why it's called 'fall'

Here's the hunting report from Wednesday and Thursday. I'll be brief, because the actual hunting was brief.

Wednesday: we started in a new field we hadn't been to before (and which might be nice to go back to at some point). Momo picked up some smells in a roadside thicket and after some encouragement went in and out popped... a timberdoodle! But it flew out over the road making a shot impossible, if not illegal.

After running Jozsi up there as well, we hit our quail field from the week before. We got in a back corner and Momo started to get all squirrely. I should note that there was little to no wind either Wednesday or Thursday and any birds in this field had stayed alive for six days. Which meant that as Momo moved to try and get a more precise location, a pair of quail bolted. I took a shot. I might as well have tried throwing rocks. But seeing birds got Momo jacked. And about 15mins later they flushed as a pair again as soon as we got within 3ft. I took two shots. I would have gotten better odds at Vegas. But the highlight was about 10mins later. I looked down a deer alley to see Momo getting squirrely again and the next thing I know there's another woodcock, this time flying directly at my head. It flashed past and over me, with its peculiar profile backlit against the sky. Once I got Jozsi out, he managed to find and flush the male quail twice, although he, too, couldn't really establish distance well enough to set up on a decent point.

Thursday: nothing. nada. rumors of the bird-stocking truck coming 'anytime.' two DEC law enforcement guys checking tags who seemed to be sized big and bigger. and temperatures just getting hotter all morning. and as we drove out, a pheasant crossed the road. Ditch-chickens 2 Team Vizsla 0.

But I decided to post a couple of pics of the scenery. Despite the warm temps, the colors are starting to come out and, especially in the morning's when it's cool, it's just a beautiful time to be out in the woods with the boys. And Jozsi is a complete wee tanker. There is nothing he seems to like more than to be charging through the woods looking for birds. And he is devout in his mission. He was so rapt with a couple of starlings sitting on a trail that he completely missed the whitetail deer crashing off 10yards to his right trying o get away from him and his dad. But the video is hopefully clear enough to show, not just His Junior Majesty, but why autumn is called 'Fall' here in the provinces.

adventures with Bob & Belle

Sadly this picture is in many ways the highlight of our adventures on Sunday with Bob, Belle and their Regal Majesties. Not sure if our timing is just wrong, but somehow whenever Bob and I hunt together we see huntable birds, but in all the wrong places. Last winter, we found grouse... but either they were in the road, or they flew across a road, or they waited till we had unloaded our guns as we walked back along the road to our trucks. In any case, the grouse had clearly been reading the hunting regulations as well as we had.

But here's Bob and his beautiful Llewellin Setter, Belle. Belle is 5yrs old and puts up with no guff from either of the boys. She's also a sweetheart who loves to get out and hunt up birds. And from what Bob was saying had had a great day the day before.

And this Sunday was no different in terms of bird-luck. We had gotten there later in the morning to give the bow-hunters, whose opening day it was, time to hunt and leave. And we trawled a couple of likely fields to little avail. At one point both Momo and Belle got into some hot-spots and we got excited, but whatever had been there was no more. On our way to our third field, we passed beautiful cock pheasants in two different places -- one pair and another trio -- entering or leaving the roadside and nowhere near a legitimate parking spot. Oh well. Score one for the ditch-chickens.

We'll try again on Wednesday or Thursday.

en fuego...

I have mixed feelings sharing this publically because I wouldn't give this advice to anyone with a 5mos old pup unless they had way more experience than I do. (Now I don't have a particularly huge amount, but I do know my dogs.) In any case, read the following as the words of a proud father not as a prescription for all you aspiring gun-doggers out there.

I shot Jozsi's first pointed bird today. I'm a little stunned. Not just because I did it, but because he pointed, held for the flush, hunted dead, and returned the dead bird to hand! 2 days shy of 5mos old. Picture perfect... not at all. But an incredible omen.

(Here's a pic taken from my fairly new cell-phone because I forgot my camera.)

The boys and I went up to a hunting area where the State does some bird stocking, but when you enter a particular hunting area you might find quail, or pheasant, as well as the occasional grouse or woodcock. I decided to 'hunt' with each boy in turn: using Momo to find spots with birds so that I could at least take Jozsi into places where he should find scent. After a bust in the first fields, he and I got into some bobwhite quail. We found and shot 3 and then time was up for Momo in that particular field.

So I put some subsonic 12ga shells in my gun... shells that most folk ask if the gun is a 28ga or .410... figuring 'what the heck, if it happens...' And despite his age, I rationalized potentially shooting over him by looking at his demeanor during his brother's recent hunt tests when handlers and gunners were shooting off some pretty loud cannons. He's shown no problems with sudden loud noises.

Now his nose is nowhere near as sensitive as Momo's yet, and so after I accidentally foot-flushed a quail, I got him to sniff the spot and he got all jazzed up. We heard a quail call further up a stone wall line that the birds appeared to be hunkered down in and set off. And Jozsi sets up on a lovely point, head in tall grass, tail out... and he holds when I called 'whoa' and move in to flush it... the bird takes off without a good shot possible... I send him in after it. He locks up on point, and then changes his mind and relocates. I'm laughing slightly because he is now standing directly over the bird. It flushes from between his back legs! I shoot it and immediately start with the happy voice and send him off to hunt dead. Again, with a little coaching, the next thing I know he's found it. So i back off 3-4ft to see if he will do what he's done before with wings and bird-field quail... he puts the semi-dead bird in his mouth, I call him to 'come', he comes and on 'drop' puts the bird at my feet. I almost fainted.

I told this story to his breeders who said that Jozsi's great-grandfather, Obertakt Hollywood Debut, 'Woody', started his first season at 5mos old and found 24 birds that year! Here's a picture of Woody. Now Jozsi certainly needs a lot of polishing with a check-cord, but the omens remain very very promising for the little guy.

a little canine controversy

Pat Burns at Terrierman has a synopsis of Nathan Winogrand's new book Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America. Pat's post is a little hard in places to figure out where he's being sarcastic, but he does also link to a nice review by Christie Keith of Winogrand's book with some good quotes from Winogrand himself.

I won't go into too much detail, but Winogrand's thesis is two-fold: that too many healthy cats and dogs are euthanized in shelters around the US because civic contracts to neatly dispose of apparently abandoned animals provide a powerful financial disincentive to shelters to keep dogs and cats alive and because those same shelters lack leadership that seeks to address the seeming overabundance of cats and dogs with legitimate needs-assessment and creative problem solving, eg. more community outreach, better foster-care programs, subsidized neuter-spay programs. I'm looking forward to reading this one.

I was on the Board of Directors of what was then our local SPCA back in Maine. Those were tumultuous times, but happily not because we were arguing about whether no-kill was a realistic fiscal and ethical stance. I'm pleased to see that they have now opened their new facility and appear to be doing well.

four for four

We just got back from the Flaherty Field Trial Area in East Windsor, CT, after another weekend of hunt testing with His Senior Majesty, The Mominator, soon-to-be-crowned Widdershins Momchil JH!!

The first cheesey pic says it all. One proud dad with his quail-finding machine. I wonder if he has been so good with the bobwhites because they were the birds he was initially trained on. In any case, he rocked.

Saturday's synopsis: Flaherty is pretty easy to find once you extricate yourself from New Yorkers fleeing the city on the Friday afternoon of Columbus Day weekend. What was a 2hr drive home on Sunday was a 3.5hr drive getting there. We stayed at the Comfort Inn, in part because our friends that we met in Falmouth, Rich + Adrian + Ella, were staying there, in part because they have a clearly stated pet policy, and because as members of the Ruffed Grouse Society we get a deeper rate discount there. Was very pleasantly surprised.

But on to the day: it was hot and sticky! And there were close to 50dogs running Junior Hunter! We were lucky to get an earlier brace that went out around 10:00am. It was still overcast, although the humidity broke while we were out coming down into the high 60s%, and the temperature rose up through 70degsF -- the air was still. Again, I'll take some credit for steering Momo in vaguely the right directions based on the few puffs of breeze we had seen -- but for the first half of the test we saw nothing. And then he hit the motherlode. And unlike the trial down in Falmouth, the birds would fly when harassed. I would guess that a lot of dogs who weren't sure in their points were busting birds or barely flash-pointing. He had five points in as many minutes. And he looked great.

Thanks for the reminder, Stephanie, to wipe and wet your Vizsla's eyes and nose on hot days like this before heading out for a hunt.

By the time Rich went out with Ella, the humidity was about the same, but the temperature had climbed through 80degsF and there was now scattered cloud cover... which meant that any bird not in the shade was either a) eager to move or b) had had their scent burned off in the heat meaning that dogs wouldn't find them till possibly too late. Ella had three nice points to start, but all on dead birds that hadn't been picked up. And then, for any number of possible reasons, she wouldn't hold firm. It was sad to see her locate birds well but then bust through them.

One of those possible reasons might be 9weeks old and sickeningly cute. Rich and Adrian have been bitten by the bug and added Khumbu to their family a week ago. Having picked up Ella at 12weeks old (already crate-trained and sleeping through the night), taking in Khumbu at 8weeks old has added a whole new level of Vizsla to their lives! Congratulations, Rich and Adrian! He's a handsome devil. We gave him a chukar wing as a present.

Sunday: Rich and I got up early and got to the field around 6:30am to see if we could give Ella a tune-up. Things looked a little desperate as she busted a big covey of around a dozen and then proceeded to chase like a maniac. Again, she probably just needed to get her ya-yas out. We managed to find a couple of birds, including one that was too tired to fly, that we were able to get her on a check-cord and keep her staunch while Rich flushed. In any case, we were able to end our early morning romp on a high-note.

Rich had drawn an earlier brace for Sunday and it looked a lot more merciful that Sunday for weather. The temperature was around 65degsF, the humidity was about the same as it had been for us the day before, it was fairly overcast, but there was a nice cooling breeze from the north. Ella looked like a hunter and while it took till the last few minutes for her to get a nice point in (largely because her bracemate had been taken far away to avoid busting all the birds in the neighborhood), she got that point in, held beautifully and was eager for more when her dad fired the shot. Bravo!

We had drawn a later brace for about 1:00pm: the temperature had broken 70degsF, the sun was out, and the humidity had dropped off into the mid50s%, but the breeze was still playing nicely from the north. I did have a game plan for where I wanted to set Momo up in the birdfield -- and he was all business on the way out, not interested at all in playing with his bracemate, a very handsome, rugged Weimaraner named Wyatt. Kudos to Wyatt nevertheless: the couple of times I was able to look over and see him point, he looked stunning.

Speaking of stunning: here are the boys waiting for something more exciting to happen. Our wee monster, a.k.a. The Evil Genius, is now 34.7lbs and has almost figured out how to get his leash off the hitch on the back of our truck.

And back to the action: once we got in the field Momo threw a nice point, but it must have been for a freshly moved bird. But within two minutes, he just started to throw beautiful, intense shapes. In probably half of the six or so birds he found, I couldn't see the bird and so asked him to relocate to help me out. Not a bird busted despite our proximity. And he did not want to stop.

Both judges on both days asked if he was going to do his Senior Hunter; Sunday's judge also said that he didn't get to see enough of Momo, meaning that he just loved to watch him work. Some of the intricacies of JH scoring are here. Suffice to say, that the minimum passing score is a 28 (for an average of 7 ex 10), and the maximum a 40. Momo scored 37.5 on Saturday and 39 on Sunday! The only point he didn't get was for 'Hunting': Momo is not an extrovert hunter which is fine with me. I'm a proud pop.

Central Asia roundup...

I have been neglecting Central Asia, especially when there are such tasty tidbits to ponder such as 'who can get the most leverage out of a natural resource' and 'how can a national constitution be subverted to stay in power under a thin veil of legitimacy'.

1) Flour and water: Bonnie Boyd has a nice piece on water politics in upstream Tadjikistan and downstream Uzbekistan -- while, via Registan, Victoria Panfilova, has some poignant observations on how poor wheat harvest in Central Asia open the door for some power politics by Russia.

2) Straight outta Tashkent: the gentlemen at Registan have a nice section on Alisher Usmanov. The debate in the comments section is also interesting. Usmanov has allegedly engineered the shutdown of former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray's website as part of a libel suit. You can read Murray's allegedly libelous full-post there as well.

I'm not sure that buying significant shares in English Premier League teams will do any more for Usmanov's reputation than it does for Thaksin Shinawatra. Having said that, if Allan Cowan at Partick Thistle could find a nice, benign former-dictator to sink some cash into The Jags he'd probably be up for it.

3) Straight outta Tashkent part 2.: We are all stunned at the Liberal Democratic Party of Uzbekistan's choice of a candidate for the upcoming presidential election. I wonder who would have thought of that first? Nobody expects Vladimir Putin.

... and all I got...

It was the first day of hunting season for us... and all I got was this nice picture of a warm, happy dog standing in some lovely leaves. While every hunter has a litany of excuses, I'm sure, it was a difficult day to find anything.

The temperature was warm, rising from about 60degF to roughly 75degF, overcast, and humid. Sadly, there was little to no breeze to speak of either. And there was a lot of leafy ground cover. Did I mention that Momo is recovering from an infection to his nasal area?

On the bright side, Momo was happy as a clam to be free of The Lampshade and eager to run around a new area looking for little feathered monsters. Being the first week of the season, we saw quite a few other cars despite it being mid-week, but (and again, as consolation perhaps) heard only five shots in four-and-a-half hours. In any case, my father was pleased for the exercise and the company, human and canine, and we for his.

We have a much better idea where we'll start next week. No more farting around in chest high grass, that's for sure.