The last day in Kansas…

The day started out in the fields with flocks of snow geese flying over. (You may have to click on the picture to make it bigger but you should be able to see them in the upper right corner.)  They were so low and brilliant as the bright sun reflected off them I had to stay and marvel awhile as Tyler walked off, unimpressed for too long by something un-shoot-able. Moments later he spooked “one of the biggest eight-pointers he’s ever seen in his life” and a doe out of the treeline and became suitable impressed by non-shoot-able wildlife.  Not too long after that Tyler had found a pheasant in a brush pile, and a covey of quail.  My Mom and I saw a lot of quail, got a lot of the “flutters” and left Kansas without getting one of our own, but we did see a barn owl that morning and that’s a trade I’m willing to make!

That was just the first hunt of the day. As Tyler said,”You just never know what you are going to find when you get out of the truck.”

Mom very nicely offered to pack up back at the campsite while we kept hunting and when we dropped her off we finally saw the prairie dogs of Prairie Dog State Park. I will admit, it’s entirely possible that I find prairie dogs far more amusing than I should. Remember the flock of blackbirds? They were a bad time waster, if I had prairie dogs out my window I’d be useless!

Tyler pulled me away from the prairie dogs back to the birds where we not so very nicely repaid my Mom’s kindness by shooting all the birds while she was gone.

Admittedly all the birds is an overstatement. There was a covey of quail that confused us, gave us the flutters, and made me drop the apple I was eating. I still didn’t managed to hit one. Tyler did, but he’s sort of disgusting like that.

I’m OK with him being a disgustingly good hunter though because I got one more pheasant the last day. Not just any pheasant,  it was a bird Tyler shot at first and missed! HA!

Mom joined back up with us in time to see me fall in two more gigantic holes, but missed all the good shooting.

Aside from getting a pheasant that Tyler didn’t, my other highlight of the day was when Buzz and I were off on our own hunting. We found a strip of grass between a bit of woods and a lake.  As we walked into it, about three million ducks and geese came off the water, three deer ran out of the woods and Buzz pointed a hen pheasant in the grass. (Ducks above Buzz on the left)

You truly just never know what you’re going to find when you get out of the truck!

We ended the day in a field recommended by the guide we met (looks like his website is still in the works, I’ll link to it when it’s up and running), and it was a good one!  Unfortunately our overtired dogs were wild and crazy as they ran nose into the wind and managed to bump most of the 100 or so pheasants that were in the field out of range or run them out the backside of the field! It didn’t put any more birds in our game vest but it sure was a fun field to end the trip on!

I’m going to continue to attempt to block the 13 1/2 hour all night drive back home, complete with getting pulled over by the cops from my memory, and then I’ll be ready to start planning the next trip!

We’ve got five dogs with us here in Kansas, four Brittney Spaniels and an English Setter. The dogs are what make the trip worthwhile so I thought they deserved a little limelight tonight, so here they are…

First we have Tyler’s dog Turkey:

Today Turk tried to make my legs as tired as his. He’d look a little “birdy,” trot off with his nose to the ground, then stop and look back at me as if to say, “Come on!”  Early this afternoon I followed along at a fast walk for ten minutes before he put up a hen pheasant. So of course later in the day I HAD to follow him just in case. Except this time he was just headed to a corn field for an easy run back to the truck. I think he did it on purpose, he’s that kind of a dog.

Then there are my parents dogs:

Rosie is the oldest of the dogs, but can still steadily trot along all day. She was the star dog who found my pheasant at the end of the day today, Rosie got extra treats from me tonight!

We have Birkie, whose escapades today involved jumping off the embankment next to the road into Tyler’s arms, and causing a  traffic jam on a log bridge on our way out the fields tonight. After being stuck on a wet slippery log for a very long time I managed to get her to turn and we both made it dry to the other side, but she had me worried for a while!

The English Setter is Misty, she spends the first few minuets of every hunt looking for my Dad, her main hunting partner, when she resigns herself to the fact that she’s stuck with us she’s wonderful to watch in action as she sneaks up to birds. Too busy hunting to be caught in a picture this is the best we’ve got of her this trip. Misty is the white dog starting at Tyler willing him to get up and keep hunting.

And then there is Buzz.

Buzz (on right) and Birkie sharing a drink.

The youngest of the dogs Buzz is just over a year old and is most commonly referred to as a “doofus”. Also known as a “block head” and on one memorable moment “Turk’s pale shadow that smells like shit.” He is overly fond of rolling in stinky stuff, requires a close eye in the field, and drinks more water then the rest of us combined. Despite all of that today Buzz was my lucky dog.

Yesterday morning Tyler shot a pheasant and carried it around with him the rest of the day. He called it his lucky pheasant and we figured it might have been true because Mom and I shot nothing while Tyler continued to fill his game vest. This morning I started out hunting with Buzz.  One of the first things he did was run down a wounded pheasant and retrieve it, so I stuck it in my vest and called it my lucky pheasant.  Buzz and I saw a quite few more birds on that hike, though none shootable. Then Buzz spent the middle of the day resting while my lucky pheasant and I covered a lot of ground seeing almost nothing! It wasn’t till the last hunt of the day that Buzz and I went out together again and the first thing we did was put up a covey of quail.

Just so you know quail make me “get the flutters,” as Tyler would say, and I haven’t been able to hit one yet.  Just imagine walking up on a stock still dog thinking you are about to flush a large pheasant out of a clump of tall grass, when all the short grass around you erupts with little birds! The quail take off low to the ground like bats out of you know where as you try to get over the shock of it all and pick one bird of the dozen or so to try to shoot. Unsurprisingly I’ve taken a lot of long, poor, unproductive shots at the “little bastards” as Tyler has affectionately taken to calling them.

After the covey went up and the “flutters” were got by both Tyler and I the quail sailed away I realized something: It must have been Buzz who was the lucky dog and my lucky pheasant had just been dead weight (literally) that I’d been dragging around all day. With an optimistic outlook I crossed the crazy log that Birkie later trapped me on, yelled at Buzz as he rolled in cow manure and finally found more pheasants!  Tonight was the first time I had a shot at a pheasant all trip. Thankfully my Mom and Tyler with their years of experience and faster reflexes were nice enough not to shoot it before I did, but they were ready to be back up if needed. They weren’t!

Tomorrow is our last day, and Buzz is hunting with me!