Heavy Cover

Mommy said that some of my friends who read my blog might wonder why we don't get more pheasants if I am such a great hunting dog. She says I should tell a bit about the type of hunting we do and the cover we hunt in.

We don't hunt at a game preserve like a lot of pheasant hunters do, except that once in awhile we go to our neighbor's hunt club to scratch hunt, but not too often. Usually we hunt on our own farm, or on a friend or relative's farm which looks a lot like ours. Sometimes we get lucky and find birds in the pastures, or at the edge of a field or the woods, but most of the time they are in the swamp, or in thickets of willow and prickly ash that grow on the edges of the swamp. We don't have any nicely mowed fields to hunt in like at the hunt clubs. The cover is extremely heavy most of the time, and we have to work hard just to get through it. I always manage to find the birds, but sometimes they flush where Mommy and Daddy can't see them because of all the trees. Or, a lot of times, they fly straight across the swamp and land in the cattails.

Here is a picture of one of our covers, and you can see that the trees are even taller than any grownups. That makes it very difficult to get a shot at any flushing birds.

Here is one of our cattail covers- if you look really hard you can just see my orange hunting dog vest in the middle of the picture. That is some really heavy cover!

This picture was taken from the bridge overlooking the South end of the swamp. It is impossible to hunt here until the river freezes over so that we can walk on top of the ice. There are tons of birds in this part of the swamp, but even with the ice it is still hard to get at them because the cover is so heavy.

Hunting around here is definitely a challenge, and it is even more of a challenge when I hunt with Mommy because she can't hit the broadside of a barn with her shotgun! Luckily, Daddy goes with us sometimes and he is a much better shot with his shotgun, so we have gotten a few birds. Daddy says that Mommy needs to get a new shotgun that fits her better so that she can be a better shot.