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Had a fine weekend of shooting trees. Got a Birch, an Aspen, a Red maple and a couple Balsam fir. These are just the confirmed kills that severed a major branch at close range. Heavy cover in the Northern MN grouse woods made successful hunting rather difficult. I did actually get one on the wing (through one of the aforementioned Balsams) and took down his roost mate dirty when he was too slow to take flight. I was hungry for grouse breast, fair play be darned! One of the few birds I've ever hit that flushed overhead.
This was following a last weekends shooting fast ducks appearing to spawn from 40 foot willows as if in a video game in a severe thunderstorm and a fog bank. Anybody else notice ducks are faster than they used to be? I finally dialed the lead in by the end of Sunday's morning flight, using fewer shells to finish the second half of my limit by a factor of 4.
All in all, this is my favorite kind of shooting. Had a great time missing and being humbled. The grouse were really tough. All I could do was snap the M37 to shoulder and slap the trigger at a brown blur, then look for feathers falling down behind the leaf cover. At least I didn't hit any solid trees at close range and get a peppering of rebounded #6 pellets!
My 1 year, 3 month golden retriever is actually showing a lot of promise at close working and flushing, and causing a lot of frustration at retrieving. We've had to go back to puppy basics on retrieving to hand with an equine lunge line and a bumper with a grouse or duck wing attached. Getting him to bring back the 2 grouse that were marked and found perfectly was ... challenging. Amazing how fast they can regress with a Month or so of very little targeted training punctuated by a weekend of playing with kids unsupervised (chase me!). On today's grouse walk with lots of on-the-job training yesterday to remember how to check, back, and stay close, he performed almost perfectly. Working cover left and right of the trail, following winds into flushes, not bolting after flushes, tweety birds, a bull moose or pine squirrels...it was a thing of beauty (relative to a 1.25 year old Golden with little experience). He even winded the two 20 feet up in the balsam and circled the tree like a squirrel dog and marking them "up" before the one flushed and the other fell down. I can't wait until some leaves drop and pheasant season starts.
This was following a last weekends shooting fast ducks appearing to spawn from 40 foot willows as if in a video game in a severe thunderstorm and a fog bank. Anybody else notice ducks are faster than they used to be? I finally dialed the lead in by the end of Sunday's morning flight, using fewer shells to finish the second half of my limit by a factor of 4.
All in all, this is my favorite kind of shooting. Had a great time missing and being humbled. The grouse were really tough. All I could do was snap the M37 to shoulder and slap the trigger at a brown blur, then look for feathers falling down behind the leaf cover. At least I didn't hit any solid trees at close range and get a peppering of rebounded #6 pellets!
My 1 year, 3 month golden retriever is actually showing a lot of promise at close working and flushing, and causing a lot of frustration at retrieving. We've had to go back to puppy basics on retrieving to hand with an equine lunge line and a bumper with a grouse or duck wing attached. Getting him to bring back the 2 grouse that were marked and found perfectly was ... challenging. Amazing how fast they can regress with a Month or so of very little targeted training punctuated by a weekend of playing with kids unsupervised (chase me!). On today's grouse walk with lots of on-the-job training yesterday to remember how to check, back, and stay close, he performed almost perfectly. Working cover left and right of the trail, following winds into flushes, not bolting after flushes, tweety birds, a bull moose or pine squirrels...it was a thing of beauty (relative to a 1.25 year old Golden with little experience). He even winded the two 20 feet up in the balsam and circled the tree like a squirrel dog and marking them "up" before the one flushed and the other fell down. I can't wait until some leaves drop and pheasant season starts.
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