Today we ran three braces of dogs in a spot where we thought we wouldn’t find any birds. Boy were we wrong. In the first brace Frankie had a a really nice find on the far edge (300 yards away) where we saw him stop and then stand as we walked all the way across the field. He had a hen woodcock about five feet off his nose in the grass on the edge and we fired and collared him away without flushing her. On the way back to the truck he had a stop to flush on another woodcock. He was running with Jack who had two woodcock finds of his own — one that we didn’t flush and one that got up pretty good (probably a male). In the second brace, LJ and Little Thuddy had a good run and the Little Thuddster had a grouse find. He always seems to find a bird. In the final brace Abbie and Trash ripped it up and Trash had two woodcock contacts. One was pretty much a stop to flush and the other was on the bird that Jack had pointed. It ran around pretty good before Trash finally bumped it on about her third relocation.
Tomorrow we’re heading over to Bangor for the Mid Coast Maine Trial. you can check out the running order at http://mcmftc.wordpress.com/ LJ and Tony’s four puppies are running Sat. morning in the Open Puppy. Frankie and Trash are also running in the Open Derby. Jack is in the first brace of the Open Shooting Dog which drew a nice entry of 21 dogs. Stopped and got a special bottle of single malt to give to Jack’s scout Mike Flewelling who has scouted Jack numerous times including his last three Championship placements. Hopefully I’ll see a lot of you there. If I have time in the morning I’ll put up an other training article for you.