Sad

[tasha]

I've spent last night Wildfowling which is basically sitting in a load of trees/bushes on the foreshore of a group of flightponds with dog to your left sitting nice and quitely waiting for the fun to begin, gun in hand loaded but broke till required and a VERY small tipple of yummy booze to keep you warm.

No moon tonight so we were only out a couple of hours starting off a bit before dusk and finishing once too dark to see. Wild ducks will come back to flight ponds for the nights feeding and you can see them quite clearly in the sky

All in all NO shots were fired, six duck came in, one lab ran riot, one twit had a duck caller and overused it I don't think he got the concept of waiting patiently and quietly... funny thing was that two of the guns posted at the other end of the ponds to me were so confused by the sound of the twit with the duck caller that when the real ducks came in loud as brass they thought it was him messing around and failed to shoot what would have been lovely birds!!

I had the first go of my new gun which is still to be fitted properly but it felt lovely so tomorrow we are going out early morning to the beach to do some shooting from there instead of the flight ponds

All in all we had five guns and four dogs, Two weimaraners (Bonnie & Dolly - a lovely 15 month old bitch) said running riot lab and Ayla who had her first night out poor whatsit couldn't contain herself and now stinks after throwing herself in the lake

It did rain quite heavily but to be honest you don't really notice it Not a bad night out shooting wild game you never really expect a big bag and sometimes going home empty handed still has its pleasures.


Duck Caller... Naughty black lab
Bonnie being a good girl and sitting nice and quietly waiting for the ducks to come...
me caught a bit on the hop after Ayla launched herself in the pond
The girls before the evening started

Some of the shoot grounds shoot goes in lots of areas around the island so you can see some of it right off in the distance.

These are the google earth version of the different parts of the isle of wight shoot I'm on at the moment

[jai]

Great story Tash. I can just imagine you sitting there waiting so patiently for the game to come in. Good Luck at the beach!
jai and falko

[marjolein]

Fab story!

[weimaranermama]

Great story.

[tasha]

I felt a little sad when mar posted that there were no hunting stories and to be honest I don't post half the stuff I get up to because some of it is a bit off the wall but I don't mind giving a few updates on what we are doing

Tonight we are doing bolting rabbit training with live rabbits We have so many on campus that are used to people that they don't run away until you are really almost on top of them and bonnie has such an urge to chase them that I am starting training her not to. We do rabbit shoots but that is retrieving work after they have all been shot so its not proper rabbiting but it is all good fun.

I am hoping that with time she will ignor them again, she used to be very good but of late with so many around she's got a little hot on them. We are also ratting training with a young terrier pup belonging to a friend of mine who will eventually do rabbit as well

[jai]

very cool tasha..
and just to add to your rabbit, Falko just came in from our last walk/pee trip outside.. and he found himself another hedgehog to point at. It was quite funny since the little guy was on the side of a hill rolled into a ball. He looked more like trash when I came nearer. Thought Falko was a bit crazy pointing at dark to a ball of trash.. but he did well and he got a treat!

Have a good nite Tasha..
jai and falko

[emma]

Just wanted to say that I haven't had any time to post much here lately because of all the hunting we have been doing!
So there is no need to worry Marjolein
Aku has attended two Field Hunting Tests and got very good points from both. He is working very well with the birds and is very obedient. He is also quite good with the hares.
We have also been hunting with him for 1,5 weeks in northern Finland but he still needs to train a lot with the forest birds which are much trickier than for example pheasants.
Now we will go to the mountains for a week and try find some willow grouse, however, this is a bad year I've heard. The willow grouse is an excellent bird to train young dogs with so I hope we will find some!
Good luck with the hunting to everyone

[marjolein]

Have fun Emma!!! Great to hear about your antics btw!!!!

[safaritours]

Hi Hi Marjolein ;)long time no speak, I am on your side the writing is on the wall all over the world, meat is bought not hunted, kids dont know what game tastes like as it is not sold in a supermarket like all the real food they eat. I tried to get the local schools interested in free clay target shooting but they dont want anything to do with firearms, and a hunting dog is frowned upon in favour of a pretty show dog, It is no wonder the hunting stories get fewer hunters are declining and Wei are disapearing from hunts because of tail docking laws, I have my two Wei bitches and shame on me they have docked tails and we hunt whenever I get a cold day ( its Hot here at this time ).

I also read Tashas bit and I quote (I can give you a little update on what we have been doing although its not competition driven only work orientated if you like.) There you have a hunter nearly apologising for only having real hunting stories to tell instead of competition, I only recieved four replies from my last story nice as they were they were not enough to write more.
by the way I never did get the opportunity to get a male from germany despite there promises and protesting, when it all comes down to it they just cant be bothered, maybe we are like them and we dont promote our hunting dogs anymore, or cant be bothered, as for me well I could put more in but the forum in general dosent seem interested in the hunting as I said, it is more into marketing and shows I think, maybe we need a hunters corner to hide in.

[marjolein]

Good plan, but I'm not a hunter. Yet I have to say. Me and my boyfriend are planning on doing the course later this year.
Anyways, I really like your stories so would love to read more of those. But I can understand your reasons for not posting anymore. I don't post that often either.....

[marjolein]

We had a FAB pheasant season btw! Dogs did a great job!

[greyghost]

At the risk of losing you altogether with your stories the HPR forum is great for hunting. There are some guys there from NZ who have some tales to tell too. We have a bit of a laugh too........

workinghprs.myfastforum.org/index.php

[tasha]

ha! I'd certainly like some more be interested to see how your girls are getting on, they must be huge by now I think alot of people read them but don't necessarily reply to them.

We've not done much of late the season here is ended so other than the odd run and some pigeon its been a bit quiet. Can't wait till next season though!!

Sam is going to New Zealand in May was tempted to get him to bring back your chunky girl if your bored of her yet haha! Am sure he could squish her in his suitcase!

[Cheryl]

Hi John, I've been wondering how you and your girls are doing. Our weather is a bit much lately so only hunting is camera shots which I'll post tonight or Saturday of the cow moose and her twins at the outskirts of our small town day before yesterday. The blizzards and fog when the wind died for a short time, the cow (moose) got lost in direction. Just as I did when trying to get
to the cabin w/jerry jugs of heating oil in between storms and fog the other night! I got to the cabin parking space and walked 30-50 feet to the first bush/tree and the weims took off to the right while I veered to the left. I called them back, in between them coming to check on me, thinking they were going to the highway again. Finally at 10 feet ahead, is a cabin, but not mine! Then the snow got deeper and the dogs and I crawled, me on all fours to my cabin, following the trees/bushes on the right side of the back road which is snowed in and waist high as its too fresh and soft- what a sweaty workout! If the moose were in the brush/trees nearby the cabin, we would have been trampled as we were swimming in snow but they weren't there yet. They will be once the sunshine comes back for longer times in March. Here's a read of our local newspaper link for our weather woes;)
www.nomenugget.net/

The dogs were tired, and Boris had snowballs on his hairy feet;) We were without power at my son's house where we have been weather bound for 5 hours, they gave us power for 2 hours to heat the houses, cook something to eat and the power off again as the power lines were shredding, at least six times the power/electricity lines broke according to the volunteer fireman who stopped by each house in our neighborhood. BTW, my hens were in dark without heat but when the power was restored two hours, they flew to the nesting boxes, laid eggs asap and hopped down to eat asap and never got cold so it encourages me to try pheasant, quail and another flock of dual purpose hens once I can get the coops and runs set up or snow shoveling done- that's been put on hold, too!

[Cheryl]

(Have to change the date on my new camera!)

[tasha]

core look at all that lovely snow!!!!

[chiendog]

Around here, the words "snow" and "lovely" are rarely used in the same sentence

It's been colder than a banker's heart around here for the last 6 weeks...down to minus 47 ( yes, that is minus fourty seven... two degrees colder than damn cold and three degrees warmer than f***ing cold. Worst of all, there are surely another 6 weeks of it to go before we start to warm up.

The hunting season ground to a halt in mid December. I have however posted a new story about hunting with our dogs on my blog. It is about an AWESOME photo my wife took in November in South Dakota...

www.chiendog.blogspot.com/

[Cheryl]

Ten degrees colder than us! Lisa's photo is Totally Awesome!

[tasha]

I'm not sure I'd be getting out of bed with the weather that cold, you must have wonderful heating systems. We keep getting the promise of snow but so far we've had a little rain, alot of wind but otherwise its too mild for anything more than the old bit of frost on the ground first thing in the morning. I don't know if its global warming but it really is too mild here even the plants are suffering.

[Cheryl]

I've decided once we get thru our first year of Alaskan NAVHDA training and testing that instead of next winter sitting here and having Boris watch the tv for training and just a bit of frozen bird and retrieving...we shall travel next year, to continue training and testing, either in Oregon and/or California...am trying to get an idea of their schedules now to make plans- its no use here, not in this weather! Poor boy can't watch tv forever, he craves and breathes education and repetitive training- such a good boy, too!