Iowa Ringnecks!

Yesterday I spent 14 hours on the road with my seven months pregnant wife, my 16 month old daughter, and both of my Cockers. It was a LONG day, but also very satisfying to put my head on the pillow once I made it to my parent’s! Due to the long day yesterday, I decided to sleep in today and do a late morning hunt. When I woke up, the snow was coming down hard, and there was already about nine or ten inches on the ground already; a combination of previous snow and new snow.  It was always fairly windy, so the conditions were perfect for sneaking up on some ol’ long tails! In the late 90’s this area was loaded with birds. In fact, the year before I went to college, my dad, my brother and I shot over 70 birds out of the field that I decided to hunt today. Unfortunately, due to a variety of factors, there are not many birds left on this side of the state. I was still optimistic about getting a bird by the end of the day in spite of the poor bird population.

Rocky got the nod for the morning hunt. I feel that his long-term potential is higher than Macy’s, so I generally try to give him the greater advantage to get experience. We hunted for about an hour and a half, but only saw one bird. It was a lone rooster that flushed extremely wild, and I lost sight of it’s flight path when it went behind some trees. Rocky and I tried to find where it had landed, but came up empty handed. In spite of the lack of birds, Rocky performed nearly flawlessly on this particular hunt. I gave him two whistles the entire time, he hunted in good range, quartered better than could be expected in the deep snow, and used the wind extremely well. I was very pleased with his performance on the day, regardless of the fruits of our labor. I did my best to get some pics when he wasn’t submerged in the snow:

At one point during the hunt, Rocky went through some water, and as a result the snow really started to ball up on his underside. In case you think Cockers aren’t tough, I dare you to try hunting under the conditions he was enduring!

After Rocky and I struck out on birds, I walked back home (ya, it’s rough…I grew up within walking distance of some awesome pheasant hunting!) and had lunch and socialized with the family. Around 3:30 I headed out for a late afternoon hunt. I went to the same area I’d gone with Rocky because I’d seen some old pheasant tracks when I’d been out in the morning, and I was hoping the creators of those tracks would come back to that area at the end of the day. Macy worked hard and broke through some really deep snow. Her legs aren’t as long as Rocky’s, so she had a little harder time of it, but she still got the job done. At one point she got really birdy and started working a small area very hard. I stopped walking and let her work it out, and a moment later she flushed two hens. I gave her a little more time to work the area, but nothing else came out. We proceeded further into the field, following a small stream that goes through the field. Again Macy got birdy and I stopped to let her work. Because of the deep snow, the grass and weeds have fallen over and created a canopy of sorts underneath. When the birds go underneath those canopies, it takes a lot of work for the dogs to root them out. While Macy was still working the cover, a rooster exploded from the cover. I dropped him on the second shot, and Macy made the retrieve. I’m not sure what happened with the first shot, but it’s still a bird in the bag! It was almost comical to watch Macy retrieve the bird. The snow was particularly deep in that area, so she was doing her best to hold the bird high enough that it wouldn’t drag in the snow. It wasn’t a picture perfect retrieve, but she got it done.

After I had that bird in the bag, I decided to cut my hunt short and work back toward the road. It was only about 3:45 PM at that time, but I have several days of hunting left and kind of want to spread the birds out a little bit. I decided to hit a small patch of willows on my way out, and headed across a relatively open piece of field to get there. There happened to be one tree in that open piece of field, and you guessed it, Macy flushed a rooster right at the base of the tree. Borrowing a trick from it’s upland buddy, the quail, the rooster flew directly away from me with the tree in-between us. I took a few side-steps to the right to get the tree out of the way and threw a couple of long shots after the bird, but he didn’t even flinch at the shots. I watched the general area that he landed and headed that direction. He flushed wild as I approached, but landed in the field I was hunting. This time I saw the exact spot that he landed, and he could only escape me for so long! Macy made the retrieve again on this bird, and we headed home. I checked my watch and it was 4:12 PM. Not a bad start to my vacation!

On a side note, I experimented with rubbing vegetable oil on Macy’s feet and stomach for this hunt. I’m hearing from my UK friends that this helps stop the snow from balling up on the dogs. The verdict is still out, but I think that it helped a lot with Macy. I’ll try it again tomorrow with Rocky and make a final decision.