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.