Aspen Thicket Grouse Dogs

09/22/2024

Rex and Ruby sent me this yesterday.

Ruby is a littermate to Gabby.

The sisters started their 10th hunting season yesterday and are going strong looking like 5 year olds.

09/21/2024

Dad Joke...

"Who has two thumbs and attended an English Springer Spaniel Field Trial this afternoon?"

Points thumbs towards myself and says "This guy."

I learned a lot today that will undoubtedly help me be a better trainer.

Always learning in this sport.

Thanks to Bob and Lisa for the invite and Jill for running the best hunting and testing grounds in the U.P.

09/21/2024

Note - one brood I ran I to this morning was quail sized with no tailfeathers.

One didn't even want to fly.

Gabby was laughing at me trying to get the little guy airborne.

Definitely a second hatch...

09/21/2024

What a great training runs by Scout and Gabby on some grouse and a couple mudbats this morning.

Simply en fuego 🔥

Felt soo good to be out for a couple hours this morning before the furnace came on.

C'mon October!

09/21/2024

"Gracie" Scout x Gypsy 2023 is OTB out west.

09/20/2024

It's hot...70 degrees during their conditioning.

09/20/2024

Welp...it's groundhog day...again.

Just keeping em in shape til it cools down.

09/19/2024

09/18/2024

To whom it may concern: As a hunter who appreciates the importance of healthy forest habitat, I support the proposed action (Alternative 2) as developed by the U.S. Forest Service in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS). Alternative 2 directs the national forests toward stewardship, and I...

09/18/2024

Welp....let's give it a try on their conditioning run tonight.

09/17/2024

"Everybody knows that the autumn landscape in the northwoods is the land, plus a red maple, plus a ruffled grouse. In terms of conventional physics, the grouse represents only a millionth of either the mass or the energy of an acre. Yet, subtract the grouse and the whole thing is dead" - Aldo Leopold - A Sand County Almanac

09/16/2024

Another one...

09/16/2024

Found a great opening day covert with my youngest son today...

09/15/2024

Have a great season everyone.

Remember:

Safety first.

Hunt the dog you have, not the one you wish you have.

Your dog only needs to make YOU happy.

How you Hunt and the birds you shoot at only need to make YOU happy.

If you have a young pup...let the birds teach em.

Enjoy a sunset.

Eat a wild apple in the woods.

Stop and talk to other hunters whenever you can...it's a big country but a small world, we could use some kindness.

Try to take someone other than a family member hunting...God does indeed give extra credit for taking adult onset and women hunting.

Enjoy the season...it's too short and so are the lives of our dogs and family members.

This is particularly real for me as this picture was a double I shot the week after my dad died last year.

He sure would have enjoyed that story.

But if I'm lucky, he is hunting with Baron, Gunner, and Gretchen is some really good cover.

Holler at me if you're in my neck of the woods.

UG

09/15/2024

I'm not gonna lie...this one was a tough one to train.

As often with the Setters I see here, he made sure to passive-aggressively push my buttons to see what he could get away with...and went way across that line early on.

But if you know Setters, you know they can shut down in the wrong hands. You have to challenge them and compromise with them.

Pick your battles and eventually win the war.

The smile on Dave's face when he handled him was enough for me...he's gonna have a good season.

Do good things Cash!

09/14/2024

"Last season a man came to me with the request that I lend him assistance in overcoming a fault which had developed in a dog with whom he had hunted for 3 seasons. The dog, he said Khama had previously been very staunch, but now he had acquired the disconcerting habit of breaking point, then working ahead and pointing again.

"Does he put the bird up?" I asked.

"OH no," he assured me. "No, he seldom puts a bird up, but he refuses to stay on point."

We went Into the Woods with him, and my suspicion was soon verified. The dog had grouse sense and he was in the process of developing it. He worked high headed and fast, yet he kept in touch with us and slowed abruptly at the first scent of game.

A half hour later, when I chanced to be out of sight of the owner and some fifty yards distant from him, the dog passed in front of me. His head was a high in the air, his tail was like a ramrod, and he walked like a boy on stilts.

In about three seconds I was behind him, and my gun was ready for instant action. I knew - and the dog knew - that somewhere a short distance ahead of that choke-bore nose, a grouse was stealing quietly away through the concealing underbrush.

We went ahead for perhaps fifty yards when all at once there came a shrill whistle from the owner. The dog stopped short, and all the tenseness went from his muscles. For the first time in years I broke my self imposed rule to refrain from giving a command to a another man's dog.

"Never mind him," I said softly. "It's the bird we're interested in. Go on."

I pushed him gently with my knee. He hesitated momentarily, his ears cocked as he listened for the distant whistle, and then he went ahead.

Twice in the next one-hundred yards that scene was repeated, but the owner was farther away now-and the grouse was nearer. The dog's posture became more tense. Twice he froze beautiful I as the bird stopped for a moment. We were nearing the end of the drama. A little opening lay before us which the grouse, as closely pressed as it was, would not dare cross the ground. Once more the dog froze into a thing of marble. I stepped up beside the dog, and the bird thundered up before me, exposed itself for one fleeting instant karma and in that instant ceased to exist."

Burton Spiller

Note to all my peeps...trust your dogs and let it be between them and the bird.

09/14/2024

On the eve of the rush for credibility through social media posts showing only heads because the tiny birds have no tail fans:

"I must call your attention, too, Jimmy, to the matter of sportmanship...I hope you will not misunderstand me. There are men who love to still - hunt grouse on the ground. There are others whose chief delight is go out...and shoot birds the dog has treed. Either method is perfectly legitimate and fair, but you are planning to become a wing shot - a grouse hunting specialist. You will learn that there is no satisfaction comparable to that of cutting down a startled bird in the split second alloted to you before it gained protective cover, and you will learn that the bushwhacking of a sitting bird is going to leave you with an unpleasant memory and a wry taste in your mouth. "

Burton Spiller, Drummer in Woods

You do you, but you know where I stand...

09/14/2024

Like early football practice...two a days are a thing here for my crew until we get the leaves down.

09/14/2024

C'mon October...

09/14/2024

They love getting ready for October...

09/13/2024

Chapter 11, "Dear Jimmy", from "Drummer in the Woods" by Burton Spiller.

I read this chapter every year before the season to remember how it started...

"You will not know very much about training your first dog Jimmy, and there's little I can tell you that will help. You will probably buy a lot of books on the subject and learn them all by heart. They will give you a general idea of what the experts demand in their dogs, but a thousand books cannot give you the one practical thing you need most. That thing is experience.

So it's a pretty safe bet you will spoil your first dog. You'll love him from the moment when you first gather him into your arms. You will never permit anyone else to feed him. You will doctor him and worry over him when he is sick. You will feed him from the table. You will take him to bed with you. You will even teach him parlor tricks, which is supposed to be the depths of degredation - or dare I say dogredation - in bird dog circles.

You'll let him take charge and run the team, and lead you around wherever he chooses to go. He will break almost every rule in the game, but you will understand him better than you will understand another dog. He will find birds for you, and after a while you will be killing your share of them, and he'll bring them to you, his head held high and his tail wagging joyously.

He will grow old all too soon, Jimmy, and some morning when you call him you will fail to hear the happy patter of his feet as he comes to greet you. You will cry when you bury him and, for a time, you wil be more lonesome than you ever where before in all your life. Then you will have other dogs, a lot of other dogs, but at some night as you sit alone before the fire that has burned low on the hearth, your memory hark back to those first joyous years, and you will say to yourself, "I wish I had old Jack back again, he was the best dog I ever owned." Listen carefully for a moment then, Jimmy. I think you will hear the old glad thump of his tail from where he sits waiting for you on a golden stair."

🍻 to those "first dogs."