Day 3

I got up at 6:15 today.  We left the park a little before 7 and went down Sag road.  We walked along the abandoned road across from Sag.  The dogs were great.  Lucy had plenty of energy and kept up with Rowdy all day.  There were an amazing number of birds, both Chukar and quail.  We got 3 Chukar and 1 quail.

I missed several pretty easy shots.  We also killed four birds that we didn't retrieve.  The first was because both dogs went off after a second covey and when we got them back they couldn't find the bird.  The second went down off the edge of a vertical cliff.  The other two were on some very steep terrain at the end of the day.  Again the dogs were distracted by other coveys.

Lucy retried a bird that I thought I'd missed.  She saw it go down and brought it back.  At one place both Rowdy and Lucy were pointing birds between them.  Rowdy was on the left and Lucy was on the right.  It was great.

The day would have been perfect except some guys parked their boat below the draw with the blackberries.  They walked up the draw and moved all of the birds there up the hill.  Then they walked above us and got in our way.  We couldn't shoot at the birds without hitting them.  Finally they went down hill and left us alone.

On the way back we stopped to rest on the road where it cut through some rim rock.  After awhile we heard Chukar.  They were up on the edge of the rim rock.  We could have shot them off the rocks.  Instead Hooch climbed above them while I stayed on the road.  When they flushed he shot one and I shot two.  Unfortunately those were three of the ones we didn't retrieve.

When we got back to the truck we road hunted down to the water.  On the way back we saw the covey flying directly over where we had been sitting and shooting.  If we had stayed ther we could have shot them on the way up.

When we got back we unpacked, cleaned birds, and showered.  Then we talked for awhile and then went to dinner at Dan's.  Patsy cooked a great dinner.  Of course we talked a lot more.

Rowdy is really stoved up.  His feet are in bad shape.  Lucy is tired, but seems ready to go again.  We will probably hunt the Sportman's access tomorrow because of Rowdy's feet.

All in all this was one of the best days hunting we've ever had.  We had a great time and so did the dogs.