Long Drives, Uplands, and Duckboats

I had a boat of mine up for sale for about a year. When I finally found a buyer, he was in New York. Seeing as I had bought the boat from a guy from Jersey, I agreed to meet him part way as long as we could combine it with a weekend that I could run some uplands. We ended up picking this past weekend - Horicon Marsh had their upland tests and that was pretty much on the way. I had gotten the boat out of storage 2 weeks before and had slowly been getting it ready to go, so no problems there, except I couldn't find the title. So I had to go to the DMV and get a duplicate (which didn't arrive in time of course). The 4WD was out in my truck as well, and I'd been too busy to look at it myself so I ended up bringing it in. They found the problem and had a decent price on getting it fixed, but also found that the rear U-joints were shot. So I had them fix the 4WD and then spent most of the day Friday replacing U-joints before I headed out. By the time I left it was 7pm and I knew it was going to be a long weekend.

After a few hours sleep, we showed up at the test. Elsi's normally very reliable so I wasn't too worried, but the lack of training since the last test which was 4 weeks was still a bit of a concern. The tests Saturday went alright. She had a low flush on each of the tests, getting feathers on both of them. So those were tough but she did stop after chasing each bird for about 15 yards. All in all though she did well, her line manners were not up to par, but certainly good enough and we earned a pass both days.

I didn't get to run as early as I had hoped, but I still got out of there before noon. So then it was off to drop the boat off. After a quick raid of the lunch buffet - a delicious spread of homemade dishes by members of the club - I headed out. But seriously, this test is worth going to just for the lunch - and the blueberry pie was incredible! Anyway, we were off. Through Milwaukee, Chicago, and across Indiana. I met the guy about 6 and the sale went off without a hitch. I was glad to make the sale, but certainly sad to see it go as well. The black brant is a great boat. Someday if I have room for 3 duckboats I'd like to have one around. Meeting someone for the first time after you have both driven cross country just for a boat is certainly unique. But duck hunters are a different breed. And generally, they're good folks. We grabbed a quick bite to eat and a cup of coffee before parting ways. So it was back on the road. I got back to WI late of course, but still managed about 7 hours of sleep.

So came Sunday. Usually, I can relax a bit more on Sunday. The few tests Elsi has failed have all been on Saturday, and for whatever reason she's usually a bit more relaxed on Sunday. Odd, but it seems to be that way. Well, not this day. She was pretty amped up for some reason. And her line manners were, well pretty bad by my standards anyway. I got on the list to run early, 2nd in one test and 6th in the other. So the first test she gets a low flyer for the first bird again, traps the second one and then another low flyer for the replanted one. The gunners didn't have great shots at either, so she ended up with two flyaways, getting some feathers on both and the typical chase before stopping. I'm getting frustrated with this now and seeing what we need to work on. The honor was ok, although I did have to reheel her, she was only a couple feet out. On the bubble for sure. The second test, by contrast went very well. 2 more flyaways, but they flushed nice and high and she sat promptly. She wouldn't however sit at heel for the honor, but she stood nicely and barely moved an inch. I didn't stick around to find out how it ended as I knew I was heading to Montana as soon as I got home. So it was a long weekend, I think I ended with about 1300 miles when I rolled in. Just in time to unpack, do some laundry, repack, and hit the road. But at least it should be a nice relaxing week.

Painting Goldeneyes

Well, painting drakes anyway. I've been pretty busy with work so haven't been able to get as much done on my decoys as I was hoping. But I'm making progress. After working up a paint scheme for the drakes a few weeks ago (with some help from Randy) I found that oil (and alkyd) paints don't keep well - even in covered containers. I've only been able to get around to painting on the rest of them a little here and there. So here it is probably about a month later, and I'm just finishing them up. Most of them anyway. Somehow I didn't get one sealed when the others were, so it's significantly behind the curve. The most annoying part of the process is how many coats of white I need to cover well. I think I'll try basing in gesso next time to see if that helps.



I had most everything base coated and the whites done prior to the weekend. I had some work to do so I opted to stick around home, planning on getting some painting in too. I was able to finish up the rump, back, and the stripes/side pocket lines on all (but the one). I also got one head painted only to find that I had forgot to put a darker base on and the green we mixed up was drying up (odd since it was all oil, no alkyd or ronan colors mixed in). So it didn't cover well and looked terrible. I got out my test board and put a very dark grey base on and then tried the green again. I'm still not sure that it's going to be quite the same as the original, but it's very close at least. So, last night I had some time to get some paint on the heads of the rest of them. There's just a couple small things left - paint the bills, tail feathers on a couple, scrape off the eyes - and then I'll finish keeling and weighting them. But, at least they're looking like Goldeneye now. Next up... sealing and painting the hens. At least there's only 4 of them!

Pass shooting pheasants at the Game Farm

Last Saturday I headed out to a game farm SE of the metro with a guy I used to work with. He runs Springers and somehow got a pretty high opinion of my dog which he proceeded to pass along to several of his hunting partners - who were also along. I'm not sure how this happened since he had never even seen my dog, much less hunted over her, but nonetheless she had something to prove. And, coming off her illness I wasn't sure what to expect. Sure she had done well at the test the week before, but that is a pretty short workout compared to an afternoon hunt with 7 guys and a few dozen birds. As it turned out she did well, I think she is still a little out of shape, but all in all I was pleased. We combed the field a few times and put up all of our birds, only letting one get away. The dogs (2 springers, a pointer, and my lab) all worked well and we had some pretty good shooting all around.

So afterward we are standing there at the corner of our field discussing what to do next and watching the two other groups next to us. Now, for perspective, we were standing basically at the corner of our field almost in between the other two and down in sort of a valley as the fields all were up on some sort of a hill. So 7 of us standing there with 4 dogs running around and the guys hunting these other fields start putting up birds. The first one comes from the field south of us and flies directly at us and presents us with a 15 yard crossing shot as it tries to land in the field right by us. Well, he gets pounded a few times - and before we can decide what to do another one comes at us, this time from the field east of us. It might have been a bit smarter, but not much. This one gets to about 35 yards and banks across in front of us and 4 or 5 of the guys in our group empty their guns as it flies away and lands by the south field. And whether they missed, or their dogs were too far out or whatever birds continued to want to fly past this spot. After one such bird flew a little out of range but then landed in the middle of our field, a couple of us went and got him and then we decided to call it a day. Good times all around, decent prices on birds, and next time I'm bringing a lawn chair to pass shoot the bonus birds.

Finally - Some Decoy carving

After the upland test Arlie and I headed up to northern Wisconsin to get some carving instruction from a World Champion decoy carver - Randy Tull - who happens to be a member of our retreiver club. We didn't get there until about 4:00 or so on Saturday, but were able to get quite a bit accomplished by dinner time. I worked on finishing up carving the hens for a Goldeneye rig I'm working on and Randy helped Arlie with some Canvasbacks we had all started a while back. By Sunday afternoon, he had one about ready to put eyes in and seal, and another one getting close. I finished up all the hens except one (a squaker), and only have a little bit left on that one. So all in all it was a pretty productive trip. I've got all the drakes in various stages of paint, with one of them finished. So the rig should be done before the snow melts if I can keep up with it.

She's back!

Well, it's good to have my dog back. She had some wierd stuff going on for a while - determined by the vet to be Vestibular Disease. She was dizzy, walking in circles repeatedly, seemed sluggish and after about a week she developed a pretty good head tilt. It started a bit before Christmas and took about a month for her to fully recover. So unfortunately she didn't make it down to AR with us. But she's been getting better all the time, and seems to be completely over it now.

Friday at the game farm she did great although I could tell she wasn't in the greatest shape from the sickness and that much time off. We put out 8 birds in training scenarios and she did well on all of them despite the deep snow. So I decided to run her at our test on Saturday. And it paid off - she went 2 for 2 earning her UH title (finally). She's had the HRCH title for several years, and always been a very good upland dog, but I'd only ever ran her in 2 tests before. She has a good hard flush but has learned to be good and steady, most of the time she'll sit to flush without a whistle. I'm planning to run some tests in WI and possibly SD this winter/spring, so maybe we'll start racking up some points and finally work on that 500 point mark. But don't hold your breath - we've got spring snows to get after too...

Another Fall, come and gone

Wow, well, here it is, the end of January. I got back from our trip to Arkansas 2 weeks ago already. So, the season has officially ended. Now it's on to some Upland tests for the dog, some decoy carving, getting ready for Spring Snows, and trying to catch up on everything else. Or club's test is this weekend, so hopefully we're ready. I'm going to the game farm on Fri to make sure. At least the weather should be nice this weekend. We've had some where it was -30 actual temps! No thanks!

Overall, it was a good season. Bird numbers were down everywhere it seemed, but we still got our share. I think I averaged about 4.5 birds/day in MN. I was able to get my work schedule arranged so I could work four 10s and have Fridays off. I didn't really take any vacation time during the MN season though so I think I hunted 28 days. The mallards never really stacked up good for us, though we had plenty of good shoots. But it was mostly just 2 or 3 of us out there, as opposed to some of the 4-6 man hunts we often have. A buddy and I started learning the craft of chasing the wiley Goldeneye. We had a few GE decoys, but I'm making a dozen more and we have some secret weapons planned for next year. We did alright as it was, we only had a couple days and our best day was 6, but we lost 4 more if I remember right. That, and again, they really didn't build up like they normally do where we planned to hunt them. That's all for now, I need to get ready for the test and paint some Goldeneye decoys.