If the day comes when a flight surgeon tells me I can't fly anymore in high-performance
jets, I can always sneak out back and fly ultra-lights. .... You do what you can for as long as you can,
and when you finally can't, you do the next best thing. You back up but you don't give up."
~ BG. Chuck Yeager
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| Hero shot! |
Gentle Readers and Loved Ones,
This Gaddabout is another story about hunting. If that bugs you, please go read something else.
That quote really hit me when I read it back in the 80s. Training Rowdy and then Rory has been my Yeagerish retirement hobby. Rory just about used up all his heat tolerance today. I came close to overheating him. I won't make that mistake again. Note the huge tongue loll in the picture.
Back to the story. I've been promising to take my nephew to a game farm for at least a year. I recently discovered the Orlando Game Farm just east of Miesville, MN. I like the Miesville area and go there when I can. It's home of the Miesville Mudhens and King's Place Bar and Grill. If Jack Ruhr Field and the Miesville, Mudhens weren't the model for Field of Dreams, then they could have been. King's Place slightly beats out the House of Coates as the best burger place in MN. But I digress.
Orlando Game Farm does not have a website and appears to thrive on word of mouth so I can't link you to them. You will have to rely on my meager descriptive skills. A really pleasant family operation, Orlando Game Farm treated us great. We bought 6 birds and they put them out for us with a flag to mark where they were planted. While this may seem like cheating, I wanted to work on Rory whistle sitting and staying steady to flush until I released him. We were about 50% successful on steady. He retrieved every bird and we even got him to deliver to hand for Jackson instead of to me.
I made the nephew wear the GoPro hoping to get good video from a different viewpoint. Sadly, I've a got a problem that I don't understand and the GoPro failed to record. It may have overheated. The upshot is I don't have any videos and we should have captured some great ones. I'm bummed.
Quick overview, Rory or Jackson found 5 of the six birds and shot all we flushed. Sadly one was only wounded and escaped. I will play a video of the escaped bird in a moment. I made Jackson schlepp the birds in his brand new Orange vest. It's good to be the old guy....
We made our way back to the truck, hid the hens because farm purchased hens make a poor hero picture and arranged the two Roosters on the tailgate. Then Jackson watered Rory.
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| Jackson waters Rory |
As I said, the next to last bird we flushed got away from us. Jackson emptied his gun and feathers flew but the Rooster kept on truckin'. I stood and tried to note where it flew, while whistle sitting Rory. He's getting better and he remained steady until I heeled him up. He was also getting really hot by this time.
We went to the truck, emptied and stored the guns, watered the dog and took the hero pictures. Then we closed up the bed, got Rory into the air conditioning and drove the short distance up and to the right to look for the wounded bird. Sure enough, we turned the corner up on the top of the hill and there it was out in the freshly cultivated field just laying there. I thought it was wounded enough it couldn't fly any more.
We cogitated for a bit and I decided Rory had one more retrieve in him. So, we got out of the truck and Jackson videoed us doing a blind retrieve. You can tell how hot the dog is by how slow he is to obey. Normally, he'd run as hard as he can. But we flailed around and got him out next to the bird. And that is when we learned we should have gunned up again and walked out there. You'll see what I mean when you click this video.
So, I think Rory got some experience, we reinforced some training and generally had a good day. Met the great guys that run Orlando Game Farm. (Why the road it's on is named Orlando in corn country in MN beats me...)
Takeaway: I will not ever schedule a game farm trip when the forecast exceeds 60F. It's just too hard on the dog to run that long in that heat. I hang my head in shame. ...and let's not talk about a wounded bird that we didn't harvest.
On that bittersweet note, I remain,
Dad/Geoff
