Trip Recap

Shooting RecDan Upland Hunting: 6 birds bagged on 12 attempts. Missed 3 "lay-ups", 1 fairly easy one, and 2 difficult shots. 2 of the birds bagged were on a covey of Hungarian partriDan Upland Hunting:

Hunting Recap:

Dan Upland Hunting:

16 birds bagged on 27 shells (59%), killing 16 of the 19 pheasants shot at (84%).

Bill Upland Hunting: 12 birds bagged on 18 shells (70%) - though 2 of those were taken by Maggie, which nicely inflates my numbers. A pure shooting percentage would be 10 birds on 18 shots (60%). I killed 10 of the 14 pheasants I shot at (71%).

This year presented different types of hunting scenarios (we were able to walk closer together with clear fields of vision much of the time) & different results than previous years. One way this manifested itself was that of our overall 21 pheasants, one-third of them were joint kills. In quickly reviewing a couple of the video clips, we noted that many of these joint kills occur under one second from the time the bird flushes until it starts to fall out of the sky, succumbing to simultaneous hits. I guess if you want to hunt with the Everly's, you have to be both fast and accurate (Rich...). We also noted that we hunted many less hours than in previous trips. Overall, for the nine days we hunted pheasants, we logged only a total of 19 hours in the field. This was due to a couple unique scenarios as a result of automotive issues combined with more miles to get to and from our hunting spots.

Dan Waterfowl Hunting: Much like last year, Dan's shooting percentage for waterfowl was dismal on the first day. Unfortunately, this year, the first day was also the only day of shooting. His official stats were one duck on seven shots (14%).

Bill Waterfowl Hunting: 2 ducks on 2 shots. What more can I say...

Dog Recap:

Our dogs are awesome.

They combined to flush 56 pheasants in gun range, 24 of which were roosters.

Winnie pointed 17 of those 27 roosters. Additionally, she pointed 14 hens. We noted a significant change in her trailing method, now having learned to trail at a fast pace which allowed her to catch up and re-point many of the running roosters - providing additional shooting opportunities for us. She also increased her range, routinely getting out to 100+ yards, but checking back in with us appropriately. During this time, she only bumped 1 bird that we can remember. Her marking of downed birds was excellent and her retrieving was certainly adequate, but Dan is still desirous of improvement.

Maggie's upland performance was again excellent as expected. She consistently hunted in range and found, trailed, and flushed any birds that were in front of her. The luck of the draw was that she did not have an abundance of action, getting only four flushes. While hunting in the same area as Winnie, she did a good job of recognizing when Winnie was on point and quickly moving in her direction to assist in trailing or flushing the bird, as needed. She had 2 honest-to-goodness points (which is a new thing for her) on and also saved me a shell by catching one on the ground on a different occasion.

On waterfowl, Mag didn't get any retrieves, but did a nice job in an area of concern for me heading into the trip, which was her steadiness. On a couple different occasions, we had birds close-by before shooting time and on another day we had Coot swimming in the decoys. She was good in all these situations. It was nice to see her get back to doing the right things, after having some issues last year.

Jackson had an excellent trip. His waterfowl hunting was brief but effective and he got lots of practice sitting and waiting while exhibiting good behavior on the other duck hunting days.

In the upland field, he continued to develop more confidence and ability to focus. We noticed that he quartered very nicely in front of me, but didn't do such a good job extending that to get over in front of Dan. This tells me that I need to work with him on hunting the entire gun line in training scenarios. He had lots of action for the week, getting a total of 16 flushes. Four of these came in a single event, along the Missouri River and seven others were today – when we had lots of action. His retrieving for the week was excellent, with the caveat that his steadiness was virtually nonexistent. In several scenarios, I contributed to this delinquency by allowing him to make the retrieve. This is definitely something for us to work on in the coming year. We again enjoyed observing his inconsistent attitude towards jumping up into the truck. Sometimes, he would leap in without hesitation while other times, he would balk repeatedly, as if he did not have the ability to make it.