Steve Snell’s Gundog Blog

Jump to Comments

I have a couple of quick posts to finish up the 2008 – 2009 Quail Season.  I’ll knock them out so I can get to my 2009 – 2010 boird hunting notes in the next couple of weeks.

1/23 Midland

I came over early before meeting up with the SportDOG boys.  I spent the day hunting with in the Quail Buggy.

We found 7 coveys.  While I was originally not a big fan of hunting out of a vehicle, I have changed my take on it after doing it a few times.

There are a couple of really big advantages, especially if you hunt with really young dogs still in training, or if you like to run older dogs.

I do both.   The advantage with young dogs is that you can put them on the ground for how ever long it takes.  Once they get the bird contacts that they need, you can put them up.  It might take 10 minutes.  It might take an hour.

Once you have had success, you are much better off to get them up and let them think about it.  If you have to leave them on the ground while you are headed back to the truck, you stand the chance of them screwing up something or running into a bad situation where the training falls apart.

Since you had success and put them up, you also have the opportunity of running themn again once the other dogs have been on the ground.  It’s win – win.

The advantage for older dogs is similar.  Em is 12 now.  She still loves it and still finds as many birds as the next dog, but she just can’t go as long.  I can run her for 30 minutes and put her up.  I can run her multiple times of the day and give her long breaks between.  If I feel she has had enough, we load her in the buggy and let her relax.  It’s hard to take short rounds when you are hunting on foot.  The buggy fixes this problem.

I also hunt in the heat.   The buggy lets me carry more water and rotate dogs faster.  It’s a big advantage it certain parts of the world.

1/24/2009 Midland

Hunting with L and S.  Kiled 21 birds. Lost count on the number of coveys.  Everyone had a good day.

1/25/2009 Midland

Bad hot today.   Ran Em and Richard first.  No birds.   Ran Click and Sage.  Found 3 coveys of blues.

1/26/2009  Midland

Hunted South East section for the first time.  Found 5 coveys.  I was really pleased with the size of the coveys especially for this time of year.

 

2/10/2009-2/13/2009 – Midland

 It was me, my brother and Sam.  It had been years since the three of us had traveled together and we had a blast.  Rob came out to shoot photos for the website and do a few product videos.

 Click here to see all the pictures.

It was a good week for the dogs and we actually got a bunch of work done.
Steve Snell