Idaho Trip

What a way to start our weekend. Not more than 20 feet from where we parked the truck did we see and shoot our first grouse of the season! A nice Ruffed Grouse.

The next morning, CT and I went up in search of Blue Grouse, thought of in some circles as the king of all gamebirds. When we got to the base of the mountain, the Forest Service was doing a controlled burn on the mountainside. But no worries as we received a dusty escort up the mountain from this young man. Later on that afternoon, on our way down, this young man stopped and loaded three nice logs into the back of the truck. He says to me " If these logs start smoking on the way down, just start honking your horn so we can put out the fire." And I'm thinking that you couldn't even feel any heat when we were going up the mountain, so why would I worry about that. Well, as we got close to the bottom , I had to roll my window up because the heat was so intense.

Here are some of the many turkeys that Tater got into over the weekend. In Idaho it is legal to hunt turkeys over a dog during the fall season. While I had my opportunity to shoot a real nice Tom over Tater, I didn't have a turkey tag. Darn!

During our weekend in Idaho, we attended the Grand River dog training seminar put on by the best dog trainer I know of, Mike Gould. Here are some of the attendees with their dogs on the chain gang. The chain gang is a great training tool, as the dogs get to watch and honor another dog doing drills.

Here is a pic of the valley from the ranch of our dinner hosts. The ranch is called the Rockin' 42. Mike's son, put on a spread fit for a king. We had jalapeno poppers and bacon-wrapped chicken for appetizers, a whole pork loin done over the barbecue with salad and scalloped potatoes that were cooked in a cast iron dutch oven. We were stuffed. Then we were treated to Mike playing his guitar and singin with the Dudette's. What a great time of fellowship.

Here is Mike working Tater during a whoa session. I'd been having trouble with Tater flushing birds, so here she is getting work on her structure. So much can be accomplished using that little check cord such as multisensory training where a verbal command is given in sync with a point-of-contact from the cord, hence the multisensory. I received a great gift of that same cord you see in the pic. It was Mike's personal cord that he used for training pointers.

I want to thank CT for keeping me company on our adventure and taking the great photos of our trip. Words cannot describe the special time we had with those who were at the seminar as well as the time CT and I got to spend in the mountains. Til' the next time my lovely wife twists my arm to write. ~ Bird Huntin' Balaku