I got out the other day with a bigger group than my usual solo ways - four guns, Pearl, a one year old black lab female - Tori, a 6 year old female GSP - Tessa, and a 6 year old Golden Retreiver - Ginger. We were in a big cover but it was almost too many dogs - hard to know who to watch! In the end I watched Pearl and Ginger mostly, because Pearl is mine and I know Ginger and her signals well. I tag-teamed a rooster over a steep bank and it got hung up in a tree, so I had to scramble down to help the dogs to get it. That was a good start. Then I got a very easy single that had to flutter around a bit to get free of the brambles, so I had lots of time to get ready - just had to let it climb to a safe height to shoot. We got four birds between the four of us that day - encountering some sparse numbers later in the day on some covers that would normally be very good. Here's the one I scrambled down for.

This weekend is shaping up to busy at home, and I've had a hard time getting onto covers on Saturdays, so I thought I'd give it a miss this weekend and go sit in my deerstand instead. So of course, I figured I'd slip out this morning before the rain to a little cover close to home. It's a field that extends out into a horseshoe bend in the river, and the wind was blowing straight down into the open end of the horseshoe. One side of the cover is very much better than the other, so I walked downwind on the less good side. Pearl was skipping along having a nice morning when all of a sudden she turned into the wind and started across the field. I stopped her and she sat to the whistle, but didn't look back at me for instructions. I wanted to take her right to the bottom of the horseshoe to be able to push the good cover in one full pass, so I whistled her in. She came, but immediately turned and nosed into the wind again. This time, when she sat, she gathered her muscular haunches under her and her tail was ramrod straight out behind her - evenly 2" over the short grass. She was basically quivering to be let go. I thought back to my wise old Ruby, and how often over the 9 short years that I had her that she tought me that I was nearly always wrong and she was nearly always right. Sure, Pearl is just a youngster, but looking at her I became increasingly convinced that she had a snootful of somethign worth investigating. I walked up to her and put my hand out in her 'steady' signal as I walked away. It was about 100 yards to the alders and hawthorn at the edge of the river, which was running quite fast today due to fall rains. I got to about 30 yards from the river and released her. She was up to me and past me INSTANTLY, and charged up to the bank a lot faster than I thought she would. I kinda figured I'd close another 15 yards before she caught up. Nope! I took a few giant strides and she lit up, birdy as hell, and had just enough time to plant my feet as she flushed a rooster from behind a thick hawthorne tree. He flew straight away, so I hammered a 3" load of #5s at him in a shower of splinters and berries. Before I could see if he faltered another rooster flushed from the same spot, opting to ride the wind in the other direction, and I picked him out of an opening between alders. He dropped in the river and Pearl went after him. While she was after that one in the fast current I stood on a fencerail and looked downstream - there was the first rooster thrashing in the current as he died, then drifted off quickly downstream. Pearl got back with the first rooster and we jogged down along the fast current to get near the bird, then I cast her blind to the river with a 'back' command and she ploughed through the grass and got to the bank close enough to spot the rooster spinning through the current, and retrieved that one.
That completed a two-bird limit for this part of the world, so I dropped some bismuth into the chambers and we walked the shore hoping to jump a stubborn woodduck that might still be around, or a bigger puddleduck that might be resting along the shoreline. We got neither, but the main point of that final walk was to give her some exercise before we headed to work for the day.

I am so pleased with this dog - really coming into her own and becoming a joy to hunt over, as well as being very effective. And I was particularily pleased to have the priviledge of relearning the lesson from a dog so young: "Dad, you're a nice guy, but when it comes to this stuff, I'm usually right, and you're usually wrong. Just watch me, keep up, and shoot straight". Works for me!

-Dave