Opener

Hey everyone! Bird hunting is finally open! Three of us limited both days. Saturday started out pretty scary until figured out the birds were in the grass along cut bean fields. Good shooting helped.
 
tOlzon said:
Gentlemen...I, too, have a cocker from Prairie Marsh Kennels. She's a female born 5/5/2013, so almost 18 months old. She is currently right around 34 pounds, so is pretty durable. She still can't hunt all day for more than 2 days in a row, but holds up a lot better than some of the smaller cockers I've seen. She's a great dog in a the house....a vast difference from my Jack Russell!

Glad to hear about West Country Kennels. I will have to look into that. Maybe we'll run into each other in the field sometime and have a cocker party. Wait, that sounded bad :eek:
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Seems like there is more than a few Prairie Marsh dogs around. Who were the Sire & Dam for your pup's litter? For the litter MN Spaniels and I got our pups it was Meric (who I heard had passed) and Jordan (still there).

Got any photos? Would love to see the pup. Not sure I have any recent ones of Ndi but will post if I do.

As for West Country I would definitely recommend Brian and the crew. Started Ndi at a different trainer where he got into some gun issues very early and the folks at West Country fixed that pronto and then did a great job with the field training. In hindsight I wish I had kept sending him over the last couple of summers. His drive and ability to find birds is pretty good but some extra work on patterning and the retrieve would have added some welcome polish.
 
This is the most recent picture I have of Molly during a sharptail hunt in NW MN.

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Great pic! I need to do that some year. I just never seam to find someone that want to go with me.
 
Tbear said:
Great pic! I need to do that some year. I just never seam to find someone that want to go with me.
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Not many people hunt them in MN. I just started this year. Maybe the wrong forum to admit this but I've become more interested in hunting Sharpies in MN than Phez. :eek: I guess MN has a subspecies of Sharptail which requires more transitional areas than true prairie. The current annual harvest in MN hovers right around 10,000 birds with some 6,000 hunters. The MN DNR's goal for Sharptails in MN is 50,000 annual harvest. I'd like to see the kind of population that would support that harvest. MN is a great hunting state, way underrated (I'm fine with that, everyone keep heading West I say ;)). It'd be tragic in my opinion if we let the opportunity to hunt Sharptails slip away in our state. If anyone is interested, a great organization working for the Sharptail in MN is the Minnesota Sharp-Tailed Grouse Society.

http://www.sharptails.org/
 
West Country Kennels

Downtown Bang! said:
Ndi turned the corner big time after I took him to West Country kennels. His drive for birds went off the charts and they loved working with him there.
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Downtown Bang!, I'll second you on Brian Roushar and West Country Kennels. As long as Brian is training, I'll be bringing my dogs to him! Awesome, awesome guy!
 
Great pics guys. Some really good looking spaniels. Will try and locate a recent one of my pup.
 
Had long ago promised a recent picture of my Cocker. Better late than never I guess. Here is one from today's hunt in SD.

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Ndi looks good.

How are the boots working? What brand are they? Even though I keep the hair trimmed on my springer's paws, he still gets ice balls. Haven't been able to find any boots that really stay on though.
 
MNSpaniels said:
Ndi looks good.

How are the boots working? What brand are they? Even though I keep the hair trimmed on my springer's paws, he still gets ice balls. Haven't been able to find any boots that really stay on though.
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I'm using the dog booties from the duluth outfit. So far just using the 330 denier models and they are on their third day without wearing thru. The snow does help reduce the wear. If hunting multiple days in a row I even use them without snow. Really helps with the wear & tear on the dogs feet especially around the base of the nail where the cattails & rough grass can cause lots of swelling & irritation.

Link is here for the boots I'm using:

https://www.dogbooties.com/shop/330-denier-cordura®-booties-2/

As far as keeping them on the dogs feet there is really only one trick that seems to work. I reverse (sticky side out) a piece of duct tape and wrap it pretty firmly around the dogs leg so that the "equator" of the tape hits the top of bootie. Put the booties on over the reversed tape as normal and then wrap more duct tape (2-wraps usually) around the top of the bootie so that it connects & secures the bootie to the reversed tape.

Hopefully that description makes sense. It works pretty well as we lost one boot on day one but have not lost anymore on days two & three. Once you get the hang of it it takes about 10-minutes to put the booties on and about 5-minutes to take them off.
 
Liberal lubing of my springers' paws and between the toes with vaseline works great to prevent ice balls. I've used an expensive boot sold in the Ugly Dog catalog in crusty snow to prevent pad cuts, and they stay on well. But those linked above are MUCH cheaper -- gonna try those soon.

Jay
 
gunflint charlie said:
Liberal lubing of my springers' paws and between the toes with vaseline works great to prevent ice balls. I've used an expensive boot sold in the Ugly Dog catalog in crusty snow to prevent pad cuts, and they stay on well. But those linked above are MUCH cheaper -- gonna try those soon.

Jay
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Hey Jay, they make a product (originally for sled dogs) but will work with hunting dogs as well that does just that and may be better than vaseline. It's called Mushers secret.

Here watch this: http://www.gundogsupply.com/mushers-secret-video.html
 
Looks just like my jar of vaseline too! :) A good coating -- especially between the toes, both topside and bottom -- holds up for a good two hours for my springers. I forgot to do this before hunting with one of my dogs last week, and ended up busting ice balls with my teeth!

Jay
 
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