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Unfortunately my wife is having health problems so we don't want to take on a pup until her issues are dealt with. I have always tried to acquire a new pup by April at the latest, then I can start limited hunting with them by November. It doesn't look like that is going to happen this year, but...

Our labs spend a lot of time on our ranch hunting "varmints" - mice, voles, etc. They'll dig until their ears go out of sight. Take them out bird hunting and varmints aren't an issue. Their minds are on birds. My guess is that as your dog matures the mice will become a non-bird hunting past...

Upland game hunting will be the last thing to go for me. I'm retired so my income is pretty much "fixed" so I'll have to cut back somewhere else. I'm old enough to realize the end is nearer than the beginning. I enjoy it too much and will hunt until I physically can't.

It's a fine line. Push the landowners too hard and they won't enroll lands in the WIHA program. I personally feel KDWP field personnel are doing a darn good job walking that line. In the areas I hunt, without WIHA's, there would be virtually no place to hunt, considering the large number of...

Agree totally. I hunt NW Kansas and KDWP does an amazing job of recruiting landowners for the WIHA program, but when the Feds allow grazing/haying CRP, most landowners will gladly forfeit the small WIHA payment for the "profit" of hay/grazing. That said, haying/grazing can actually help habitat...

Had to put our 11 year old yellow lab down Friday. She just couldn't make it any longer. So yes, we will be looking, and hopefully finding a new pup this year. We've had yellow labs so many years I know we won't change, so any thoughts on good breeders, preferably in the west (Kansas, Colorado...

I always try to choose a name that can be shortened to one syllable to make commands easier and clearer for the dog (and me). As an example, our current two labs are Reba and Gemini. Reba becomes "Rebe" in the field and Gemini becomes "Gem". Both allow emphasis for commands. That has made my...

Yup. Those are the colors you go to SD for!

Kent makes good ammo. I don't think you can go wrong with FastLead. My only caveat is, as Joe Hunter noted, the "fast" loads tend not to produce tight patterns. I've always attributed this to increased pellet deformation due to the added "set back" and the lead pellets deforming on each other...

Black Hills for fall colors. That isn't pheasant country, though, but it is pretty and not very crowded in the fall. We pull a travel trailer when we hunt. In SD we generally stay at State Parks. They are well maintained, have water, dump stations, showers, etc. and are "hunter friendly", though...

I started using Winchester's Rooster XR ammunition when I decided to go "back" to all round shot. The shot is copper plated high antimony - excellent quality for dense patterns. I've found it to be very effective and though it is more expensive, when I add up how much pheasant hunting trips cost...

I've said this before on this forum, I shot Prairie Storm for quite a few years with pretty decent success but never in all those years/birds did I find one "Flitestopper" pellet in a bird. My simple-minded analysis was that the belt around the middle causes those shot to be "flyers", quickly...

I agree that current research indicates grain free dog foods have problems, but as my mother always said "never say never". In our case one of our labs had a diagnosed allergy to corn and other grains. Our choice was to let her vomit every day and live a miserable life with an inflamed digestive...

A short update on PPP "sensitive skin and stomach" food. After 2 weeks the lab that has shown allergies to things like corn in food has started vomiting again, pretty much every day. When she started this about 4 years ago our vet did an upper GI scope ($1,300) and found her digestive track was...

No one thinks of fire until it happens. Grass fires can be as or even more dangerous than forest fires. Look at northern Colorado for an extreme example. Most of my friends on the plains are scared to death of folks pulling into a "parking" area with grass reaching the frame of the vehicle...

It took me a moment to figure out that there were two different entities posting videos to this thread and that they were both running springers. Is that correct? Anyway, as far as quality, both are plenty good for me. I particularly enjoy the dog work. It took me a while to figure out, in the...

I've been feeding Taste of the Wild grain free to both my young (6 years) and old (11 years) labs for the last few years. The younger dog has a "grain" allergy of some sort which this food seemed to sort out. The older dog had lived 10 years on Royal Canin Labrador formula without a glitch until...

That is why I never hunt in large groups or with unknown dogs. It can ruin good dogs and even result in injuries to your dogs. Everyone to their own as to what a "good hunt" is, but from my perspective this sounds like a nightmare.

Your first picture kind of shows what my labs think of springers. From a labs view point "a little pushy". My labs prefer to hunt as far away from a springer as possible, yet are fascinated by that stub tail and their hunting technique so they will stop and watch every once in a while.

Hopefully you have OnX, Huntstand or some other application that will allow you to identify private and public lands. In the areas we hunt there are lots of unfenced, unposted private lands mixed in with public lands. There often isn't a house within miles to (try) to ask permission to hunt. My...