A Stolen Season...

Sitting here reviewing pictures from the fall and winter and Murph Dog is sitting next to me, snoring away.

It's occurred to me that I pretty much stole this bird season from her.   She's in her prime and I made it afield 3 times.  One of the days I shot so poorly I think she laughed at me, but the last day of the season made up for two other mediocre efforts with the scattergun

That's horseshit in my opinion.

So a belated resolution.  I'm going to get my dog's nose in the cover more come next fall.

What's In The Grass...

The tall native grass just goes and goes.  At times you lose the dogs because it's so dense and thick and the only way you can located them is to watch for the serpentine movement of grass that indicates their movement.

Our labs work the cover nose down, searching for scent trails that indicate their quarry.  You dont get to watch the dogs as well and notice their body language, so the flushed ditch parrots rocket up and scare you without prior indication.

Makes the ticker really go pitter patter.

We might walk 2 miles of the grass without so much as a flush.  We might bust birds at the beginning, middle and end.  They might run all the way to the end and hit the air at the same time in a flurry of wingbeats.

Either way, when I start this particular grass field, I always take a second before I step a boot into the cover and wonder....

What's in the grass?

Farmland Relics...

The stories these machines could tell.

Coming from a bygone era, they're left to rot in the spot they died.   Weeds hide the hard work and toil that families poured into the land in their fight to push forward with progress.  Some won, some lost, some got new equipment.

We're constantly finding these machines tucked away on our pheasant grounds that we walk each fall.  Bailers, combines, tillers and other assorted machinery dot the land and provide habitat for the quarry of our chase.  Ever flushed a rooster in the remnants of an old combine?  It's an experience to say the least.

If you think about it, the pheasants are relic's themselves.  Product of another era itself, they struggle to maintain their foothold in the face of farm practices that become more and more efficient each year.  

Thank goodness for the glacial floods that created the channeled scablands of of Eastern and Central Washington that created the nooks and crannies that the relics of farmlands past and future cannot touch.

They both make Fall so very, very interesting.

Yes Dad, I Know It's a Staged Photo...

I dont care, it's a limit. 

What a great day out, a perfect excuse to skip work and share time outside with OMR and Kevin from
Ducks, Dogs and Downriggers. 

More info to follow, but we had a hell of a day.