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Gratuitous Bird and Dog Photos

Due to the drought, roosters are not common in NW MT this year...no gang flushes, usually singles.
Now retired, I hunt most weekday mornings with a self-imposed limit of 1 rooster.
That seems to help as I always see roosters in each spot I hunt week after week.
I hunt the same five or six local spots.
This was a rare double for me:
IMG_0014.JPG
 
AlaskaHunter said:
Due to the drought, roosters are not common in NW MT this year...no gang flushes, usually singles.
Now retired, I hunt most weekday mornings with a self-imposed limit of 1 rooster.
That seems to help as I always see roosters in each spot I hunt week after week.
I hunt the same five or six local spots.
This was a rare double for me:
View attachment 205224
Click to expand...
My gawd, that dog could be my Ellie's twin. Is that a Ruger Red Label? Birds were scarce on the east side too, mostly due to scarcity of cover. I actually managed to shoot quite a few but only because I hunted 30+ days. And Ellie is dynamite. Required a helluva lot of legwork! I only bagged a handful that were this year's roosters. Usually I get 60-80% young birds. Sharpie numbers were down from last year for sure but last year was ridiculous. They were everywhere. I only shot a couple. I was hunting federal refuge mostly and no steel shot available anywhere in the state. Saved what I had for pheasants. Hell, I couldn't even find lead shotgun shells (but I had enough reloads for the few times I hunted BMA). I posted about the one and only double on roosters. It's been at least three years since I shot a double. Opal was still alive. Pretty much impossible this year. Most of my hunting was deep in the cattails. One goes down and I must mark it and ignore the rest of the birds flushed. Seems every time I had a good opportunity for a double in open country, I already had two in the bag. There were lots of pheasants on the refuge but certainly not like it should have been. Relatively speaking the hunter numbers were way down there. I attribute that to lack of available ammo and probably high price of gas too. It's a good thing because the cattle run on the place really messed up about half the huntable end. If the refuge had received the usual pressure, I probably would have left earlier. I met a few new folks there this year, all with pointing dogs. Just won't work on that place. You gotta have a dog that works very close in heavy cover. Those birds will not hold more than a few seconds. Very wet, cold (usually), hard work. It's Lab territory. I shot several daily limits and never met anyone else who did. Not on the refuge anyway.

When I was a kid it was almost a rare thing to get a shot at a rooster in the Flathead Valley. Nowadays, forget about it. All the good spots have been gobbled up by McMansion development. You must be hunting down around Charlo?
 
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Would it be asking too much to have this thread pinned to the top of the forum? I, for one, would like a nice, guilt-free place to post pics of my pooch(es). Always a PITA trying to dig for a long-rolled over thread between off seasons.

We need more dog photos!

I need more dogs!
 
OntarioHunter said:
My gawd, that dog could be my Ellie's twin. Is that a Ruger Red Label? Birds were scarce on the east side too, mostly due to scarcity of cover. I actually managed to shoot quite a few but only because I hunted 30+ days. And Ellie is dynamite. Required a helluva lot of legwork! I only bagged a handful that were this year's roosters. Usually I get 60-80% young birds. Sharpie numbers were down from last year for sure but last year was ridiculous. They were everywhere. I only shot a couple. I was hunting federal refuge mostly and no steel shot available anywhere in the state. Saved what I had for pheasants. Hell, I couldn't even find lead shotgun shells (but I had enough reloads for the few times I hunted BMA). I posted about the one and only double on roosters. It's been at least three years since I shot a double. Opal was still alive. Pretty much impossible this year. Most of my hunting was deep in the cattails. One goes down and I must mark it and ignore the rest of the birds flushed. Seems every time I had a good opportunity for a double in open country, I already had two in the bag. There were lots of pheasants on the refuge but certainly not like it should have been. Relatively speaking the hunter numbers were way down there. I attribute that to lack of available ammo and probably high price of gas too. It's a good thing because the cattle run on the place really messed up about half the huntable end. If the refuge had received the usual pressure, I probably would have left earlier. I met a few new folks there this year, all with pointing dogs. Just won't work on that place. You gotta have a dog that works very close in heavy cover. Those birds will not hold more than a few seconds. Very wet, cold (usually), hard work. It's Lab territory. I shot several daily limits and never met anyone else who did. Not on the refuge anyway.

When I was a kid it was almost a rare thing to get a shot at a rooster in the Flathead Valley. Nowadays, forget about it. All the good spots have been gobbled up by McMansion development. You must be hunting down around Charlo?
Click to expand...
No that is my Citori with 26 inch barrels...the receiver looks like a chrome Red Label, but its just the blueing has been worn off from use (my main shotgun including waterfowl since the 1980s).

I have a tribal license so mostly hunt tribal properties.

Your hunting Bowdoin NWR? Yes cattails and pointers are tough combination....
 
AlaskaHunter said:
I have a tribal license so mostly hunt tribal properties.

Your hunting Bowdoin NWR?
Click to expand...
Good guess on Charlo area then. You're right, Bowdoin and adjacent waterfowl production preserves. Also some other federal land and state WMAs on the Hi Line. Didn't hunt much besides Bowdoin this year. Lack of cover was a serious problem. Forget about BMAs. They were grazed bald. From what I could see there was only three or four days of waterfowl hunting on Bowdoin. The lake was nearly dried up and nothing migrated until it froze over. Hunting was all round messed up there for everything this year thanks to drought and management running a hundred pairs of cattle on the place. It's the hardest I've ever worked for birds.
 
51657634388_4fa947bc09_z.jpg
 
OntarioHunter said:
Good guess on Charlo area then. You're right, Bowdoin and adjacent waterfowl production preserves. Also some other federal land and state WMAs on the Hi Line. Didn't hunt much besides Bowdoin this year. Lack of cover was a serious problem. Forget about BMAs. They were grazed bald. From what I could see there was only three or four days of waterfowl hunting on Bowdoin. The lake was nearly dried up and nothing migrated until it froze over. Hunting was all round messed up there for everything this year thanks to drought and management running a hundred pairs of cattle on the place. It's the hardest I've ever worked for birds.
Click to expand...
Yes overgrazed areas are the norm here. I hunted this area in 2000 when I lived in Lolo...now 90 percent of the spots are grazed down to a pool table look. Still I have a few local spots that have not been overgrazed.
IMG_0015.JPG
IMG_0023.JPG
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