The 2013 Tour Has begun: We're off!

The Open Range is hooked up, guns and gear packed, dogs are loaded up and we are crossing North Dakota as I write this. We have felt pretty organized the past few weeks as we prepared for this trip. We are planning to be on the road for about 8 weeks which is a good length of time but feels a whole lot easier than last year when we had to prepare for 4 months on the road. Having a house here in Kansas cuts our road time in half since come November our hunting will be just a few nights away at a time or even some day trips out of the house.

Our first stop last night was at a campground in the Sheyenne Natl Grasslands at a lovely, spacious campground and we were the only ones there so were were able to let the dogs stretch their legs a bit. Our brand new generator quit after just a few minutes which left us a bit hot with no AC but the RV fans got us through the night and the company is over nighting a part to where we will be tomorrow. Now we are on to western North Dakota for some dinner plans and tomorrow we head into Central Montana.












In MT we will be running Jack in a field trial, it is a wild bird, all-breed pointing dog trial but a different venue than I have ever been to. The EB club requires dogs to have been successful in both trials and at shows before being bred so we recently decided to enter him. This gave me about a month to take a dog who has been allowed to break at the shot for thousands of birds and make him steady to flush and shot. I have been training by myself, old school style with only his leather collar and checkcord as equipment and his progress is proof positive that a good dog needs nothing more than that. After the trial we will let, actually encourage, him to again break at the shot because especially with roosters we want every advantage when it comes to recovering birds we shoot.

The MT season opens Sept 1st and we will explore and hunt the central part of the state which is new to both of us. There are pockets of forest in addition to prairie with the possibility of a variety of bird species. Daytime temps will likely require early morning hunts with afternoons for fishing or driving around. We hope to meet up with a New England friend who is making a quick trip to MT himself: we had dinner together shortly before moving to KS but this time there should be wild game on the table instead of a jaw dropping tab. As it cools we will head east to the familar areas where we hunted last year.

We will post photos and updates when we can find internet access. This year we have a new camera that also shoots video so we will be trying our hand at that as well. Also, after years of people asking me if I had a website for my dogs I finally broke down this year and had a modest site set up. I got a referral to a wonderful young man who is starting his own business and it was fun to work long-distance with him as he attempted to rein in my verbose, photo laden style and make it work on a site. If interested, the address is www.Firelightbirddogs.com. I still need to add to and fine tune some details on it but that will have to wait until we return.

Cheers!


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