My wife and I decided to make our first trip over Thanksgiving, we arrived Wed. evening and got settled into our cabin we rented. The plan was to hunt public land Thur. thinking not many people would be out then go to our friends ranch Fri/Sat.
We awake Thurs. morning and were blessed with about 2 inches of snow, when we got to our first spot we walked some heavy grass area that was just starting to lay down to some cattails. Before we got to the cattails I looked it over and came up with a plan working the wind and positioning my wife where I thought the birds would be coming out, I guessed wrong as my Gordon and I first stepped into the heavy cover it was like a tornadoe with about 2 dozen birds busting every which way. I pulled up on a nice rooster pulled the trigger and nothing, seems this moron forgot to chamber a shell. After I realized what was wrong these birds were long gone and my wife was asking questions....... I got a shell in and proceeded through to the end where we pushed the remaining birds to the opposite of where she was and out of her range. ( she should have been quiet like I told her ) When the birds came out I was able to tag one and got our first in the bag.
From here we headed to the Akaska area and turned down out first dirt road to see a bird in the ditch, we pulled over and I was getting the dog ready I told my wife to walk that way and she bagged this one. I caught up with her and we got the dog under a fence and into the draw that we were going to push when our dog scented something and went back to the other side of the fence, as I was headed toward her she then jumped back to our side and in the process ended our hunting for the day. We were now looking for a vet to stitch her up, we eventually got a hold of one and 12 stitches later we realized we would be dogless the rest of our trip because of where the wound was on her foot just was too sketchy to bring her back out.
Now we are on Friday and we head to our friends ranch, though most of the snow has melted the birds are still holding in heavy cat tails and off we go. Unfortunately every thing is getting up out of my shooting distance, we were able to bag 4 more pheasant and a bonus sharp tail but after losing our 2nd bird I decided it was time to quit. I hate losing hit birds and we felt fortunate to have harvested what we did.
Not a horrible time but not the best, we seen lots of birds on both walk in land and the ranch so we decided that we are going to head back the 10th and redeem ourselves.
We awake Thurs. morning and were blessed with about 2 inches of snow, when we got to our first spot we walked some heavy grass area that was just starting to lay down to some cattails. Before we got to the cattails I looked it over and came up with a plan working the wind and positioning my wife where I thought the birds would be coming out, I guessed wrong as my Gordon and I first stepped into the heavy cover it was like a tornadoe with about 2 dozen birds busting every which way. I pulled up on a nice rooster pulled the trigger and nothing, seems this moron forgot to chamber a shell. After I realized what was wrong these birds were long gone and my wife was asking questions....... I got a shell in and proceeded through to the end where we pushed the remaining birds to the opposite of where she was and out of her range. ( she should have been quiet like I told her ) When the birds came out I was able to tag one and got our first in the bag.
From here we headed to the Akaska area and turned down out first dirt road to see a bird in the ditch, we pulled over and I was getting the dog ready I told my wife to walk that way and she bagged this one. I caught up with her and we got the dog under a fence and into the draw that we were going to push when our dog scented something and went back to the other side of the fence, as I was headed toward her she then jumped back to our side and in the process ended our hunting for the day. We were now looking for a vet to stitch her up, we eventually got a hold of one and 12 stitches later we realized we would be dogless the rest of our trip because of where the wound was on her foot just was too sketchy to bring her back out.
Now we are on Friday and we head to our friends ranch, though most of the snow has melted the birds are still holding in heavy cat tails and off we go. Unfortunately every thing is getting up out of my shooting distance, we were able to bag 4 more pheasant and a bonus sharp tail but after losing our 2nd bird I decided it was time to quit. I hate losing hit birds and we felt fortunate to have harvested what we did.
Not a horrible time but not the best, we seen lots of birds on both walk in land and the ranch so we decided that we are going to head back the 10th and redeem ourselves.
