Are you really going to make me hunt in these things?

An off day

We took it easy today. With Buffy, Shooter, and Noble nursing sore feet, we decided to only run Patriot and Lucy today, then head into Lubbock for a few things.

Once again, we found birds hard to come by. Patriot covered a lot of ground on his run, but the birds simply weren't there to be found. Lucy had a good ol' time when she was out, but got hung up a few times with cactus in her feet, and the cover where she was running was particularly barren, so she didn't have much luck finding birds, either. A month ago, those same spots held a few coveys, but the cover has gone way, way down after a few snowfalls, so apparently the birds simply found better places to be. Hopefully we'll find THOSE places sometime this week! :)

Going to bed now. Until next time, stay classy San Diego.

One of the locals...

The snow has started

Couple of inches expected today.

Our first wild quail

Today's hunt

Today was some tough going. We started the day with Noble and Buffy and hunted for close to 2 hours. Pickings were slim; we came across one HUGE covey, but it flushed well out of shotgun range and before the dogs saw it, and we were unsuccessful in locating it again.
We got back to the van, rested, had a few snacks, and headed out again with Shooter and Sera. Those two worked really well together and were fun to watch! About halfway through, Shooter locked up on point, with this look on his face like, "Holy crap, I got something big here!" Sera came in and backed, and I only needed to take 1 step in front of Shooter befor 15 quail erupted about 15 yards in front of me. I was still thinking "holy crap!" when I took the first shot, but got my wits together and managed to take down a bird with my second. It was the first wild quail for both me and Shooter. I made sure to have Phil take a picture right then and there with my phone!
Unfortunately, as we moved forward to locate singles from that covey, we discovered that the property line was just a short distance away - and all the quail had flown over it. Damn.

The biggest downside to the morning was that Buffy tore her front pads up pretty good and will be on IR for at least a few days. We'll see how she's feeling on Wednesday and take it from there. The ground is plenty soft, so we suspect the ice-covered snow acted like sandpaper and did a number on her. Shooter and Noble also had some sore pads; not as bad as Buffy's, but we're still giving them the day off tomorrow and only running Patriot and Lucy separately.

Anyway, we did have one short afternoon hunt over Miss TomBoy. She was a bit thrown by the strange smells that she hasn't encountered in Florida, so she was a bit off her game. We came away birdless although she DID appreciate being allowed to stretch her legs after spending so much time in her crate.

SO - tomorrow we will start off with either Patriot or Lucy. Those two aren't quite ready to be shot over, so we'll just be hoping to get them some exposure to wild birds. After that, we'll be heading to Lubbock for a few supplies.

Snow is in the forecast for tomorrow!

Frost on the atv = we'll be taking the van out for the morning hunt!!