Sweep had a few days off so she got the first call. We parked at a trailhead north of Nashwauk. There was already a truck parked there, it had a trailer on it so I figured ATV hunter. Shortly after releasing Sweep we saw the rider coming down the trail. He said that he hadn’t seen a grouse yet and hadn’t seen many this year.
We made it to a spot where you can turn off onto a smaller trail without any action. A little ways in and we got our first Woodcock point, it held but I didn’t get off a shot. A bit farther we had another point that turned out to be another Woodcock and this time I did get off a shot and make the harvest. Unfortunately I heard a grouse flush from the shot but didn’t see him to make a try. One nice thing about this shot was that I was able to call Sweep over to look for it and she found it closer to me than I thought. She has been about 50/50 at looking for downed birds that she didn’t see fall. We continued down the trail farther than we have hunted in the past. We did move one more Woodcock but no more grouse before we turned around. We didn’t get a shot at the Woodcock. We worked our way back to the main trail without any more contacts. Once on the main trail Sweep did bump one grouse but she was working with a tailwind so I wasn’t too upset. Once back to our truck another suv with an atv on a trailer pulled in. It was a buddy of the first guy and he was looking for him.. cell reception is a bit sketchy up there.
I loaded Sweep into her kennel and headed back to a spot near our place. Last week was the first time that we had hunted there. We had moved a fair number of Woodcock there and I was hoping to get the 14 year old Tasha some points. We started out with a nice point in the first 5 minutes and it was a Woodcock and I was able to connect and find the bird. We worked this trail also farther that we had before and had one grouse flush wild. The was no wind in the woods so I wasn’t surprised that Tasha didn’t get a point. On the way back Tasha went on point and the Garmin watch said she was just 35 yards into the woods. When I started in I looked at the watch again and it said 100 yards and then 150… I tapped the vibrate mode on her collar which will usually turn her around. She is pretty much deaf so getting her oriented can be a challenge.. she got out to 300 yards and I was going as quickly as I could in the cover… I finally stumbled back onto the trail and she was only 70 yards away but she ran the wrong way… I went after her again and after hitting 250 yards she turned around and came jogging up to me as if nothing had happened. I put her on a leash and just walked her back to the car. On plus side after one hour of hunting she was still going strong.
Post Hunt.. The next morning both Sweep and Tasha were limping. The weather was wet and gloomy so giving them the day off didn’t cut into our hunting time.
No comments:
Post a Comment