Wednesday October 22, 2014

Location: Beaver County
Weather: 55 degrees, slight wind, cloudy.

Wednesday October 22nd was the first day Rocko and I made it out for birds.  Locally here, it's almost all pheasants all the time.  But I was able to make it out before the pheasant fields were loaded with hunters.  We decided to try and chase some woodcock and grouse in some cuts that were only 5 years old.

This proved to be tough to get through.  Rocko wildly flushed something.  I could tell because he was acting nuts for a few minutes.  I figured "Hey, at least he's getting his early season jitters out."

By the way, what the heck?  This was about eye level, and I'm 6'1".  Obviously not a buck rub.

There was an hour until dark, and I had to be back home by 6:30.  So I figured we'd hit up a reclaimed strip mine area.  It is full of brush and goldenrod and may hold some woodcock or grouse.  I figured not woodcock because the soil is a little shale-y and I don't see how they'd probe for worms in it.

I was wrong

Just as I was daydreaming about our next hunt, Rocko went on point.  He was holding forever on it (well, okay, maybe 40 seconds) until I made it over to him.  I flushed the timberdoodle and it flew straight at me!  I took a wild close shot as I was flustered, then following up on a shot behind me.  I was able to swing around and hit it at 25 yards.  We retrieved the bird and took some pictures.

Then things started getting crazy.  We had 4 more flushes in the next 40 minutes.  All solid points by Rocko with my flushing.  So proud of him!

Unfortunately I was only able to get a shot at 2 more and I missed with my O/U twice.  I thought I connected the one time, only to go over to where I thought it would be laying to flush it again and I forgot to reload my gun!  I wish I could have seen my face when nothing happened. 

Then I realized we were running late, and on the way out we're flushing more birds.  Kind of a bummer since I was focused on getting out of there, not to mention it was almost dark.  All in all an awesome day in the field for a random Wednesday after work.