More Bird Hunting, Deer Hunting, and New Clothes

After we got our first two pheasant birds, we kept hunting almost every day. Sometimes it was raining outside, and lots of RR's don't like to go outside in the rain 'cause they don't want to get wet. But Mommy played a trick on me when I was really little. Whenever it started to rain, she told me to go outside and play with Abby, my sister who is a Black Lab. Lab dogs LIKE to get wet and Abby always goes outside in the rain. Because I was so little and just wanted to play, I thought that was lots of fun and I got so used to the rain that now I don't even care if I get wet!

Sometimes we all hunted together, sometimes only Mommy and me went, and sometimes Mommy, Daddy, and me went. But no matter who brought the gun, I always flushed all the pheasant birds I could find. I got to be a very good hunting dog. In fact, I was a better hunter than Mommy OR Daddy because they hardly shot any of my birds. Mommy says they need to practice shooting some more before next hunting season! I hope they get as good as me! We still managed to bring some birds home though, and Mommy said that I did a GREAT job!

We hunted all the way until it was November, then all of a sudden, us dogs were not allowed to go outside anymore except to potty. Mommy said that was because it was deer season and she did not want us to get shot by some city deer hunter who can't tell a brown dog from a deer. Can you imagine anyone doing that? Mommy even got us some clothes to wear so that, hopefully, the hunters could tell that we weren't deer. Here is a picture of me wearing my blaze orange vest.

One day, Daddy's friend Bill came to hunt on our farm. Mommy and me were still hunting pheasants, but we went over to the other side of the creek and hunted far away from where Daddy and Bill were deer hunting. We did not get any birds that day (Mommy missed all the ones I flushed!), so finally we went back to the house so Mommy could fix supper.


Before she even had a chance to feed me my supper, Bill called in on the radio to say that he had shot a deer, but it ran into the woods and he wanted help finding it because it was going to be dark soon. Mommy said that we could go help, too! We headed out to the field where Bill was and waited for Daddy. Mommy put my tracking harness and my blaze orange vest on me and I was all ready to go. When Daddy got there, we walked over to where Bill said the deer was standing when he shot it. Daddy found a little tiny drop of blood on the grass, about the size of the eraser on the end of a pencil. He pointed to it, and told me to "Go Find". I remembered how I had found the sow from tracking her blood trail, so I just did the same thing again. I sniffed that drop of blood, and then I took off! I followed it all the way to the fenceline, but then I did not know what to do because the fence was too big for me to get over. When I was just a tiny little puppy, Mommy had taught me to crawl so that I could go under fences instead of jumping over them. My vet says jumping over is bad, especially for boy dogs like me. But this was a good strong fence and Mommy could not lift the wire up for me to crawl under. Instead, she took me down the fenceline until we came to a spot where a tree had fallen on it and smashed the fence down really low. That was okay for me to jump over, so I did! Then we walked back to where we had left the track. It was really easy for me to find that deer's scent again on the other side of the fence, and when I did, off we went again! I followed that deer trail all the way into the woods, and I wasn't scared even though it was spooky and dark. Mommy followed me, and Daddy and Bill followed her. Pretty soon, I led them all right to that deer. I must have done a really good job of tracking because Mommy was sooooo proud of me again and kept telling me what a GOOD PUPPY I was. Here is the picture Daddy took of me and Mommy with the deer.