April/May 2004 Newsletter
Upcoming Events
Saturday May 22, 2004 – FUN TRIAL AND TRAINING DAY – 8:30 a.m. Shea Meadows, Bovill ID.
Directions: From highway 95 in Moscow turn east on State
Route 8 to Bovill. A mile west of Bovill, on the north side
of the road, will be a Vassar Meadows road sign and the
club’s Field Trial sign. Follow Vassar Meadows Road
to Shea Meadows. Onsite registration will begin around 8 a.m.
Shea Meadows is a beautiful spot with lots of room for people and dogs
and a good spot for some good old-fashioned comradery. In
response to feed back and member requests we will divide the meadow, as
we did in the March Fun Trial Training Day, into a training field and a
competition field to accommodate all ages and expertise levels of dogs
and handlers alike. The “competitive
field” operates just as in all our previous fun trials and
training days. Fast flying bobwhites from Dunlop Hatchery
will be offered up for your dog(s) to find/point and for you to smack
down with your laser-honed shooting skills. Ribbons will be awarded to
top dogs/handlers and photography by Gage and Watson is available upon
request for no additional fee.
If you missed the training day in March, this gives you an opportunity
to work with your young dog with or without training aids, with or
without a gun, and with or without a trainer, coach, videographer,
photographer… you decide.
There will be lunch fixins’ (Lunch is a potluck, please bring a dish to share)
and soft drinks for everyone. Entry fee is just $15.00 per brace plus
the contribution of food (hot dish, salad or dessert) for the luncheon.
Dan Watson has agreed to pamper us with his culinary abilities by
cooking a turkey on site. Yum Yum!
As is our custom, the previous fun trial winners graciously chair the
next event – ably (?) assisted by the current club
officers. Gary and Jerry’s job(s) is/are
to help organize the event and make all feel welcome.
Here are a few things your trial chairmen request of you by May 19, JerryThiessen 208-743-2647
- The total number of braces you would like to run and how you would like them split between fields (training or competition).
- The number of dogs - and the name of each dog you will be handling.
- Your
interest in helping with score recording, bird planting, or otherwise
assisting. We need dedicated assistance, but can share tasks throughout
the day.
- The food contribution you plan to bring.
We are on the honor system. You can pay at the fun trial by cash or
check. If we have more sign-ups than brace slots we may have to trim
back on some opportunities, but this has not been much of a problem
before.
If you know of a non-member that is interested in training pointing
dogs for hunting or competition, feel free to invite him/her. New
members are welcome, as always. You may want to bring insect
repellent, sun block and outdoor chairs for your comfort. We will try
to place a porta-potty on site for your comfort as well. Your
suggestions to help make this a more enjoyable experience are
appreciated.
Please RSVP with your desired number of braces as soon as
possible. Our goal is to give everyone interested in running
a dog an opportunity to run at least one brace in their choice of
field, and additional braces as entries, time, and available birds
permit.
Hope to see you on May 22nd!
Brief Planning Calendar
May 22 Fun trial &Training Day,
May 29 NW NSTRA Regional Elimination
June 26 Poker Shoot, Lewiston Gun Club,
July
Family Picnic,
Aug
Sporting Clays,
Sep
Fun Trial and Training Day
Sep
Perfection Gun Dog Training Seminar
TRAIN the Trainer
Saturday
June 5, 2004 – TRAIN-the-TRAINER - BIRDS!
“Flyaways, intro to the gun 10:00am – 12:20 pm
Next training day in the series. By now, you should be well
on your way to a basic understanding of the methods and madness in
working with your dog.
Member Musings
(Selections from SRSGDA members)
Scenting
After 40 years, I had a first; my son, Kevin, said I was right.
We had chukar hunted together for a couple of days and were unable to
find many birds. Kevin implied that “Tippy” was less
than a good finder and I related to him what Ray Holland in his book
Bird Dogs (Pub: A.S. Barnes and Co. 1948) had written. Holland
had judged a field trial in which more than 40 birds had been planted,
four birds per brace, before a dog found a bird. While we would
all admit that cool weather and a stiff wind, make it difficult for
dogs to find birds it is hard to understand how 40 birds could be
missed by 20 dogs.
The day after this exchange, Kevin and five Pullman local yokels with
two Brittany’s, two English setters and a Lab spent a day chukar
hunting on the breaks in bone dry, breezy weather. They walked-up
and busted 12 coveys containing more than 100 birds, but the dogs
failed to point any of the birds and they had trouble finding the
downed birds.
Holland goes on to caution us not to be too quick to follow up a busted
covey to hunt singletons or downed birds. Rather, wait as long as
30 minutes or more to allow single birds to build up a cone of scent of
large enough to be found by a casting dog. The author suggests
that a bird in flight is “washed of its scent” and that it
takes time to reestablish the scent before a pointer can locate them.
JWK
Addendum: Some club members have noted that the
size of the inter-tube used to make the dog boots described in the
handout I gave away at our September fun trial was neither in the
article I reprinted and distributed, nor in the Spokesmen Review
article fall 2003. I have found size 225/ 250 - 17 motorcycle
intertube has met my needs in pointers and German shorthair. (JWK)
Palouse Pheasant Pleasure
Devon St. Pierre
Growing up I learned to fish and camp but never had the opportunity to
learn to hunt. My opportunity came about nine years ago when I
inherited a shotgun from my father. At the time I was living in
the Tri-Cities and a good friend of mine (even though he didn’t
have a dog) invited me to join him bird hunting. We would always
joke about going for long walks with our guns, which is exactly what we
ended up doing most of the time. But even with out a dog, we
experienced enough action on those outings to keep me going out.
I brought that interest with me when my family and I moved to Moscow
four years ago.
My first hunting season here on the Palouse was more of the same: long
walks with a gun. About that time, I was really starting to think
about how a dog might help my hunting situation. It was then that
a friend at work referred me to the SRSGDA. I attended my first
fun trial in the spring of 2001 and kept coming back… without a
dog.
Finally, after two years of watching, asking questions and learning as
much as I could, I got a puppy of my own earlier this year. I’ve
had the opportunity to work with Ginger all spring and summer. It
has been time consuming, it has been frustrating at times, yet at the
same time it has been fun, and it has been rewarding. We ran in
our first fun trial in September 2003 and had some success chasing huns
across the hilltops in Genesee. But all the waiting and hard work
really paid off the opening of day of pheasant season.
We got into more birds than I had ever seen in a single outing.
Ginger did a wonderful job. The only thing that could have stood
some improvement was my shooting. [But even my shooting was better than
it’s ever been thanks to some personal instruction from a club
member.]
My experience on opening day this year is something I could have only
dreamed about in my youth. Thanks to all of you in the club that
have helped me over the past couple years. I wouldn’t be
enjoying bird hunting like I do today without your help.
DID YOU KNOW?
The new SRSGDA club officers for 2004:
President: Bart Dearborn
Vice President: Ed Westbrook
Secretary: Nance Ceccarelli
Treasurer: Monica Dearborn
Webmaster: Devon St. Pierre
We’d like to find a new location to store the club’s
trailer – preferably easy access during winter months –
please contact one of the officers if you have space and can assist us.
Address changes and corrections
Please note the following corrections as submitted to your club secretary
after our last membership roster was printed.
Please forgive my name misspellings and typing errors. Take a moment, and check YOUR listing, too!
(changes have been omitted from the website)
The executive group is working on a member survey to distribute and
ascertain membership needs, wants, desires, direction - like, we all need
more training, we want to get more birds, we desire more time off
to hunt, and…your input is required to set the direction for the club! You don’t have to wait for a printed survey
to share your ideas and thoughts – send ‘em in!
The website is out of date and in need of a new “home” or server. Members Terry Quinn, Monica Dearborn and
Devon St. Pierre are working to move this project forward.
Classifieds:
PUPPIES –
Gary Gage has ticked and solid liver
German Shorthair puppies sired by his hunting companion, HARRY. For particulars such as pedigree & price, please call 208-285-1608
Justin and Stephanie Rink have darling
English Springer Spaniel
puppies ($350.00). Dam and sire are on premises – both
parents are personal hunting companions and FDSB registered.
Please call for more information, (509)397-3139, after 6:00 p.m.
Miscellaneous –
In search of:
A roving reporter, or six, to provide salient and scintillating sagas
of SRSGDA members’ adventures in training, trialing, and
traipsing a-field (hunting)…I guess we could also include
trap! Any thoughts are appreciated; pictures are nice; can be in
final form or just simply “blurbs” to be edited.
PLEASE send to SRSGDA Secretary Nance Ceccarell via USPS or
secretary@snakerivergundogclub.org
Snake
River Sportman and Gun Dog Association
