Firelight Bird Dogs

Firelight Bird Dogs

Monday, December 3, 2012

Friends and ghosts

In recent weeks we have had the pleasure of hunting here in Kansas with friends from Texas, Maine and Vermont. We bird hunters sure are willing to travel to sate our addictions, aren't we?!

A true gentleman, Jess, and his beautiful Drahthaar, I love that breed.





His viszla nailed this covey, check out her color camo!





Taylor came out from Maine and it was a lot of fun helping to get him into his first-ever wild quail and pheasant.





As a young man should, Taylor headed off on his own adventure after learning the ropes and texted us pics like this of his dog on quail.



Warren came from Vermont with his 8 month old puppy (from Tweed) and his seasoned veteran grouse dog. And what the heck, he smoked a double on the elusive prairie chicken the first time we even came across a group of them.





The icing on the cake of Warrens visit for Mike was the contents of his fresh-from-Vermont cooler. Aficionados will understand.




Many fun times for sure, but it has been very sad to find that the dismal reports regarding the effects of the drought on Kansas birds were accurate. This is reported to be the most serious drought here since the 1950's with record strings of 100+ degree days. The drought has been hitting southwest Kansas for 2 years now and this year northwest Kansas was hit hard. Pheasants in the nw were devastated this summer and the lack of birds is the topic of discussion for hunters and residents alike since they rely on hunting tourism as an important part of their economy. Mike has hunted this area for years and has been frustrated and saddened by the phez numbers. In fields where we would find a couple of birds Mike would tell me that normally he would have seen 20-30: in these beautiful grasses I could practically feel the presence of the ghosts of pheasants past. We join the locals in hoping that the drought ends soon.


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1 comment:

  1. Nice to see Dixie; she's a good looking girl!
    Despite low bird numbers it appears everyone enjoyed the hunt.-JW

    ReplyDelete