My second bird...

 I am proud to have been born in Iowa. Through the eyes of a 10-year-old boy, it was a place of adventure and daily discoveries - the wonder of the growing crops, the excitements of the harvest, the journeys to the woods for nuts and hunting, the joys of snowy winters, the comfort of the family fireside, of good food and tender care.- Herbert Hoover, 31st President

 Gentle Readers and Loved Ones,

This will be the last post about our trip to NW Iowa.  It will be short.  I have what I think is a really good video of Rory and I working together to share with you.

We got word that there were birds seen just up the road from Ryan's place in the ditch.  So, we drove up, gunned up and detrucked.   Brandon and Ryan crashed through the large cover to the left side of the road and Michael plunged down the embankment and started wading up the narrow ditch on the left side.  

A side note.  The alert reader may be concerned that I remained up on the road.  In many states, hunting from a road is not legal.  I checked Iowa's laws and I think I'm good.  Your mileage may vary.

I thought it was obvious that the birds would be in the bigger cover to the left, so that's where I encouraged Rory to go hunt.   I was wrong.

In any case, Michael flushed a large number of hens and roosters out of the narrow ditch on the left and I went into wing shooting fugue.  I don't recall mounting the gun or snicking off the safety but I do recall thinking that in this situation I'm confident it's safe to shoot and I'm not trying to catch up with the birds.  I even had some confidence I'd get a double. 

I had no idea where the bird fell because I was going for the second higher bird.  You can see that I was behind the second bird when I shot. 

Rory came up out of the cover on the left and I wondered exactly how I was going to talk him onto a bird I didn't know where was.  But he must have marked the fall, because he confidently dove into the far ditch and by the time I got over there he had it found.  

I think the video of him retrieving it to me is really nice and I'm proud of him.  It's not a perfect obedient retrieve - Michael distracted him with a shot up the road to our right - but it's pretty good.  

That was my last bird of the day.  By then I was worn out, so I did a lot of driving to the blocking position for the rest of the day. 

The last thing I want to brag on Rory about is that he is really good with other hunters.  He spent the rest of that day quartering with the other three guys and finding birds.  He delivered to hand for them and just did a great job. 
    

 We wound up bagging 9 birds that day.  I think Rory found and retrieved 6 or 7 of them.  To get him to sit still for the picture, I gave him a bumper.  He still wanted to go run some more.

We filleted those birds out and I got a lot of the meat.  That was very generous of the guys.  Ann and I plan to make a big pot of pheasant wild rice soup for the annual Winter Solstice family party.  

On that happy note, I remain,

Dad/Geoff 

ps, As I was proof reading this, Michael called to say he enjoyed the earlier posts.  He also said that he and the other guys took their sons to that same intersection this last weekend and got lots of birds.  Way cool!

Geoff Busts his Bucket and then Recovers

 

The best part of falling is getting back up again. ~ David Belle

 

Gentle Readers and Loved Ones,

 In case it's not obvious later, I'm going for self deprecation in this post.  ..then I'm gonna try for uplifting.  As always, you are the judge of my success.

My brother, Mark, used to love the phrase "bust your bucket."  I'm kind of fond of it, too....

Basically, I tried to work my way down a steep road embankment, my age and infirmities proved unequal to the task, I overbalanced and busted my bucket.  I've got the video to prove it.

 Okeydoke, here's the rest of the story.  Really close into Le Mars is a very nice plot of land that bottoms out in a meandering creek.  Michael identifies the plot by the name of the owners, but I want to avoid that so I call it "Pheasant Bottom".  Pheasant Bottom was our last hunt last year and there were birds everywhere.  Michael scouted it again this year and saw lots of birds. 

So, we decided to try again with four hunters and Rory.  It's a big, sprawling property with lots of room for the birds to run, so Michael, Rory and I were going to block and Brandon and Ryan went up to the far end for a two pronged push down into the area most likely to hold birds.  

After we got out of the truck and got all gunned up, Michael asked me - pointedly - if I wanted help down the embankment.  Pridefully, I declined and moments later got my hubris rewarded accordingly.  I had every intention of somersaulting out of the fall, but age, agility and an earthy hump at the bottom all foiled that plan.  I hit like a sack of cliches on my left chest and shoulder area and was immediately concerned about cracking a rib. 

Michael came down the embankment and helped me back up.  I rallied and started walking down the right side of the creek, doing my job as blocker.  The whole time, I'm assessing the damage.  Except for a few minor pains, I feel remarkably good for an aging fellow and I thankfully continue hunting.  

Way out in the distance, Brandon and Ryan are bouncing up a lot of birds.  None are flying in my direction, but Michael is over on the other side of the creek and up the hill a hundred yards or so.  He gets a couple of shots.  This gives my plenty of time to overly focus on my ribs....

The GoPro captured my honest thanks to the Lord for letting me get away with being really stupid.  With some trepidation, I'm sharing it with you here. 

Here comes the uplifting part.  Not soon after that prayer, a rooster jumps up out of the cover and I make what is quite simply the best wing shot of my life.  The GoPro captures it in a video I'm quite proud of.  I love how I kept the gun moving out in front of the bird.

One could get all metaphysical about this sequence of events.  You go ahead and do that if you want.  I'm just proud of the video and humbled by the chain of buffoonery on my part that preceded it.

As a side note, that night, the pains increased.  It took about a week for the bruising inside my chest to abate to where I could sleep comfortably.  I'm doing really well here a week later.

I let the bird lay there in the field - I could not and did not want to cross the creek to go over to it.  Rory was way too for away with the other guys and never marked the fall.  We have not progressed in his training to the point where I could blind cast him to the bird.  I really missed Rowdy for this.  

When I start back training Rory in January, blind casting is one of the skills we are going to work on.  

So, I waited while Michael, the other guys and Rory to walk out the rest of the creek bed to retrieve the bird. They heeled Rory over until he was downwind of it and then completed the retrieve.  It was pretty anticlimactic.   I've got video but I won't subject you to it.  It's boring. 

So that was my first bird of the day.  In the next post, I got my second bird and Rory made a great find and retrieve to hand.

Until then, I remain,

Dad/Geoff

 

 

Le Mars, Iowa

 

  "The secret of success is not doing what one likes, but liking what one has to do."  

~ Thomas M. Barnes

 Recently, I had a really great weekend with friends, family and Rory down in NW Iowa.  The next couple of posts are going to talk about this trip. 

Katester's BFF and college roommate makes her home in LeMars, Iowa in the farm country where she and her husband, Michael grew up.   

Every summer they bring the kids up to the cabin and we all have a great time knocking around the lake and the Wisconsin Woods.  Michael and I go trap shooting if we can.  He's great, intelligent, fun guy to be around and I enjoy his viewpoint on a wide variety of subjects.

Every year about this time, he and Brittney invite us down to stalk the wily pheasant in the lush farmland around Le Mars.  I look forward to it with relish.  

On the way to Le Mars, you pass within a few hundred feet of a towering land mark.  Hawkeye Point, the highest spot in Iowa.   

Hawkeye Point, the highest spot in Iowa.

As one drives by Hawkeye Point, the attentive will look around and wonder: "How, 'zackly do they know where the highest point is?  It has to be measured in fractions of an inch.  Plowing and raising clods must change the location...."

On a really sad note, last year's trip was Rowdy's last hunt. I wrote about it here. 

Rory had to stay home last year.  He was no where near a gun dog yet.  We spent the time since then making him a better hunter and there are posts all through this blog about his progress. This trip was the culmination of the work we've done together and I'm looking forward to telling you about it.  But first and overview of the area. 

In my humble opinion, Le Mars represents everything that makes America great.  Farming requires a successful attitude and a society that rewards success.  You have to grow the crop, produce the product and get it to market.  There aren't many examples of layabouts there.  It's a place where your efforts get rewarded. 

Evidently, the Kelley family is a leading example of this with the Blue Bunny Ice cream story.  Starting with a dairy operation long ago, they exanded into butter and then ice cream.    

Which leads me to the picture I'm going to share with this post from the exact center of downtown Le Mars. 

 

 

Now that I've got that discussion out of the way, I can start talking about how good Rory, Michael and his friends did at stalking the wily Pheasant.

On that happy note, I remain,

Dad/Geoff 

Rowdy is Gone

  "Death isn't failure.  Not living is." ~ Dr. Bernie S. Siegel

 

We lost Rowdy this year.  I've been putting off blogging about it because, quite frankly, it hurts.  He was way too young.  At the age of six doggie years, he developed Splenic Cancer and Ann and I put him down at Pilot Knob Animal Hospital.  This happened back in June.

I wrote about him all through the last 8 years or so of this blog. Training him was my retirement hobby. I would say it was a vast success for both he and I.

Rowdy lived every day of his short life with the gusto and verve that Field Dogs bring to everything they do. He was a truly great Gun Doodle and lived to find birds.  

I miss him every day.  

On that most unhappy note, I remain, 

Dad/Geoff

Hunting Gary's Place Year Two

  "Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do." ~ John Wooden

 

 Gentle Readers and Loved Ones.  I'm about to tell you about the most successful 30 minutes I've spent with Rory.  

Michael has a special relationship with a land owner we call Gary.  Gary has a nice little farm with a creek bottom splitting it.  The cover in the bottom has just been crazy with hens and roosters these last two years.  Gary evidently only lets Michael and another friend hunt his land and the birds are unpressured, dumb and plentiful, just the way you like 'em.

It's a big plot of land with lots of room for the birds to run away from you down the creek cover.  Therefore, it really needs a blocker at the far end to have a chance to harvest the leakers.  We decided that Michael and I would would walk the cover and Brandon would drive up to the far end to block.  We waited for him to make his way up there and then we started out.  I took the right side of the cover.  Rory started doing a really nice job quartering back and forth between us, crossing the cover and the hidden creek bottom, frequently.

On the right side, I could see birds up a couple hundred yards away, running toward the far end and Brandon.  

The attentive reader will note that I have not yet mastered wearing the GoPro on the hat band mount I have.  

The GoPro Hat

I have the camera tilted much too low and totally missed a good part of the action.  Still, I'm running with the video I have.  Please make sure you have your sound turned on and recall that you can click these video links, expand out the size to see them better and control the quality of the video with the gear icon.  

We had walked about 3 or 4 hundred yards when this bird pops out.  It looks like I bagged him, but I did not.  The wounded bird fell on my side of the cover after both Michael and I shot.  I missed.  

Rory comes charging across the cover and sees the wounded bird running for the cover.  I love the way he grabs it before it can enter the cover.  Once they are in cover, wild pheasants have a much higher chance of hunkering down and getting lost to die in peace.   

Now, we have an interesting situation - it's why I chose the quotation to lead off this post.  Rory is not yet as well trained as Rowdy was, but 

"You go to war with the Army you have." ~ Rumsfeld.  

Rory normally would retrieve the Rooster to me.  But at the same time, he thinks gunshots mean another bird is down.  As he comes back to me, Brandon - way out in the blocking position - starts shooting at the bird di di mauing away from us.  Rory's confused.  Does he bring the bird to me? ...Or go fetch the new one?  Does he drop the bird he has?  ..or try to get both in his mouth?  I'm going to have to work on that a little because he ignored my "heel" command for a while.  

Finally, he delivers the bird to hand.  I sound miffed but I'm really pretty proud.  This is Rory's first time with multiple hunters and real live birds.  He did great.  

Not soon after that, Michael jumps a second bird.  

Again, I'm sorry I did such a poor job mounting the camera to my head.   But if you look along the top of the video, you can see bird flying away.  

Now we have the same story, Rory has a bird in his mouth and there is more shooting.  Brandon down the way and suddenly Michael gets his third bird.  If you listen close, you can hear, "Got my limit!"  But this bird is wounded, running and Rory still has the second bird...

 The video at this point gets too long and muddled to edit and tell a good story.  The camera is still terribly mounted. So...to make a long story short, Rory runs around excitedly, bird in mouth, and finally crosses over and gives the second bird to Michael.  Brandon continues down the wash and joins up with us.  He saw where the third bird ran into the cover and hid.

We spend about 15 minutes crashing around in the cover, trying to get Rory's nose on the third bird and failing miserably.  There were so many birds in that cover that morning - soaking everything with scent - that finding a wounded bird is almost impossible... although we did find a blood trail and Rory really showed interest in that.  I'm really sad we did not recover that third bird. 

So, in about 30 minutes, we flushed a lot of birds - probably close to 20 between the three of us and shot three of them.  Rory retrieved two.  That's not bad for Rory's very first wild pheasant hunt.

We did note where many of the birds that escaped went to up in the terraces and adjoining draws but their dots were pretty agitated by then and we never got close to them again. 

For the next story, I'll tell you about "busting my bucket", getting up and making the best shot of my life. 

On that happy note, I remain, 

Dad/Geoff

The Pheasant Trail

 

“Responsibility is the possibility of opportunity culminating in inevitable fulfillment.” ~ Sri Chinmoy

Rowdy and the Rooster

 

Gentle Readers and Loved Ones,

This is a story of tracking down and bagging a wounded Pheasant.  To me it is a story of having fun hunting with Rowdy.  But I can see as how someone more sensitive might get all tangled up in emotion over this.  If wounded animal stories offend you, would you please just stop reading now?

Every year, some of Kate’s oldest friends invite us down to NW Iowa to hunt for the wily Pheasant.  I look forward to these trips with enthusiasm. 

We got to Le Mars, IA, Friday night for two days of hunting.  Mike briefed me up on what he had planned at dinner that night.

He had permission from a nicely set up farmhouse owner to hunt his “grove.” “Grove” is a mildly fascinating example of how names for things change regionally.  My family roots in Oklahoma called the trees perimetering a farmhouse a “Windbreak”.  In Iowa, the term is “Grove” – the trees planted around the farmstead for privacy and wind protection.  You can see a small portion of the grove in the picture above. 

This is a story in two parts.  First there is a generically bland story of the slog around stirring the birds up.  Then there is the long trail to bag the wounded bird. 

We were going to go first thing Saturday morning to Gary’s farm.  I’d walk the perimeter of the grove out in the corn stubble looking for leaker roosters while Mike busted through the grove trying to drive out the birds.  Which is what we did, slogging through the ankle-deep snow for the roughly half mile it took to walk around the stead.  We popped up one Rooster which cantankerously flew back over the farm house preventing a shot.

Mike saw some birds run out on the other side of the farmhouse into this nice little drainage ditch.  The ditch ran up this hill off to the right up to the property line up on the top an adjoining hill.

We agreed Mike would load up in the truck, drive up the hill and cut off the ditch.  I was plodding slow enough he’d have time to drive up and block. 

So, I stood at the edge of Gary’s grove, watched Mike drive his truck up to the top of the hill and then Rowdy and I began beating through the ankle deep snow along the right side of the ditch.  Wild Pheasants are wily and it wasn’t long until I started seeing numerous hens and Roosters flying out ahead of me around 50 yards away.  Most were flying up the ditch towards where Mike would soon be blocking and then settling down again in the ditch.  So far, our plan is working.

As I slogged on, some of the birds began flying left and right and leaked away with no chance for a shot.  Blessedly, one Rooster got up and flew directly away from me but close enough to Mike that he had a shot and he "winged" the bird.

The wily Rooster struggled over the boundary fence, landing hard on the next farm over and began running hard, dragging its broken wing back down the hill.

This is when the tracking fun started. 

Mike ran back to his truck and came down to pick up my tired old carcass. 

We are now presented with a problem.  The bird has run onto George’s property.  Luckily, Mike knows him, so he calls.  We get permission to come on over and see what we can do. 

We drive up and around the road onto a really nice little family farm.  It’s surrounded by a really lush grove that probably has a perimeter of over a half mile or so.  We drive to the back, unload, gear up and start walking towards where we think the bird landed and ran.

Mike stays in the grove and beats around, while I walk out into the cornfield on the far side looking for tracks.  Quickly, I find the wounded birds tracks in the snow.  It was running hard; the claw marks are about 3’ apart as it ran into the grove.   

The bird entered the grove roughly in the middle of the back strip.  That strip of grove is really wide, big and complex.  It contains lots of farm stuff.  Melting snow has fallen from the tree cover and has churned up the snow making tracking hard.  Rowdy beats around in there, acting all birdy, but isn’t much help.  Mike is over to my right on the other side of a woodpile when he yells: “Here’s the tracks.” 

I plow over to him and sure enough, you can see that the Rooster has slowed, the tread is much shorter and you can see the wounded wing dragging in the snow.  The tracks lead over to where the grove has made a 90 degree turn to our left again, leading out toward the road.  Again, I go through the grove and out into the field, while Mike busts through the Farmstead yard and grove.  This portion of the grove is much narrower.   I do not see any tracks out in the field.

Turning left, we continue to walk to end of grove, hoping we are driving the runaway out of the cover.  I see no sign of the Rooster and I’m beginning to feel disappointment that this last leg has been a waste.

I’m about 15 yards from the end when Mike yells.  Rowdy comes out in big looping arc around to my right chasing the wounded bird.  Feathers and snow are flying as both of them run for the bird's life. 

A lot starts happening at once.  I begin to raise my gun but realize that Rowdy is much too close to the bird for that.  At the same time, I hear Mike warning me off of that act of buffoonery.  As Rowdy narrows the gap, the Rooster tries to fly which results in a half roll and Rowdy knocks it down out of the air.  He narrowly misses grabbing the bird.  Feathers are flying everywhere.  There is a final, short ten yard heave and Rowdy finally catches the bird. This is when the Rooster begins whaling his face with the good wing.  The Rooster might have also attempted some spurring violence but Rowdy hangs on valiantly and delivers the bird to me. 

I give the bird to Mike since it’s his.  He wrings its’ neck and we hike back through the farm complex to the truck.  

Mike, Rowdy and the Rooster

  

I would guess that from the point of the shot up over and down the hill and through the grove, we trailed that bird 3/4s of a mile so.  Working with Rowdy to catch it was right up there in the top 5 fun things I’ve ever done with him.

On that note, I remain,

Dad/Geoff