Summer Training 2019

Photo by Holly Higgins

I was very fortunate to be able to make a month-long trip to Idaho, Montana, and South Dakota with my gal, and the dogs and horses, this past August/September. We were able to access Sharptail habitat on both public and private lands, and ran into a good number of birds. We found Sharptails in this brome (CRP) as well as native cover made up of mixed native grasses, sedges, and sage brush. Some coveys were pointed, but many flushed on the approach of the dog. On a couple of occasions, while working dogs in this mid-calf to knee-high CRP, I saw birds running through the cover while atop my horse; I whistled the dogs back to me and got some birds pointed this way. The Sharptails loved to flush wild, so there was some good stop-to-flush work that got done. There were many occasions when a sleeper was kicked up after the initial flush of the covey; if the dogs had movement after the flush we could make a correction, get out in front of the dog, kick around, and hopefully kick up that sleeper. When it happened it was a great way to end a session......