We received some fresh snow late last week so I grabbed the dogs and camera and went out to do some training/photography on wild quail. It turned out to be as good as it gets, and even though hunting season is over it was an outstanding day just taking pictures.

Cash on point with Porter backing.

Porter on Point with cash backing.

Porter on point.

The subject of Porters point.

Cash pointing with quail walking around in front of him. He scent pointed this covey first, then after about 5 minutes of me walking around taking pictures the birds became nervous and started coming out from under the bushes to run off. Good practice for him, and he passed the test, again.

Flushing the covey that Cash was pointing.

Upland bird hunting season is now over in Nevada. For me it was kind of a random year with not a ton of inconsistency from one day to the next in regards to success. Seems like I had a lot of weekends where I would have a great hunt one day, then really struggle to find birds the next day. As a whole though this was my best year in terms of putting birds in the bag that I have had since maybe 4 years ago. It was a great season.

I did not get as many days in this year as I normally do, and that is in a large part because of my Nevada Elk hunt. I had to burn a bunch of days off for that hunt that I would have normally used for bird hunting. This year I got in 35 days, which is quite a bit below my average of 45-50 days.

I had some unbelievable days in the field this year and have a bunch of new memories that I will remember for a long long time. This last Saturday Porter made the best retrieve of his life, tracking a crippled bird well over 300 yards before jumping it up, catching it, and bringing it back to my hand. I could go on and on with new memories from both dogs, but I will spare you that, for now at least. I had some great times hunting with my friends this year and I am very thankful to have a handful of such great people to share time in the field with. Taking lots of pictures was a goal this year, and I did a pretty good job with that.

Both dogs hunted very well this year, as I would expect. They also made it yet another year with no injuries, and I attribute that to good luck, their Raw diet, and offseason conditioning. I am very thankful for their good health. I also tried to make a conscious effort to say very little to them in the field this year. They are both so dialed into what they are supposed to do that there is really no reason for me to say much at all, other than giving them some “good dogs”. Some days I was really good at this, and some days not so much. As a whole though they really had free reign to just hunt, as they are much better at it than I am.

Now it is time to start fishing, so you will be seeing some new fishing pictures on the blog soon. In a few weeks I will also start doing some offseason dog training, and I always look forward to that.

Below are a handful of pictures from this last weekend.

Jay