I met up with my cousins Friday night at the farmhouse that we would call home for the next 3 days. Much revelry followed – and thankfully pheasant hunting can’t start before 10 am, so we had plenty of time to recover and grab some breakfast before meeting up with our guide and hitting the fields.

I took my truck separately so I had somewhere to keep Ricky, Eleanor, and Jack while we were out in the fields. First up was Jack, although we drew a blank on the first field we hit. We had much better luck on the second field! We fanned out along both sides of a thick tree line, blockers at the far end, and proceeded to walk. I guess I picked the wrong side of the tree line to walk down, as I could hear my cousins on the far side shooting. A LOT. To the point that they ran out of shells before they reached the end.

And I can’t help but point out that they finished that walk with about 5 birds in the bag. Shooting lessons, guys. Shooting lessons.

Anyway, on this second run, I had put both Jack and Ricky on the ground. Both had an awesome time. Well, I’m pretty sure Jack had fun as he decided to hit the other side of the treeline and I think pretty much lost his mind at the number of birds he saw, the # of shots that were made – and the # of misses, causing many a flying bird to escape with Jack in pursuit.

On that note – OK, I don’t teach my dogs to break off the chase. Reason being is simple; I teach them not to chase in the first place. In a perfect world, they are steady on their birds until I release them for the retrieve. In the field trial game I play, if they chase, they’re automatically out of contention, so honestly – I don’t worry about calling them off of the chase because I’m finished and out of contention anyway. Let ’em get it out of their system and then get them back on the leash. No use hollering. Anyway – South Dakota was far from a controlled environment, so with running birds and fellow hunters that, let’s be honest, just weren’t very good shots, there were many opportunities to chase birds.

And I was totally OK with that. Let them have their fun. I’ll train ’em back up later.

Ricky had an absolute blast, and was nice enough to pick my side of the treeline to do it on. Having never been on pheasant before, I had no idea what to expect, but he was a rockstar. I got several nice points out of him over the course of the day, several resulting in excellent retrieves. I was so happy I was able to take him.

So, about Ricky. He’s a champion in the field as well as a Master Hunter – he’s great on his birds and as honest as the day is long. Unfortunately, this past summer he injured his foot to the point that one toe had to be removed. He’s fully recovered and happy as can be, but the healing process left that leg pretty restricted in its flexibility. As a result, it’s been harder for him to really stretch out and run like I know he can, and he gets sore from running more quickly. Ultimately, I decided to retire him from field trials, even though he was just 1 point shy of his amateur championship. I was very hard pressed to not take him to South Dakota, though. I took TomBoy, Patriot, and Emma Jane back in 2017 and it was the best hunting trip I’ve ever been on. I’ve shot pheasant before, but there’s no beating hunting over your own dogs to do it!

I didn’t want to deprive myself or Ricky of that opportunity, and after discussing it with the ex, basically I figured I would keep an eye on him and limit his running, and if he showed any pain, I’d give him a break.

Well, my friends – I vastly misjudged the situation. Ricky was freaking ROLLING. You never would have guessed that there was anything wrong. The boy went all 3 days and hardly showed signs of letting up. He was a little sore at night, but nothing too bad, and he certainly didn’t seem to mind.

It certainly didn’t hurt that he always had a lap to rest in every night.

So, to sum it up in two words – WORTH IT.

There were two moments in particular with Ricky that stick out for me. On the first day, he disappears out front and I don’t see him for a few minutes. We work our way down the feedstrip and eventually he comes into view – locked up in the middle of the row as a pheasant was walking around about 40 yards in front of him, (clearly had to have been pen-raised, as I think most of what we hunted were). He stood there the entire time as we slowly moved up. I got there, the bird flushed, we downed it, and Ricky brought it back. It was a proud moment. That was his first pheasant retrieve, and he done good.

The second moment was when he lost his damn mind. Second day, we’re hunting a feed strip at the top of 1 hill; we were on rolling terrain, so there was another hill to our left as well. Ricky and Jack are out hitting each strip and having a ball. A bird goes up well out front, we took a couple of shots with no luck, so the bird was away and heading towards the next hill. Annnddd Ricky saw it. So he was off.

Next thing I know, Ricky is a little red speck heading up the side of the next hill, several hundred yards away, in pursuit of this completely uninjured bird. Even if he could have heard me from that distance over the wind, he wasn’t gonna listen anyway. This was the epitome of a dog totally mailing it in. 🙂 All I could really do was laugh. Not really ideal behavior for him, but to see him enjoy himself with complete abandon AND be able to run like that with a bum leg – it was fine. It was all fine.

He eventually did come back. I was hoping he’d actually be able to run down that bird, as it would have been incredible to see him pop up over that hill with a bird in his mouth, but no such luck.

He’s a good boy. Always tries to do the right thing. Sometimes loses his mind instead. It’s fine. It’s all fine.

I’ll end today’s post there. I’ll get to Jack and Eleanor soon.

Until next time…