And my first Sunday hunt ever. PA eliminated the no-Sunday-hunting rule for almost everything this season.

My oldest lab was a super-hunter, he had prey-drive like no lab I’ve ever owned and likely will ever own. He always hunted himself bloody and there is no quit in him.







He retired this year. It was my decision, certainly not his. He’d kill himself if I left him hunt again.

My middle lab (Raven) has some pretty big shoes to fill. She is a great retriever, but doesn’t have the prey-drive of the old lab.

We had her and the new pups (brothers) out this morning. She tracked down and retrieved a wounded ringneck.

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Showing the new dogs what we are after.



Getting a drink from a beaver pond.



My two, Raven and Ranger. The other pup, Remington, belongs to my buddy. I hope Ranger learns the game quickly. I wasn’t expecting the retirement of my older lab so soon. Ranger is 16 weeks old.

That’s great!
Love a dog that will track a cripple down. So many hunters don’t realize what the dog is doing. They yell at them and call/shock them back so they just quit tracking all together. I look at a tracked down crippled rooster as two birds!

Way to go

Cool dogs and nice ground

She was acting birdy and I knew she was trailing one. I didn’t call her back but kept having her sit when she’d get out about thirty yards so we could catch up.

Twenty minutes later I was on an old skid trail going through some thick stuff and my buddy was up a side hill in some beech. Raven was between us. I thought she had lost the bird she was trailing.

I had my phone out and was taking some pictures of the pup when a rooster hopped down the bank onto the trail in front of me twenty-five yards out. My buddy had just been busting on me about all the pics I was taking. He told me to, “Take a picture of the cockbird that’s going to flush while you got your phone in your hand instead of your gun.”

The rooster crash-landed on the skid trail, hopped into the air and crash-landed again fifteen feet away before scooting into the nasty stuff with Raven hot on his tail.

It took her another two or three minutes but she caught him and brought him back.

Pheasant hunting was one of my favorite hunts of the year. But with changing farming practices, farmers not raising sugar beets and the raccoon invasion, Alas, pheasants are mostly gone.