I’ve been struggling finding good chukar numbers around home, so I traveled down to Southern Utah to look for Gambel’s quail and chukars. It was a spectacular day with fresh snow on the ground. The quail were a bust, but we did find a fair number of chukars. Problem was, that like Homer’s Sirens, they called us from just a ways up the hill, then a little farther. Before I knew it, I was at the top of the mountain, it was getting dark and they were calling me from just the next mountain over.

 

 

I was able to take advantage of the light snow so far this year and Utah’s new extended blue grouse season the other day and get out and shoot a limit of duskies. Most years by this time the high country is locked up with snow and the season blue grouse season closed at the end of November.  It was still a long hike in and once we got to the highest elevations where the grouse were there was six to twelve inches of snow. Some of it was hard enough to walk on; otherwise it was post-holing all the way.

Sometimes late in the season once there is snow on the ground the blues have all taken to the trees and you don’t flush any from the ground. When this is the case I’m sure you walk under a lot of grouse and they just hold still and let you walk right by; those that do dive out of the tree tops, usually from the backside going 80 mph downhill. They make for a very sporty target.

This time I caught about half of the birds on the ground and half in trees.  The highlight of the day was when Lilly, a young French Brittany I am working tracked and retrieved her first bird, a bird I barely hit through a narrow window in the pine boughs. I watched Lilly work down the air-born scent cone along the flight path of the bird, and then disappear over the edge. She showed up about two minutes later with a big cock blue grouse in her mouth looking very proud of herself.

 

 

A limit of ring-necks, prairie chickens, sharp-tail and a bobwhite. What a day.

While pheasant hunting in Nebraska this year I was thrilled with my lab’s performance. Because of the condition she is in from daily roading, and early season grouse and chukar hunting, Allie was a powerhouse. She hit the tall grass CRP fields with leaps and bounds and quartered over every inch of the fields. Best of all, she listened to and followed my quiet commands.  She stayed within gun range and put up roosters for me.  I was proud of her.

I did, however miss my Drahthaar Aika. This new dog helped me recognized some of the strengths of that old dog; mainly her tracking ability. There was one rooster in particular that drove this point home. We were working a tall grassy edge that ended in a plumb thicket adjacent to a plowed field. All at once about six roosters erupted from the back side of the covert. Five of them flew left and away out of range, but one came up a little closer and crossed to my right over the plowed field. When he cackled from the cover his tail feathers seemed to just keep coming. He was one of the longest tailed birds I have ever seen.  I rocked him at about 50 yards with the first barrel and dropped him with the second barrel. He went down hard, but immediately jumped up and sprinted 150 yards across the bare field to a nasty thick field of standing cane. We raced over to where he crossed under the fence and entered the cover and Allie started down his track, but after a short search came back empty. I wanted that bird and worked and worked to find him to with no success.

With Aika, I can honestly say that I didn’t lose many birds. If you put a bird down, that dog would track it down and find it.  Looking back now I can see she was an amazing tracker. I remember one pheasant I knocked down in a thick weedy patch of tall corn stubble. I sent her for the bird, certain I had killed it and that it would be a quick retrieve. She hit the area, worked around then headed off down our back trail. I called her back several times and each time she would head off. Soon she was gone. I yelled and whistled for her and she was just gone. I waited probably ten minutes before she reappeared, rooster in her mouth. I couldn’t have been more pleased. To this day I wonder how far she tracked that running Ringneck.

One of the things that I really saw on this pheasant hunt is how individual dogs have different strengths. I appreciated how much energy Allie had and how easy she was to handle and follow my commands. But I also recognized my Drahthaar’s hard headedness and her amazing tracking ability.

This year around us chukars have been hard to come by. Numbers seem to be down quite a bit. Saturday I had a great day out with the dogs and a new friend who shares a passion for upland game.  We hunted hard over some rough steep country. Luckily I was able to end up with at least one chukar.

I remember three or four years ago chukar numbers were really up. I could go out and see numerous coveys and consistently shoot a limit. I remember one Saturday I stayed home to get some yard chores done before the snow flew. I worked as long as I could before I had to get out and at least try for some chukars. With just an hour of light left I was lucky enough to pull down a limit of chukars. I am confident that numbers will be back, but until then, I’ll have to keep pounding the hillsides. One hard-earned chukar is real trophy and it tastes that much better.
 

It was a spectacular weekend. We got our first snow of the year. In the higher country we received about 4” of wet snow. My guess is that it will all melt off within a few days though. The aspen leaves were spectacular. Blue grouse populations seem to be down in my usual spots. I had a hard time coming up with a limit this weekend. It was a beautiful day though. The aspen leaves made it worth the effort.

 

 

 I had a fun weekend grouse hunting and watching the development of Remington, a 12 month old Brittany I have been training. To date we have focused on birds in the training field (pigeons, bobwhite quail, and chukars). This weekend we went out and hunted wild blue grouse (dusky grouse). Remington is a dog that I had to work with very carefully on noise sensitivity issues. I could tell from the outset that he was very sensitive to loud noises, so I took it very carefully.  On the plus side he was very keen on birds, so I was able to use his interest in birds to overcome his aversion to loud noises, and have eventually been able to work up to the shotgun.

This weekend was his first wild bird hunt, and his first hunt in tall dense cover where he couldn’t see me. Remington made a lot of progress this weekend; I saw him go from a dog, crazy with excitement running wild through the forest and getting himself lost, to a dog that stayed within range and was actively hunting with me looking for birds.

I used the Garmin GPS collar on the dog and was able to see exactly what he was doing on the first hunt.  This was really interesting. We started out working through an upper elevation aspen/Doug fir transition area that had been selectively logged. Remington started out wild with excitement. I was able to call him back to me several times for the first ¼ mile before he blew out of the area in a frenzy. I watched what he was doing on the GPS unit. He went part way back to the truck then ran back and forth perpendicular to our direction of travel, ranging 500 – 600 yards back and forth. Based on how fast he was running and the fact that he was just running back and forth in practically a straight line it didn’t seem like he was hunting, more like he was in a brain spastic frenzy and then got lost. After ~20 minutes he found the truck and sat under it waiting for me.  Thanks to the Garmin, I didn’t have to worry about where he was I just monitored what he was doing, then went to him.

I put him in up in the dog box in the truck and went hunting for a couple of hours with another dog. When I got back, he seemed anxious to go again, but had lost the crazed look in his eyes. We went out and he was like a whole new dog. It was as if he had sat in the kennel and thought about what he was going to do next time he got a chance.  He stayed within a reasonable range for the thickness of the cover and checked back often, he responded to my commands, and seemed to be hunting with me.  Best of all, when I did have a chance to shoot a grouse, he was right there wanting in on the action. My other dog, a lab, located and flushed the grouse, but Remington was quickly there at the shot looking for the downed bird he has come to expect at the sound of a gunshot.

The next day the lessons seemed to have stuck. From the outset, Remington was out looking for birds, yet he stayed within range, followed my directions and checked in often. Unfortunately after a hard day of grouse hunting we didn’t find any birds. It is looking like a tough blue grouse season this year. Nevertheless, it was exciting to see this young Brittany developing into a good field dog and asset to the hunting team. He has a ways to go, but this was a great start and it was fun to watch his progress.
 

I had a chance to field test the Garmin Astro 220 (DC30) dog GPS unit while grouse hunting.  I put it to the test in a variety of cover types and conditions on both flushing and pointing dogs. The following are my thoughts on the unit:

First, I am an experienced GPS user and long time fan of Garmin GPS units.  Over the years, I have owned the Garmin II+, Garmin V, Legend, Vista, and GPSMap 60CSx GPS units. Garmin has consistently led the industry with quality, accurate, durable products which are easy to use and have intuitive menu systems.  So, as an advanced GPS user and avid bird hunter, I was excited to see Garmin come out with the Astro for tracking dogs.

When Garmin came out with the previous unit, the DC20, I felt that it was too bulky a unit to be practical; you would have to use it as a backpack mounted device on the dog’s back, or use a counter-balance weight to keep it up on the back of the dog’s neck.  It was too cumbersome to be practical. With this new DC30, that changed. The unit is about the size of an e-collar with a flexible rubber antenna coming out the back. 

My first impression of the dog collar unit was that this was a practical collar that you could use in the field on your dog. The collar is solid and appears to be able to withstand some abuse from dog’s running through the brush. It turns on easily and is readily apparent when the collar is turned on or off, by the flashing red lights.  I do have a concern over the life expectancy of the small wire that feeds between the sewn layers of the collar from the unit on the bottom of the collar to the small, flat, square GPS antenna on the top of the collar. Only time will tell the durability of this critical connection.

My first impression of the handheld unit was that it would be the same great unit as the GPSMap 60 series. It’s fairly small and fits comfortably in your hand and has a fairly large screen. It has expandable memory and can be loaded with background maps for your area. One of my biggest complaints with the unit is that with all the great GPS units Garmin makes and their background making simple, sharp-looking, intuitive menu systems, they really fell down here. I think they tried to make the menu system simple; instead, they made it clunky, awkward and ugly. It takes quite a while digging your way through the unit, but all the screens from the GPSMap 60 series are there, just very difficult to get to and under a very clunky menu system.  Maybe they thought bird dog owners wouldn’t be smart enough to have a unit that did anything more than point at your dog.

However, when it came to pointing at your dog, it did so pretty well.   You can either see a compass type screen with an arrow which points toward the dog and a distance to the dog in a window at the bottom, or you can see a map of the area with your location and track and the dog’s location and track.  When we were working open country with no tree canopy overstory the unit worked very well, providing updates of the dog’s location and position (running, pointing, treed game) on a user set interval (5, 10, or 30 seconds). When we were working in sparse woodland type canopy cover the unit work fairly well and would consistently provide dog GPS locations. On the other hand, when we were working moderate canopy cover, including aspen, riparian, and evergreen (spruce/fir), the dog unit had a difficult time getting a location. I assume that this is due to the fact that the antenna on the top of the dog ‘s collar is so low to the ground and has so much cover over it, that it has a hard time seeing enough satellites.  At times in the thicker aspen areas where I was looking for grouse, the handheld unit would show the dog several hundred yards off, long after the dog had checked back and was nearby.  I assume that for hunting pheasants, quail, huns or sage-grouse in open country the unit would work very well.

The unit works really well, however, a bird hunter with fairly close working dogs will have to very carefully consider whether a $600 ($700 with maps) dog pointer is worth it. You can buy a lot of dog bells for $600. The question to ask yourself is if you really spend that much time looking for your dog. Now if I were a houndsman, or running big ranging pointers, those dogs that are always half a mile beyond the horizon, then it would an invaluable tool.  I don’t. I have close working upland retrievers and pointers. Occasionally I will spend a few minutes looking for a dog on point, or one chasing a wounded running bird, but given a few minutes, I usually find them. I certainly wouldn’t buy the unit to simply use as a recreational GPS unit; the menu system is too clunky for that.

I have heard some people say that it should have had a built in e-collar so that the dog doesn’t have to wear three collars around their neck, an ID collar, e-collar and GPS collar. My response is that you can’t have it all. Someday you’ll have it all in one. Heck, someday they’ll be marketing a robot dog that does everything your old dog could do, but better, all on a two hour charge.

Overall, I thought the system (both the dog collar and the handheld unit) were durable and worked very well. However, there were some limitations with satellite reception in moderate to heavy tree cover. For the cost of the unit, I was disappointed with the clunky, but functional menu system as a GPS unit. That said, for someone who spends a lot of time looking for their BIG running dogs, this system will prove invaluable.
Chris Colt
Cove Mountain Kennels

*photos from garmin.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been working with Kaiser, a big slick-coated male wirehair pointer, getting him steady to wing and shot. He is a great dog to work with, because of his intense drive on birds. His toughness, high energy and passion for game at times made things a challenge, but once his energy was harnessed, he was a pleasure to hunt with. These shots show him with a beautiful staunch point on a liberated chukar and the retrieve. This is a dog that as long as he can be provided enough daily exercise and mental stimulation, and regular experiences on wild birds, he will develop into a bird hunter’s dream dog.