Bob Jennings: Book Review - My Mythical Adventures with Bird Dogs

MY MYTHICAL ADVENTURES WITH BIRD DOGS, by Bob Jennings.

Bob Jennings has this book available for $30 postpaid. Send payment to: 3302 N 190 W., Switz City, IN 47465. Or call, (812)798-0783.

This book is for any hunter who has owned bird dogs, and learned to love them like the author does.

The Dedication of this book states: This booklet is dedicated to all dogs that have passed on and made their way back into the hearts of their owners. I think this wonderful dedication will pertain to any dog lover.

This book, at 42 pages (twice the length of the first book) shares with readers the thoughs about three of his dogs. Anyone who has owned bird dogs, and raised them from pups to adults, can clearly find something in this book to jog their memory about pets they have owned in the past.

I read the book at one setting, and couldn't put it down. The first of the three stories I read was one of the finest dog pieces I've ever read, and the entire book was a great read except for a few misspelled words.

I'm not going to go into great detail, but will keep this short. If you've got a good imagination, I strongly suggest you take my word for it, and buy this book. You'll be reading some of the finest dog stories I've read in a very long time. This book is a spiral bound paperback with many drawings and photos.

Praise doesn't come any higher than that. Happy reading.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors

Grouse hunting interest pick up after the leaf drop

Grouse numbers are decent is many areas and very good in others.

 

Fall may be my favorite time of year but it lasts such a short time. The leaves peak in color by mid-October, the rain and high winds come, and soon all the beautiful color has lost its sparkle and lay dead and spent on the ground.

The leaf drop is over, and bird hunters are getting active. Grouse season runs through November, and from Dec/ 1-Jan. 1.

Most sportsmen know the next logical step is the first snow flurries, and in northwestern Lower Michigan, we'll usually have snow on the ground before Nov. 15.

Between now and the firearm deer season should offer good hunting.

 

But for now, after the leaf drop has ended, and the woods open up as the bracken ferns die off with the first heavy frost, other things come to life. Grouse hunters revel in this period.

This is a time for bird dogs, well oiled shotguns, sunlight glinting of birch and popple trees, and a brown and gray landscape as it prepares for winter. This is a time when ruffed grouse feed heavily on wild grapes, and the longer the fruit hangs on, the more pungent they become and the sooner we see wildly flying grouse. Some believe those birds that fly into houses and kill themselves are slightly addled by the grapes.

It's a time when a good pointer can lock up on a grouse holding 20 yards away, and if the dog is staunch, one foot will be held high and the tail, as rigid as a fireplace poker, will be pointing at the sky. The dog will be quivering from the strain and pent-up excitement.

Open woodlots make grouse hunting fun now.

 

The flush is anticlimactic, the ending punctuation mark of a wonderful sequence of dogs criss-crossing the cover, following tiny ribbons of birdy scent before slamming to a solid point. The nose is wafting draughts of grouse scent, and the bird holds until his human friend walks in and puts the bird up.

At the shot, some birds will fall and others will fly a zig-zag pattern through the trees, twisting and turning as they put more distance between them and the shot charge that will follow. Often they will fly head-high through the woods while at other times they skim close to the ground in their bid for escape.

Ruffed grouse never fail to surprise me with the fury of their explosive flush. I'm startled even though I expect it, and that delay in my reaction time always allows the bird to get much farther away before I can recover and shoot.

As much as I love grouse hunting, I also enjoy hunting woodcock but few are still around now. They tend to sit much tighter than grouse, and when flushed, can perform all sorts of aerial evasive tactics. These birds look lopsided, and seem to fly about like a knuckleball. They wobble, dip, dart, seem to fall sideway out of the sky, and on rare occasions, they will tower like a hovering helicopter over the tag alders.

Just as they start to tower, the hunter jerks off a shot at the same instant the bird falls unharmed to the ground. Following the bird, and trying for a second flush will work on occasion, but often the bird will flush wild, far from the gun, on the second try.

Hunt wild foods like wild grapes and you’ll find some birds.

 

There is something about hunting the tag alder runs and 10-foot-high popples, often growing so closely together it's difficult to bring the shotgun into play. Sometimes a woodcock seems like he would be easy to hit with a scattergun, and the next moment hunters wonder how they ever manage to knock one down.

The flight birds, down from Canada and the Upper Peninsula will often arrive in another eight or 10 days, and are much different than locally raised birds. Sure, they look much the same, but when a flight settles into a covert, and the hunter is lucky enough to be in the right spot at the right time, hunting these birds can be a delight.

I've had days (three that I remember well) where me and another hunter and one dog, would flush 100 woodcock in a morning. We'd often flush two or three grouse and a few snipe as well. We never shot a limit of woodcock each, even when the limit was five birds daily, and it wasn't important to do so.

It was always after a cold rain, the woods were drenched, both of us took a number of pratfalls on slippery downed brush, and we came away from each hunt well pleased with the dog work. Our work, manning the shotguns, left something to be desired, but that is woodcock hunting.

The next few weeks, including early December, will provide the best grouse hunting of the season, and although I find it difficult to see those flushing birds these days, it doesn't diminish my love of gunning and being afield with a brace of fine pointers.

Keep your pets at home

Ruffed grouse are killed in winter by cats sneaking around houses.

The cat tracks came creeping around my back steps. Mourning doves often roost on my deck at night, and 30 feet away was a pile of bloody feathers in pristine snow where a stray had feline had killed a dove during the night.

Wild running cats and dogs spell trouble for winter wildlife, and the animals do what often comes natural to them. It’s in the nature of cats, and some dogs, to kill anything they can catch. A similar thing happened one day last week.

The day was brilliant with strong sunlight reflecting off the snow, and when I went out for the paper, cottontail rabbit tracks were everywhere in front of and behind the house.

A brief walk turns up a winter casualty.

The rabbits had been active. I donned some boots, and forgot about my shotgun and blaze orange, and just went for a short walk.

It was to see how many bunnies were living near the house and in nearby brush piles. One rabbit can make plenty of tracks at night, and I knew there were at least two bunnies nearby. I've seen them outside after dark as they scamper around looking for food.

It appeared there were four cottontails. Two were the adults I'd seen on many occasions, and the other two made smaller tracks. Perhaps the smaller two were from the most recent litter.

They weaved in and out of nearby brush piles left from the last timber cutting, wandered through downed tree-tops, and there were many tracks where we feed deer. They've nibbled a bit on the old dead clover, and there were two deer tracks as well. One was an adult, most likely an adult doe, and the other was a fawn.

We often see cottontail rabbits where sunflower seeds are knocked from the feeder. The bunnies don't mind sniffing through the seeds for some that are still intact.

My short little walk wasn't much over 150 yards, and in one spot was the unmistakable sign of the death of a young rabbit. The animal had made a serious mistake by moving into the open and away from nearby brush and heavy ground cover, and nature’s story was painted on the white snow.

A few drops of blood on the snow spelled the demise of a cottontail.

An owl had swooped down from the sky during the night, gliding in on hushed wings, and a few spots of blood on the snow showed where the bird had run his talons through the cottontail. There were faint signs of wing-tip  feathers dusting the snow as the bird grabbed the young bunny and flew away with his nightly dinner.

Avian predators are a major concern for wildlife. We often see hawks  take songbirds and ruffed grouse during the day, and if they hit a grouse, nothing is left behind but a pile of russet feathers drifting on the breeze.

We've had cottontails around as long as we've lived here. They stay in the shrubs, venture out after dark to feed, and we see signs of their presence as they chew on ornamental bushes and shrubs.

Cats are silent predators, and they prey heavily on songbirds and grouse when the snow is deep. There's no telling where these cats come from, but if we see a strange car or truck, we will probably find cat tracks later.

People who no longer want these critters turn them loose in someone else's neighborhood, and then we must deal with the problem. Today, there was one lone dog track behind my house, and one pooch often meets a sad fate when it encounters one or two hungry coyotes.

These large predators will kill every dog or cat they catch. Cats occasionally escape by climbing a tree, but coyotes are brazen animals. They've been known to pluck a small cat or dog off the back porch.

Rather than take unwanted cats to the Humane Society and let them deal with the problem, people dump them. They feel sorry for the cat, and often these animals slowly die of starvation or provide a nourishing snack for a drifting coyote.

Cats are born killers, and I don’t want or need discarded felines.

A cat is a killing machine, and often kill for the sake of killing. People should keep pet cats and dogs inside at night where they belong or in a kennel. Too often they lack the guts to accept this responsibility, or are unwilling to take them to the pound. Those of us who live beyond city lights do not deserve these canine or feline discards on our property.

Unwanted cats are destructive during winter months. I frighten them away, but many people either set live traps or kill the cats on sight. Cats may be pets, but they belong indoors or under human control at all times.

Those left to roam at night often disappear. Although I don't agree with the Three S's doctrine (shoot, shovel and shut up), I can easily understand why some landowners treat every free-roaming cat with suspicion and a quick death.

Those that appear to be hunting game or song birds are summarily dispatched. This can be cause for a citation, a fine and perhaps a jail sentence, but no one I know wants free-roaming cats in their neighborhood.

Free-roaming dogs often attack deer in deep snow, and many think that turning Fido out for the night is the right thing to do. Two, three or four dogs, turned out by their masters at night, form a pack, and will chase and kill deer.

The place for pet cats and dogs is inside the house or locked in a kennel where they belong at all times unless they are hunting dogs. They need to be under human control even when outside. Free-roaming animals are pests, and it's up to pet owners to control their animals at all times or others may do the job for them.

Sad words but many people don’t pay attention to their critters. All too often someone else chooses to solve the problem for them. It may not be right or legal, but there it is.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors