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| The Birthday Girl |
This post is a bit late, but Sally insists I do it, anyway, as we had such a lovely time together.
On Wednesday, 12 December, I took the day off from work to spend the entire time hunting with Sally. Instead, I spent half the day getting my shoulder looked at and x-rayed and some of it buying dog food.
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| Split Tree With Core Exposed |
Sally and I finally hit the trail in the afternoon and enjoyed a three mile hike. We only encountered three birds, none of which provided me with a shot. We were approaching an intersecting trail when Sally slammed to a halt on the left side of the trail. She was pointing slightly back in my direction, so I left the trail well in front of her and looked for any movement. Nothing. I looked at my dog. No movement. She was solid. I started working closer. When I got closer than she usually points them, I heard the bird flush from her far side. Darn. That bird was pretty stealthy to not have alerted Sally to its movement.
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| Broken Tree Growing Toward the Sky |
The next bird was my find. I hadn't noticed many tracks and started paying more attention to the snow. I became quite excited--birdy?--on discovering a beautiful line of partridge tracks crossing from right to left. I began following them and, just as I began moving to avoid running into a rather large tree, the bird left said tree in a thunder of noise! It had, I believe, been perched at about head-height, observing my blundering progress and well aware of the dog's distance from us.
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| Woodpecker Work |
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| The Trail to Adventure |
As with any good handler, Sally did not get upset with me for mismanaging the bird. She did decline to believe me when I told her where I thought it might be, but otherwise she gave me lavish wags and a few licks on the hand. Then she went off in search of another bird. The only other bird I heard flushed very far away from us. We had a lovely time, regardless.
