.

*Not the barber

Anticipation, especially when given too much time to simmer, often allows expectations to grow a bit beyond the practical limit. It's hard to temper expectations with a pup anyway, so I'm giving myself a pass. We're just glad he's finally here.

The first two weeks have been an orange and white tornado. Yes, he tries to chew everything. No, he hasn't shown an uncanny pointing instinct, steady to flush, at ten weeks of age. While housetraining is a daily effort, it is still mostly in the dream stages. He's a puppy.

Curious, confident, not the least bit timid, all good traits in a bird dog. There are a few overachievers in the pedigree as well, which never hurts. The cards are stacked in his favor and my job, at least for the next few months, is to not screw it up. I can't possibly give him more potential than he has, but through lack of patience and other blockheadedness I can certainly take it away.

I'd forgotten how much fun it is to watch the lights come on a little bit at a time. Simple things like learning where the food and water bowls are and what his crate is for and the harder stuff like that name we keep calling him and what "here" means. It's like watching a time lapse of kids growing up. In the end, there are more similarities than differences.

This is Floyd.

Yes, I'm taking a leak all over the leash

Still not sure how all this works together.

Two speeds: on and off

Mmmmm...shoe

Just about everything is a chew toy

Give it a few more months

Getting it right

A week from today I'll make a drive across the state and bring home the newest member of the team. Everyone's excited, eager to meet this little guy and have him as part of the family and I'm slowly checking items off the list to make sure we're good to go. Kennel cleaned, bowls scrubbed, collar and lead where I can find them, pile of rags handy. All stuff I could have knocked out in about an hour if I didn't have 8 weeks to kill.

As I mentioned before, it's been almost 20 years since I had a bird dog pup in the house and the last time around I was cutting (and grinding) my teeth. This time around, with the blessing of 20 years of experience, I'm intent on doing a few things differently and I've been reading and thinking and reading and thinking some more about how best to approach this project.

More and more I keep coming back to one overarching theme: It's not what I do that's important, it's what I don't do.  As in don't go after him when you want him to come. Don't talk incessantly when trying to teach him a one-word command. Don't scold him for the puddle on the floor when you forgot to let him out. Don't feed him from the table if you don't want him to beg. The list is close to endless and its length underscores how much easier it is to just do a few things right.

So I'll focus on basics like talking less and showing more, being consistent, not rushing the progress, using the occasional backslide as a hint and not a reason for punishment, giving affection only as a reward. Yes, the last one will be a challenge. I'm unabashedly affectionate with all dogs, my own especially. Might not get that one right.

Probably the biggest training aid is not something I've found in any book or article. It's my age. I'm just a helluva lot more patient now than I was the last time around and I'm convinced that patience is one of the most, if not THE most important aspect in raising a pup. In spite of what you read and see about 3 month old pups being broke to wing and shot, it takes time to make a good bird dog. As in years. It's only a race if you make it one.

One last don't: Don't over-think the process. People get so worked up over getting it right that they try too hard and manage to get it perfectly wrong. It's a simple game. You throw the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball.

Lost and found

We're at T-minus 4 wks until the new family member arrives and it's apparent that this is gonna be a change of pace. Most of the stuff the older dogs use will be useless for a while so over the weekend I pulled out my dog box and rooted through it to see what I had and what I'd have to come off the hip for. This little green collar was buried in there, one I bought for my first bird dog and somehow kept from losing over the last twenty years, no small accomplishment considering I can't find my coffee cup from this morning. Kinda diggin the nostalgia. Photo on the right is from the early days with that pup, putting many miles on the boots just exploring and sniffing.

Not long after that picture was taken we were out walking and crossed a creek next to the road. We went downstream a ways and came back across and couldn't find the road and kept walking and came to the creek again, only I was dead sure we weren't walking in circles. Dead sure because I don't like to admit how easily I get lost but the fact is I am a directional dyslexic. No, that's not a real condition, it just aptly describes me. Back and forth and up and down and somehow we kept ending up at the creek, not the road.

Soon I started wondering which one of us would keep the other warm when it got dark and we had to settle in for the night. This was back when cell phones were still mounted in the car and GPS was limited to billionaires and the military so the only options were to sit and wait until someone came to find you (not gonna happen) or find your way out. Why I didn't try this earlier I still don't know but eventually we headed back upstream, figuring sooner or later we'd find the place where we'd crossed the first time, and what we found was that the creek had forked and we'd been wandering between the two branches. By then the little man was out of gas so I threw him under my arm like a 12-pack, which I might have traded him for at that point, and set off for the road.

Still a few months away from such adventure with the new pup but it's not as far off as it feels. This was taken at a bit over 3 wks of age, eyes open now, still trying to figure out what those feet are for. Hope he has a better sense of direction than his owner.

Chance

Most of us live under the delusion that we control far more than we ever do. It's an endless source of frustration at best and leads to stress and depression in extreme cases, neither of which are on most bucket lists. Still, we insist everyone else ought to do what we want them to and get pissed when they don't. And God forbid some random event doesn't go our way.

The secret to happiness, if it exists, has to lie somewhere in the ability to roll with the punches. Hold a high degree of indifference toward anything you can't control, which basically means everything except your own thoughts and actions, and move on without emotion as if it doesn't matter, because in the grand scheme of things it doesn't.

My first bird dog was a Brittany and I've never had any desire to stray from the breed. I've always been partial to orange and white ones, especially those that are mostly white. But not all white. And male. Picky, yes, but that's my deal.

When I started poking around for news of upcoming litters the only thing on my mind was whether the sire and dam were the kind of bird dog I was looking for. Coloring didn't creep into the picture until I got the news on Monday that the chosen mom had whelped a whopping 10 pups over the weekend.

I started thinking about how I'd choose among the males. Where is the happy mix between color and temperament and, honestly, how much can you really know about temperament at a few weeks of age? Gotta be at least 4 or 5 males in there to choose from, right? At least 2 or 3 would be orange and surely one would be mostly white, maybe more. Surely.

One. That's not how many are mostly white. That's how many males in the whole pot.

Sometimes you take what life gives you. I think it's gonna work out just fine.

There's either one missing or buried in the pile

Lower right is our man

It's been a while

Something like 19 or 20 years I think since an honest-to-goodness bird dog pup made puddles and chewed shoes in my home. The last few dogs came in as teenagers or older, a compromise to offset the other toddlers in residence. The toddlers are now in grade school and the window of opportunity is fully open. Call me the breeze.

Saturday I drove to the other side of the state to talk with a guy about my next bird finder. The female is starting to show just enough to make us think the breeding took, which puts pups on the ground around the third week in April and ready to go home in early to mid-June. Perfect timing in my world, a stretch of warm, long days with no other real calling to distract from making sure a pup turns out right.

Mom and Dad are beautiful dogs with solid pedigrees and perfect temperament.

Mom

Dad

And then he walks back to the kennel and brings out this little pot of piss and vinegar. She's 10 weeks old out of the same sire and she's a fireball, chewing my shoelaces, chasing this bumper around, gnawing my sleeve. Pick her up, though, and she's putty. If this next litter turns out like her I don't think I'll be disappointed.

They're filled with promise, which is maybe the most imposing part of the whole affair. You can get it right or you can get it wrong, but you can't get a do-over. I made plenty of mistakes with my first dog and lucky for me he was bold enough to deflect most of them. I like to think I'm a little wiser and a lot more patient now. Hopefully we'll find out.

One last post for 2014

The ink well has been running a little dry lately but through the wonder that is Craigslist I managed to pick up another media tool recently - a decent Canon dSLR that I've been having a little fun with. Photos below are from two recent excursions with the dog, one carrying a gun and another without.

We're not allowed to hunt in the national forest on Sundays, something I did for years until I learned about the rule. I always wondered why I never ran into anyone else. There's no rule against taking your dog for a walk, though.

Figures we'd stumble into a covey when I didn't have a gun on me. This photo tells the tale of just how fickle scent can be. When I rounded the corner and saw Wyatt on point, he was looking to the left, not the right as he is below. His head was gently drifting from side to side so I knew he didn't have the birds locked, but he wasn't coming off the point either. I stepped off the road toward him and the covey blew up about 3 yards off his tail, leaving him with the look below as they flew off.

I checked the wind and sure enough it was blowing left to right. My guess is the birds were feeding (it was about 4pm) and had just been in the area to the left. A few minutes after the flush the wind had shifted 180 degrees, so there's no telling what his nose picked up. I was extremely impressed he held point for as long as he did under those conditions.

This time of year you can occasionally find a few woodcock in the right places. They love the river bottoms and cane breaks and the shooting is usually pretty easy down there.

Woodcock like this...

...and love this

Well, we hunted the best spots and didn't move any so we eased on to higher ground to look for quail. It wasn't long before Wyatt went on point, at least I thought he was on point because he wasn't moving although I couldn't see him through the mess of young pine trees and saplings and briars and vines. I'm of the mind that unless it's dangerous you should always, always try to get to a dog on point. It just sends the wrong message if you wait for him to break or, God forbid, call him off.

A machete would have been highly useful as I pushed and clawed and bled my way through and after a few minutes I heard it, the chirp of a timberdoodle taking flight, and looked up just in time to see it float over the tops of the pines. Gun behind me, a shot was not a remote possibility. This routine repeated on a second bird. Eventually we escaped from the wooded prison and got two more flushes, the last of which actually presented a shot but the bird would have dropped right back in the middle of the trees and vines so I watched it sail off. Woodcock hunting.

Working the edge late in the day

Not all views are bad

Fungi

Apparently they're not too concerned about the rider.
I didn't see either of them.

Maybe this way..

End of the day

What's a clock?

This happens several times a week, proving that instant gratification is not purely a human weakness. He doesn't seem bothered by the reality that opening day is still 3 months away.

I've heard that dogs have no concept of time, at least in certain context. None I've seen need a clock to know it's feeding time.  When it comes to elapsed time or relative time, however, I'd be inclined to agree. How else to explain the same surge of joy whether you've been gone two hours or two weeks?

It must be nice to spend your time not burdened by regrets and fears or wishing you could re-create the glory days. Now is all there is and if something not so good is happening now, well, every second is a new now.

Time only matters when you're getting paid by the hour anyway.

From the days of film

Thumbing through some old photos I came across this one and although I had to scratch my head for a second, I don't think I've ever posted it here. It was taken around 1998 or 1999 at a preserve north of town where I had permission to hunt the leftovers. Pen-raised fowl are a distant second to wild birds but it was good practice before the season opened.

Shortly after sunrise on a foggy morning, the scent conditions were ideal when he stopped in his tracks and I snapped the photo, then shot one of the two birds that flushed. The other landed in a tree at the edge of the field and he pointed that one too, ten feet over his head. I managed a photo of this as well but seem to have lost it in the folds of time.

Occasionally the unexpected, unplanned, and accidental have virtue. I thought nothing when I took it or later when I looked through the stack of pictures from the PhotoMart. This was no photo session. In fact, it was shot with a disposable camera.  Remember those?

A friend saw the picture and asked if she could have the negative to make a copy. That "copy" came back 2'x 3', framed, as a birthday present and I still have trouble convincing people that it's not a painting. The camera quality (low) combined with the film speed (probably high) and the enlargement resulted in a very grainy portrait that closely resembles the work of a brush. For the doubters I point to the ear turned inside out and the beggar's lice on his side.

This is the dog I wrote about in the first post ever on this blog. He's long gone and all this image brings back is more images played out in the motion theater behind my eyes. We had a lot of good days.

Playing chicken with the grim reaper

His back legs can't quite carry the load like they used to, bending under the weight of standing still and dragging toenails on the ground when he walks. He wobbles a bit, too. He's mostly deaf and his head droops much of the time. Episodes that are best classified as some sort of canine dementia carry him into a corner where he'll stand for long stretches until you tap him and he snaps out of it.

But his health is generally good, he never seems to be in pain, and at times (usually around meal time) he gets some spring in his step again. Hard to say for certain what a dog considers good quality of life, but being able to get around on your own, eat, drink, and sleep probably cover the basics.

Sometime on Monday he wandered through the electric fence and didn't make it back by supper time. I walked around the neighborhood looking without luck in places an old dog might wander. With temps in the 40s he wouldn't have any trouble surviving the night as long as coyotes didn't find him but several days without food would weaken an already frail body to the point that he wouldn't be able to get around. By the end of the week there'd be little chance of finding him alive.

Shortly before bedtime I came to grips with the fairly good chance that we might not see him again and I wasn't overly upset. Sixteen years is a long time and he does require more effort and upkeep than the younger dogs. We'd all be a little sad but wouldn't feel cheated in the least. Not knowing would be the only difficult part.

I came home at lunch on Tuesday to see if he'd turned up anywhere. No sign of him in the yard. No messages on the phone.  On an impulse I pulled in the driveway across the street to see if he'd strayed into their backyard like he'd done once or twice before. Having checked on Monday evening there really wasn't any reason to go back but unseen forces, maybe animal spirits at work, will pull you or push you to do things that aren't entirely logical.

He wasn't in the backyard and I walked to the edge of the woods, looking down a hill toward the muddy wetland that borders the creek. A white spot in the distance turned out to be a five gallon bucket.  A second white spot had some brown patches toward one end and turned out to be my dog, stuck chest-deep in the quagmire. A few more hours and this would have been a recovery operation. He could barely keep his nose out of the muck when I arrived.

In the two decades I've owned dogs I have never, ever seen one this muddy. Hell, I've never seen a pig this muddy. He looked like he'd been dipped in chocolate and left to soak. It took the better part of an hour and some unimpressive work with scissors to get him reasonably clean again. He was so exhausted he went to sleep while I was bathing him.

If I had gone on back to the office instead of taking one look behind the neighbor's house, if I hadn't looked exactly where he was mired, if I'd just waited to see if he turned up....the story changes completely. It's humbling that just one split-second impulsive decision can be the fence between life and death.

There's no question life around here would be easier if he were gone. Old dogs, like old people and old cars are high maintenance. But we get attached to all of them. Maybe that attachment is the unseen force making you do things that aren't entirely logical.

Somewhere is a line beyond which you stop doing whatever is necessary to keep an old dog alive. I guess I haven't quite crossed it yet.

Company business

It's a rainy Friday, bird season is long gone and there's really nobody around the office today. Seemed like a good day to bring some company along.

He's not thinking about spreadsheets or bank drafts, but what's stirring between those ears is anyone's guess...

..if the line on the UVA-MSU game gets to 1.5 I think I'll take some action on the Hoos.

..eventually that Russian guy's gonna bite off more than he can chew.

..is 'gardener' a job description in Greenland?

..natural gas is a viable alternative to oil-based fuels.

..wonder why the kids are so averse to flossing?

..this is a helluva lot softer than the garage floor.

That's a wrap

March 1 clocked the end of the 2013-2014 quail season, and as such was the last day of wingshooting until September. It's in the books, and that's just as well.

I decided to go off the menu and hunt somewhere I'd never been, a good three hour drive from home. Several people who ought to know told me this place held birds. In retrospect I shoulda asked them exactly where.

Canal WMA is a long, narrow stretch of property, not much suited for anything but hunting. The diversion canal that forms its spine was built by the Army Corps in the 1980s to re-route some of the flow from the Santee Cooper lake system back into the Santee River.

Red cedars and ice storms don't play well together

We had a nice walk, saw the spoils of the recent ice storm, scared a few geese out of a dove field, but didn't move a single quail.

That's a goose in the water, one of a dozen

I'll just wait here and see what happens..

You can grade a season by how many birds you shoot or by how many coveys you find and there's nothing wrong with that.  Birds are what we're in it for.

But worse than going and not finding any birds would be not going at all.

Eyes out the windshield, not the rearview.

Pointers & birds

Went hunting with some friends last weekend and took my wife's camera along. It's a 35mm SLR with a lot more capability than my pocket-size point & shoot and I'm determined to get proficient with it. Not much else on my mind this week anyway so I figured I'd post a few pics.

Show jumper

Wind blowing 25mph makes for hard work

First bird out gets shot

I never got the pic of a 20-bird covey rise that I wanted.  We found several that size but the camera was always in the bag. This was a much smaller covey but I captured a few birds in full stroke:

Ghost eye

Turn on a dime

Everyone has to wait his turn

Tools of the trade