still jumping the gun

it was a beautiful day to run the dogs on some quail. perfect temperature and a nice wind for the dogs to catch sent. birdie is doing great. she finds the birds fast, holds point like a champ, holds on wing, and retrieves to hand. she is not holding on shot. i think she did it once today. i need to focus most of my training with her on that one issue. ritter was fun to shoot over as always. the two dogs even ran together on a couple of birds. we ended the day with about 7 quail and a beautiful sunset.

duck of a life time

bob, ben, birdie, and i went down to sta 5 yesterday. we had tons of ducks working all morning. we didnt fire a shot till well after the sun was up trying to wait for big ducks. for some reason we couldnt get the big ducks to come near our spread although we had wigeon and pintails working all day. birdie did awesome and retrieved 8 of the 12 ducks we shot. she is breaking on the shot about 70% of the time and i need to break her of that. the highlight of the day was that bob shot a cinnamon teal drake. it was not full plumed but still a beautiful bird. we typically do not get cinnamon here on the east coast. they use the western flyway and show up mostly in mexico and california. most likely neither one of us will ever see another in our life time.

birdie on snipe

went back out to see if the ducks would show up and to put birdie on her first snipe. the ducks did not show but its good training for birdie to have to sit in the blind. after we saw that the ducks were a lost cause we walked up a few snipe. her first snipe retrieve was beautiful. she held after the shot and went straight to the bird when i sent her out. she brought it straight back and dropped it into my hand. the retrieve i caught on video was not as pretty but still not bad. she tried to take the bird to andrew who was to my left. she had such a great time out there bounding through the water and looking for birds.

thanksgiving 2010

today i went on my annual thanksgiving day hunt. my buddy andrew came along which was a fun change because every year previous i have hunted alone. we did not shoot any ducks but like many other times, it was not the ducks fault. we had no ducks at first light come into our spread. after the sun came up i decided to break out the big camera and get some close up shots of the hand carved decoys i had floated in our spread. thinking the morning was a bust i did not even bother to take my gun with me."beside, i would be standing in the middle of my decoys. what are the chances of ducks coming in?" wrong! while i was photographing my last decoy i heard a whistle. then another and another. i looked up from my viewfinder to see 10 black belly whistling ducks headed straight for me. if i had reached up i probably could have grabbed a few by the legs. i looked back at andrew and said "black bellies. shoot!" they slowly circled his head as he raised his gun. "CLICK!" he looked at his gun and chambered another round. "CLICK!" i heard a few unmentionable words from the blind. he ejected another live shell and "CLICK!" at this point i was almost running to the blind for my gun as the birds slowly flew off in the direction of another group of hunters. "BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM!" i saw 4 our 5 birds fall from the sky. i looked over at andrew who was dumbfounded. we looked his gun over and noticed that the firing pin had fallen out at some point. what a bust! i walked up a few snipe. could have shot a limit but i was tearing them up with the number 4 duck shot i had brought. tomorrow i will have number 7 with me and no hand carved decoys.

i used 3 different cameras to shoot the pics above. my iphone, my canon point and shoot, and my nikon slr. that was a first for me. can you tell which ones were shot with which camera?

10/11 opening weekend

well opening weekend has come and gone. i scouted thursday and friday. found thousands of ringers and a few puddle ducks. saturday the wind died and the ringers were nowhere to be found. shot a few ducks and should have hit more. tons of woodies working on saturday and plenty of ringers working the decoys on sunday but always about 80 yards out. got to hunt with two friends, dwight and ed. had a blast with both of them!

anna maria island fishing

i had a wedding to shoot this past weekend on anna maria island. my buddy dubs was the hired musician for the wedding so we devised a plan to do a little fishing the morning after. dubs towed his boat down and despite staying up till 4 am we pulled ourselves out of bed at 7 am and hit the water. chris boll also joined us. we had a great time and caught a ton of trout.

Birdie gets a visit

birdie and i went over to meet up with amanda, the owner of birdies parents, in orlando. she was in town at a conference. im so glad we were able to connect. her and birdie had a great time playing outside of bass pro shop. thanks for meeting with us, amanda!

its really coming together

well yesterday it really came together for birdie. she looked like a pro out there. she found birds quickly. she held rock solid point for long periods of time. on fetch she went straight to the bird and came straight back and delivered the bird to hand. i cant tell you how proud i am of her. after the hunt she got to spend lots of time running and playing with her friends.

"birdie" by Janie Koch

an artist from biloxi, mississippi that is related to my mothers best friend saw a picture of birdie and it inspired her to do a painting.

upland training

birdie and i went to do some upland bird training yesterday. she is coming along nicely. it felt like fall for the first time out there. the cooler weather makes it easier on everyone. feels like hunting season.