Summer = Puppies and Produce

Hi all.  I apologize for not keeping more current with blog posts.  We have been busy around here!   Most relevant to this blog....we have puppies!  Our Storm delivered 8 pups on June 7th.  They just turned 3 weeks old so they have reached the really adorable stage.  The sire is a handsome fellow owned by another ryman breeder.  It was a stroke of good luck that they happen to be only 4 hours away - that's close by Kansas standards.  In August the pups will be headed to their families, scattered from Colorado and Montana to the Great Lakes and on to the coast of Maine.  I will again combine my road trip back to Vermont with delivering the pups to their families.  I look forward to visiting with friends and family there......and eating lobster and seafood!

We have been hoping that Mike will be able to join me on the trip east but this has been a challenging year for our produce operation so that is still to be determined.  The month of May brought us rain - usually a welcome thing here in Kansas but enough is enough!  We had 17" within a few weeks and the timing resulted in the delay and in some instances, the elimination, of some vegetables.   However, our strawberry crop was the early star of our gardens this year and we were kept very busy with Mike picking and me handling the advertising, sales and deliveries.  The hard work is rewarding when you see the smile on people faces as they anticipate their annual jam cooking or kids are grabbing and gobbling berries from the baskets even as their parents are carrying them to their car.  At the Farmer's Market one little girl around 3 or 4 couldn't help herself and as I was talking with her mother she was reaching up and snacking on berries from my table.  Healthy food for local folks  - that's our goal.  

The heavy and excessive spring rains do have us concerned about the local quail and pheasant hatches.  If the timing of the chilly rains was poor, then the newly hatched chicks would not have been able to survive.  But if the birds held off or perhaps have re-nested, then the chicks will benefit from the bumper crop of insects and seeds produced by the rains.  Time will tell!

This is a sketch on sandstone that we have

Cheers!

'Tis the Season

Hunting season that is.  Oh sure, being December 22nd there are decorations around the house, a wreath on the door and Christmas cookies in the kitchen.  But we are still hunting....and have another month+ of hunting ahead of us!  This gift of time is something I am still getting used to.

You see, back in Vermont the season officially closes on Dec 31st but many, ok - most, years, significant snowfall has already shut down the bird hunting by now.  There might be some short late season hunts just to get outside and enjoy the crisp air but on woody mountainsides the going gets tough once the snow gets more than a few inches deep.  Winter settles in deeply in Vermont with a rhythm of quiet snowfall, crackling fires, and dogs settling in by the woodstove.

A pic from 2000 in my old house in Vermont.  Tweed and Storm.

I am sitting in Kansas as I write this though, and although there are dogs sleeping in front of the woodstove, the temperature outside is 45 degrees.  The light snow we received a few days ago is gone and for a couple of days is replaced by mud.  But by tomorrow it will have dried up enough to be very pleasant hunting with a forecast of 38 degrees and we will be back out there.  I took this photo just a few days ago of our 2 youngest dogs, Jazz and Belle..  The warmth of a fire attracts all dogs regardless of breed or age.  But don't worry, the setters from the photo above are sound asleep in nearby chairs.  

At the beginning of December we took the OR and spent a few days in western Kansas where Mike likes to deer hunt.  He took a couple of deer but we were disappointed to see that the pheasant numbers were still depressed.  We returned home and he took a third deer locally.  We don't buy beef all year long but instead eat 'grass fed venison.'  Mike also processes all of the scraps from the deer for supplementing for the dogs.

Western Kansas, where deer hunting is in wide open country and is all about spot and stalk.  After shooting the deer Mike had dragged them over to this small tree, the only distinguishing landmark to assure we could find them when we returned with the cart.

There were not a lot of pheasants but enough for some good dining on pheasant fajitas in the OR. 

But after a week of deer hunting it was back to bird hunting out of the house.  Often we pack a lunch since our search for new areas may take us a distance from the house.  We snack on cheeses, meats, crackers and apples in the car while on break between the morning and afternoon hunts.  This car lunch is the same that we often have when we hunt in Montana as well and it has become a pleasurable part of our hunting routine.

We enjoy exploring new covers and are delighted when we find quail coveys on new grounds.We continue to be conservation minded when hunting the quail: the size of the covey determines whether we pursue singles and how many it is okay to take.  On a typical, healthy covey we typically will take only one or two birds, knowing that if it is a large covey we can always revisit them before the season ends.

I will close with some random dog pictures that I have taken the past few weeks.  As always, I have more and will try to share in future posts.

Good cover means birds which means dogs on point but that cover also means more photos get tossed than kept, this pic is an example of why. That's Belle hidden behind the grass.

(click on any photo to enlarge)

Mid-season update

In October we made a quick trip (can you call 3500 miles quick??) to Vermont for some ruffed grouse hunting.  I was happy to be back on familiar grounds and it was fun to visit with friends while we were there.  The scenery was as beautiful as ever and it did my heart good to hunt areas with vistas such as this:

Unfortunately, it seems that we must have forgotten to pay the weatherman's bill ahead of time and it rained all but 2 of the days that we hunted.  Despite the weather, we shot some grouse and woodcock, hunted with some friends, ate Parker Pie pizza and drank good local beer.   With the forecast of a soaking nor'easter coming in for the next 5 days, we cut our losses and headed home several days early.  We were sorry it meant missing out on connecting with a couple of special friends but both of us and the dogs needed to get out and dry out.  I managed only a few photos between rain showers:

Seems odd to see Mike wearing orange, doesn't it?

We find several deer racks a year, this one was fairly large for Vermont.

So interesting how moose are so large and sign is so fresh yet we don't see them all that often when bird hunting.  

Dining in the OR.  Ruffed grouse are my favorite game birds to eat.  

The Kansas bird season has been open for 3 weeks now and we are having a lot of fun.  We have been hunting out of the house: loading dogs, guns and lunch in the morning and heading out across the state.  This past summer we bought a little Ford Escape SUV and most days that is what we take - we have been impressed with the gas savings it gives us compared to driving one of the trucks every day.  We can carry 5 dogs plus gear in the back, the dogs might be a big snug but no one is going to complain when they are heading out to hunt.  We hunt most days although a couple of days I have hung back home and sent Mike and his EB boys out by themselves - those guys never seem to wear down.

We have been getting into birds every day with enjoyable dog work that is usually the discussion for the ride home and when reviewing photos that evening.  The open covers in KS and MT are great for providing opportunities for good photos.   This pic is my favorite so far this year, I love the colors and textures and it was taken at one of my favorite covers.  In the center is Storm on point on a covey that she held a long time while we worked our way over to her.  (click on any photo to see it larger)

Our typical sequence usually starts with one of us calling out, "dog down over here."  I will take a moment here to interpret for my grouse hunting friends: it is a midwest quail hunting tradition that 'dog down' means that a dog is on point.  It takes a little getting used to and I try to remember to explain it ahead of time to any friends who join us so they don't get concerned that we have an injured dog.  But I digress.....   Since we run 3 - 5 dogs at a time, the other dogs also know what that means and any that are around often head in to back the pointing dog.  This is makes for safer shooting since we know where all of the dogs are plus there have been many times that a dog coming in for a back actually serves to block a bird/covey that was running.  Once all are stopped I take out my pocket camera or Mike his cellphone, and we take a couple of photos.  We then check if the other gunner is ready and someone moves in to flush the birds.  It is quite civilized, if I say so myself.

On this point was the first time that I saw a covey on the ground when I went in to flush the birds.  They were running around in the brush in front of the dogs and as soon as one bird made eye contact with me they were out of there. Mike was in position on the other side of the hedge row for any birds that might fly through it.

A few other pics

  

A hedge row, classic quail cover

'The Oaks' , a new favorite cover filled with great timber....and birds

I will let you go for now but promise to post more photos and updates soon!

Cheers

Lynn Dee

Montana 2014 in the rear view mirror, Part III, the dogs

I have come to really enjoy taking photos while we hunt.  We even have a little routine where I download them onto the laptop or ipad when we return from hunting and while we eat dinner I set it to playback the day's photos in a slideshow.   Lots of fun to relive the moments and discuss details that maybe one of us had missed at the time.  The photos also sometimes point out things that both of us missed, such as additional birds flushing off to the side or a dog backing - or breaking - that we had not noticed in person.  So I hope you all get some pleasure from my photos as well.  This will be the last batch from our MT trip.  But.....stay tuned, because in 2 days we are leaving for a spontaneous trip to Vermont to hunt grouse and woodcock!  

For now, back in MT, it was fun to have 2 pups along again this year.  Belle, one of the Fr Brit pups, was only 9 months when we left.  These first pics show her first points on sharptail.  We think she's going to be a good one: she covers the ground very nicely, handles easily, and seems to have a good nose.

Jazz, our other Fr Brit puppy, was only 5 months and still pretty small in size so we decided to hold off with hunting her until quail season here in KS.  She did get a little exposure to sharptails though, you can see how short she is in the grass.  Look closely to see the sharpie standing in front of her in the grass.  Overall, she is adorable and I can't wait to hunt her.

Often in photos the eye is drawn to the setters since they are bigger and white, but the 2 FB boys Jack and DW always put on a show, we are very fortunate to have them.

Sally is just 1 yr old and it is great fun to watch her speed across the prairie.  She has the darn'dest habit though of going on point only in the densest of cover where you can barely see her.  She reminds me a bit of the TV show Tool Time where the neighbor always had his face half covered.  This year Sally got quilled by a porcupine not once, but twice, but fortunately they weren't too bad and we were able to pull the quills ourselves.  The second time she yelped when it happened I am hoping that she learned to leave porkys alone.  

Can you see Sally on point in the photo below?

Fortunately, Tweed and her daughter Storm are much easier to see.

As always, thanks for looking.