One of the reasons I wanted to originally write a blog about hunt recaps was to give people the “realness” of what it is to be a hunter. I wanted to share stories that others could easily relate to. I also wanted to highlight that dogs, like humans, have their good days and their bad days and so that anyone following along could easily track the development of my dogs over the course of the season. Hopefully, this article will do just that.
Early season this year was quite different from what I am used to. Typically I would get together with a handful of people out of southern Ohio and we would either hunt around my area or I would make the 4 hour drive south to hunt a spot that they had. This year though, I had to tackle the early season solo. Opening weekend was very lackluster. I only got to hunt one day and we got skunked. We saw a handful of geese out in the distance and then had two high fliers come by later in the morning, but that was it.
The next weekend was much more productive. Here in Ohio the early season is only open for 7 days. So you realistically have 2 weekends to hunt unless you decide to take time off of work. Saturday we (myself and Ida) went out early and got everything set up. For those of you who are gear heads like me, we ran a dozen Higdon full bodies along the edge of a small farm pond, which I broke up into family groups. We weren't expecting birds to be flying until around 8 a.m. and like clockwork they did just that.
There was a group of 15 that came in from the south behind a treeline that obscured our vision. Thus they were able to sneak in on us. Personally, I don’t do any calling during the early season unless absolutely necessary and instead rely on the decoys to do the work. They saw the decoys and traveled the quarter mile to get to our pond without needing any extra coaxing. They took me by surprise, because they landed in a tight cluster on the water in front of us. I waited until they started to spread out and head to the bank. At that point the fun began.
My Beretta dropped the first bird no problem, as is usually the case with my shooting. My second shot on another goose didn't quite finish the job and a follow-up was necessary. By that point the rest of the group were well on their way out of the hole. But having 2 geese down was plenty for me. We were set-up in a Tanglefree 360 solo blind and I had the bottom dog door open. I’m not going to lie to you, Ida broke, as soon as the first shot went off. A quick verbal correction stopped her in her tracks despite the noise of the follow-up shots and the rest of the group trying to get out of Dodge.
I recalled Ida back into the blind and made her sit. I then heeled her out of the blind and lined her up on the first bird, who at this point was quite close to the shore at about a 45 degree angle from where we were. She didn’t take a straight line and was hesitant to pick the bird up, because he still had a little fight left in him. After we made that pick we walked over and I lined her up for the next bird. This time she had two choices, take the straight line that I wanted, which would take her through a dense patch of weeds before hitting the water, or she could run around them and enter the pond at an easier point. She took the straight line that I gave her and crashed through the cover as if it was something she had done hundreds of times before. She made the 30+ yard swim to the second bird, grabbed it and brought it back without any kinds of issues.
Now that we have our first hunt under our belt, we can start to tailor our training to the things that we struggled with. We will work taking a straight line when entering water at an angle. We will spend some more time on steadiness work and we will make sure to use our Dokken goose dummy as much as possible going forward.
Even though her performance was not perfect, the hunt was still a victory. Remember, training, hunting, and owning dogs is a lifelong pursuit. Your dog will always need to have “tune-ups” throughout its life and throughout every season. The goal is, as always, to get 1 percent better every day.
Comments