growth spurts

1) As suspected, high amounts of sleep = significant gains in body weight. Jozsi just tipped the scales at 27.9lbs. Yoiks.

More impressively, yesterday afternoon, immediately before Momo and I left for western MA to go chase chukar, Joszi either spied or smelled a mourning dove in the trail and just froze up in stellar form... and as the bird moved, he would relocate and re-freeze. Not sure if Momo saw it at the same time or was honoring his little brother's point, but once he froze up, I called 'whoa' to hold him so we could all watch Jozsi getting birdy. Inspiring stuff. And no, of course, there was no camera around to document Their Majesties doing their bird-thang.

2) Momo and I had another good morning at Fullflight Game Farm and Preserve. I had originally intended to get several birds 'in-hand' that I would place myself so I could do some 'whoa' drills with Momo, but when we got there we were informed that 'a bunch' of pheasants had escaped one of the flight pens and were roaming free.

And so we got warmed up on a small gaggle of pheasant instead before going to find the chukar that had been placed out earlier in the morning. The challenges of the morning were that there was even more undergrowth and a lot of pollen in the air and, while humid, there was enough bare sunlight to burn off any available scent. Momo did really well, in spite of either running birds or ones so dug into shady, covered places I would have needed to have trodden on them to have found them.

Here's a pic of him on point. If you click on the pic to get it full size and look carefully at the dark spot directly in line with his nose, you can just barely make out the chukar.