ORIGINAL: Dr. Trout
Tip of the hat DarDys...
I love hearing about guys doing that sort of thing !!
Let us know how that ATV thing works out !!!
Should be interesting..
Doc,
It did turn out to be rather an interesting day. There were about 20 boys from 12 - 15 at the event. While half the group hunted pheasants and chukars in parties of 2 -- their parent/chaparone trailed along. While the others were hunting, the remaining boys shot some off a trap, shot a bow, and participated in dog demonstrations. When the first hunts were over, the groups switched.
The first group I had out had a local kid from about a mile away, but the other one came with his father about 350 miles from Brooklyn. The dogs did well, pointing 14 birds, and the boys got some shooting. For some reason, and it wasn't wind direction because it happened no matter which way we were hunting, the birds wanted to come off the ground and whip around behind us. Before the event started, there was a safety PowerPoint that made sure that escaping game behind was not shot at (which it shouldn't be most of the time) and they adhered to that lesson. However, the kid from Brooklyn did manage to harvest a chuckar and the local boy shot a phesant and three chukars.
After resting the Pointers for about an hour, it was over 70 degrees and the cover was way thick because of the lack of a killing frost so far, it was time to take the boys in wheelchairs. I had the only pointing dogs and the plan was to let the dogs go on point and then back the Gators up as close as possible. This would be no easy trick. Imagine you are the size of a dog, doing whatever you do for work and someone running right up on you with a motorized vehicle. But the Boys did alright and basically ignored the ATV's after the first attempt.
Because the birds were tending to break back, just as they did earlier, and due to the limited range of motion of the hunters, it was a tough deal. One rooster did fly across the line of fire and was missed twice by one of the boys. I am not sure many able hunters would have made the shot though. Finally, we had a chukar get up and fly in line with one of the boys and he hit it. It sailed about 100 yards and the mutts were able to mark it and make the retrieve -- no easy feat for Pointers.
Because one of the boys hadn't had a shot, we changed tactics and decided to run a Kansas pheasant drive through some Milo. We popped out about 10 birds and the boy was able to shoot one.
In the end, all of the kids had shooting, with some bagging one bird, others having several, but everyone having at least one. They got to shoot some clays, shoot a bow, see some dog work, hunt over some dogs, win some doorprizes, and have a little lunch. All in all it was a good day for the kids and a better day for the adults.
My concern for the event was that when I volunteered for it more than a month ago, I had not checked my calendar and did not know that it was 1) on the opening day of phesant season and 2) it was the day before the PA State Open Pheasant Hunting Championship. The first day thing is not big deal because I tend to not want to get involved in the combat hunting that can take place that day, but I do like to participate in the Pheasant Championship. This year was particularly important because my older Pointer, Darty, is now 8.5 and is right on the edge of not being fast enough anymore to effectively compete. He has entered 14 events and has 13 top 10's and 6 top 5's. But because of my ineptitude, meaning I missed a shot or two (incures a penalty for each missed shot), he has never won. Since this would be his last realistic chance, if I had known the date, I more than likley would not have done the youth hunt. These dogs work so hard in the field that they need to recover for a day or more before going back at it -- especially when asked to hunt at the speeds needed for the Championship. So I resolved myself into the thought that I did a good thing by going to the youth hunt and what was is what was.
On Sunday morning, the mutts burst out of the kennel like they had spent the week at the beach. I told my wife that I was going to take them to the Championship just to let Darty have his last go at it.
I ran our younger dog, Dyson (on the left in the avatar) first in the Single Pointing Division (one dog, one hunter, 4 pheasants). Dyson likes to remind me that he is a POINTER, not a RETRIEVER. In the south, where these dogs are used on quail, Pointers point, hunters shoot, and retrievers, ususally labs, retrieve the birds. Pointers do not have any bird retrieving responsibilities. However, in this competition, dogs, irrespective of breed, must bring the bird to hand or there is a significant penalty. Basically, I run Dyson to get the misses out of my system.
As expected, he was a bird finding machine, but not a retrieving machine. He had a killer run and we had all four pheasants in the bag in slightly over 10 minutes. Somehow I didn't miss a shot and mentioned to the judge in the field that had Dyson done all of the retrieves (he had one, just to show me he could do it if he wanted to) he would have done pretty well. He told me that Dyson was leading and the only run left was Darty. In short, he could only lose to his father.
As much as I wanted Darty to have a title, because I have left him down so many times before, it was tough to take the title away from Dyson (who turned 3 two weeks ago). So I gambled and decided to not run Darty in the Single Division, but to enter him in the Team Division (two hunters, one dog, 6 pheasants). There was only one problem, I didn't have a partner for the Team -- my wife had twisted her knee and couldn't hunt. Heck, we didn't even have a shotgun for her there if she could have participated because we were only planning on running singles.
I was, after searching a bit, able to come up with an acquantance (flyfishingdave, you can guess who it was) that I shot sporting clays with on many occassions, who was willing to give it a go. He has labs and has never hunted over pointing dogs. But he is a great shot and an even better sport.
The Team field was tough -- high, heavy cover and no wind. In fact it was so tough that the best any pointing dog had done was two of the six birds in the full 30 minute time allotment. The best any dog, flushing or pointing, had done in the two days of competition was 5 birds of the 6 -- and that was my now partner's lab (although the dogs were not competing against each other -- flushing dogs compete against flushing dogs, pointing against pointing).
The run was tough, Darty had to point and relocate one bird 6 times before we pinned it to a spot where it could be flushed. I missed a shot -- over swung a quick riser that wasn't as quick as I thought it was -- luckily my partner made the follow up shot -- unluckily, so did I -- three shots for one bird is not good for a high score. But in the end we pointed, bagged, and retrieved all six pheasants in a little over 24 minutes and the win was by more than double the second place finisher's score.
Perhaps it was a little karma coming back from the youth hunt -- Dyson is the 2010 PA State Open Pheasant Hunting Champion in the Single Division and Darty is the 2010 PA State Open Pheasant Hunting Champion in the Team Division -- and now retired from competition.