hunting with Her Majesty

We had the pleasure of the company of HRH Brisztow Jones on Sunday to show Her Majesty the TMT Preserve and give her the opportunity to chase some pheasants for the first time. Here she is, very pleased that Momo is about to come out and play.

It was another warm day, probably up to 75degsF, and unlike our trip up there with William, there wasn't much breeze either. We let Brisztow run first and Karen asked me all kinds of questions about whether there was a real strategy to 'hunting'. I'll be honest that when it comes to hunting on a preserve, I note which direction the wind is coming from, head for the most likely cover, and then follow the dog -- occasionally calling the dog around and working them back into the wind. But like I said to Karen, I largely trust the dog to guide the direction -- they have several hundred million scent receptors to find birds with, and I have about six, all of which are tuned to finding donuts or crullers. Here's Momo's happy face after bringing his dad a monster bird.

Brisztow actually found more birds than we initially knew. Her challenge was that she didn't know what to do when she encountered the particular pong of the pheasant. And so while she got all birdy, and successfully tracked her first running bird (which I was embarassed to miss when it finally took flight), and then got all curious in a couple of other spots, it wasn't till one of my boys got to those same spots and got their point on that we knew she'd come a lot closer than she knew. (Karen's version of events is here.)

She did also love the boys. Although, sadly, as she discovered, given the choice between flirting and looking for birds, sadly romance comes second. This pic shows Her Majesty in the Taj Mahal, cooling off after her run, but wondering why Jozsi hasn't broken her out yet. We did put all threee dogs down at the end of the afternoon and she got a good sense of how crazy vizslas hunt.

Hopefully we'll get to do it again -- and hopefully when it's a little cooler.