[cascadedad]

Thanks again to everyone for your advice on shooting. Hopefully will get to try it out tomorrow.

OK, there will be three of us hunting with 2 dogs (labs). My lab is about 6 years old and understands the game pretty well, probably much better than I. The other dog is my buddy's and one of the puppies from my litter that is 9 months old. She is coming along nicely for being 9 months old.

We are hunting rolling wheat country that has pretty good cover for birds. When we hunted there a couple weeks ago, it had rained the night before so everything was wet. The birds were holding pretty good. This past Monday, my buddy went back to the same spot and almost all the birds flushed wild about 50-100 yards away. I don't think it will rain tonight, so I expect the birds will be running and flushing wild tomorrow.

Also, there aren't too many breaks in the cover, so you can't corner them and run them out of cover.

So, what do you recommend? Should we work the fields together slowly and be careful to be quiet? Should we work them fast to try to get on them quicker? Should 2 of us try to push the birds to the third guy? Or what?

Thanks so much. Will give you a report tomorrow evening.

 

[cascadedad]

Thanks guys, it makes perfect sense. We all wear hunter orange vests and hats. Safety is of first importance to all of us. I hunted with this friend 2 weeks ago for the first time. I think he was a little nervous since my son is only 13. When we were finished hunting, he pulled me aside and said,"Keep up the good work with Matt. I felt very comfortable hunting with him. He is as safe or more safe than any of my other hunting partners." Wow, that made me feel good. I just keep pounding it in to Matthew though.

The other dog is young and stays real near his owner. My dog works very good and if she gets a little to far, I just give a short toot on the whistle and she is right back in range. She is an absolute joy to hunt over. I know what you mean about when they get birdy and take off running. Those darn birds can run.

Will hopefully be able to post a report tomorrow.

Thanks again.

 

[cascadedad]

REPORT: First of all, I am beat. We had a good day though.

Many birds flushed wild, but we did have 4 very good flushes. Of those I nailed 2, my friend got 1 and my son and I missed one at about 35 yards flying across at mach 10. The young dog flushed it up above us and Al could not shoot because he couldn't see us at the time. He yelled "bird" and it was flying with the wind and down hill at full speed.

We didn't try to pinch, but we covered a lot of ground. It is really cool to hunt with one of the puppies out of a litter we had and she is doing so well.

Score 3 for humans against late season pheasant!!!!

Got to go prepare for a pheasant dinner!

Later and thanks for all the advice.