While recovering from knee surgery walking to most of the stands we have isn't happening just yet, so we made a list of a few that I can hobble too.
We informed the landowners and went to work.
Still a lot of foliage up and mother nature pissing on us most of the weekend, so while we've had dogs on camera, we heard but didn't see any Friday and Sat Pm.
Normally when we hear dogs in the general vicinity and they're not budging, we'll move to cut the distance and hopefully get a shot at them.
With my bum knee we couldn't do that, so the dogs got a big break.
It rained all morning and into the afternoon on Sunday, but it cleared up going into the evening and we made the most of it.
First stand we stopped at a local clubs pheasant preserve and saw one dog, but it never presented a clear shot and didn't respond to our calls.
Sat evening we heard two packs calling in the area, so we thought we'd see more, but they were silent Sunday, probably because they dined on pheasant all weekend.
With several of the farms having freshly cut hay fields we decided to drive around and scan fields on the way to the second stand.
First field we saw two dogs, but they were close to the landowners house.
While we were down the road trying to make a U turn to see if we could coax those two dogs away from the landowners house, we saw two more on a flat uncut hay field on a take no prisoners property.
We decided to see if they wanted to play and parked across the street.
With no wind to give us away, we were able to get into an adjoining field undetected and used a rock wall as cover to hobble stalk into shooting range.
While we were doing that the dogs separated and we only saw one when we got into position.
I set the call out and got behind the rifle while my buddy got into position in the direction the target dog was looking in regularly.
I dropped the first dog and the call went into pup distress, which caused the other dog to pop it's head up giving my buddy a shot.
He connected and we ended up with two dogs down a half hour before midnight, a male and female.
While not really a double, it was pretty close and a great end to our opening weekend.
SJC
We informed the landowners and went to work.
Still a lot of foliage up and mother nature pissing on us most of the weekend, so while we've had dogs on camera, we heard but didn't see any Friday and Sat Pm.
Normally when we hear dogs in the general vicinity and they're not budging, we'll move to cut the distance and hopefully get a shot at them.
With my bum knee we couldn't do that, so the dogs got a big break.
It rained all morning and into the afternoon on Sunday, but it cleared up going into the evening and we made the most of it.
First stand we stopped at a local clubs pheasant preserve and saw one dog, but it never presented a clear shot and didn't respond to our calls.
Sat evening we heard two packs calling in the area, so we thought we'd see more, but they were silent Sunday, probably because they dined on pheasant all weekend.
With several of the farms having freshly cut hay fields we decided to drive around and scan fields on the way to the second stand.
First field we saw two dogs, but they were close to the landowners house.
While we were down the road trying to make a U turn to see if we could coax those two dogs away from the landowners house, we saw two more on a flat uncut hay field on a take no prisoners property.
We decided to see if they wanted to play and parked across the street.
With no wind to give us away, we were able to get into an adjoining field undetected and used a rock wall as cover to hobble stalk into shooting range.
While we were doing that the dogs separated and we only saw one when we got into position.
I set the call out and got behind the rifle while my buddy got into position in the direction the target dog was looking in regularly.
I dropped the first dog and the call went into pup distress, which caused the other dog to pop it's head up giving my buddy a shot.
He connected and we ended up with two dogs down a half hour before midnight, a male and female.
While not really a double, it was pretty close and a great end to our opening weekend.
SJC
