[COLOR= ]With wet weather upon us, I stayed a little closer to home yesterday. I'm not sure if the drizzle and wet, quiet ground enabled it, but Slick chased deer three times yesterday. I suspect that he surprised the deer because it was so quiet in the woods, jumped them and saw them and began to chase. This is the first time he's ever chased deer. On our first drop I walked him to the woods on a lead like I always do. When I let him loose he took off like a rocket like he always does. At 200 yards he starts yipping wildly. at 300 hundred, still yipping wildly, I could not reach the trainer fast enough as I realized he was chasing deer. tone, yell, low power yell, again. I'm getting nothing. Slick still running and yipping full power(and I laid on it for a couple seconds), but that only slowed him down and shut him up. I start walking, as fast as I can without breaking into a run, yelling and toning/zapping him. I cover about 400 yards, and Slick is still out about 200 but I'm gaining on him. I stopped to catch my breath and call him. He finally comes, and honestly had no idea that I was ready to bash his head in with the butt of my gun stock. If I was fast enough to catch him, I might have. I put him on a lead and dragged him back to our original starting point to start over. young dog is gonna chase some trash. I get over it. We hunted on and Slick found two squirrels, stayed treed perfectly, rifle found its mark. Off to stop number two and a little deja vu. I turn him loose, he takes off like a rocket. 200 yards out, he starts yipping again. I didn't waste any time with the trainer this time. I let him have it and it did not even slow him down. full power three times, and me sprinting across the woods yelling like a man possessed, and he finally turned around and came to me. I could just shake my head and try to calm myself down. Slick without a care in the world, tongue hanging out, tail stub wagging, waiting on me to start moving so he would know which direction to go. This is a big woods and Slick covered it pretty well, but only found a half dozen den trees. Stop number three went pretty well. Slick only treed one squirrel, but did a bang up job figuring out the track and staying on the tree. After I confirmed there was a squirrel I eased into position slowly and quietly in an effort to keep squirrel from moving to hide from me. I almost made it. Squirrel only flinched a little, so I could still see the top of its head. Shot it's nose off, but squirrel ran onto my side of the main trunk offering me a wide open shot at a running squirrel, which I missed twice before squirrel had gotten hidden again. Slick gets excited when the rifle starts singing, so he was hot on the tree as I wandered around and around looking for a way to get a bullet to this wounded rat. I finally found a shot, but I had moved away from the tree a good bit and there were lots of small branches between gun barrel and rats head. I took a good rest, focused on the reticle, exhaled slowly and squeezed one off. Nothing but brains on what seemed an impossible shot. By some miracle provided by the hunting gods to even out the misery they cast upon me twice earlier, I presume. That would be the only squirrel we would see in that spot, but we did visit several dens. On stop number four Slick found a squirrel before he had a chance to scare up any deer. Did a bang up job staying treed while I played hide and seek with a very stubborn rat. Eventually, I gave up, but had some vines attached to the tree to shake. I start shaking, rat takes off, timbers out to a smaller tree, then bailes to the ground. Perfect! except for Slick did not see the squirrel leave. so, this one got away as I did not see it go up another tree and could not get Slick on the track. So we cross a dove field to another small woodlot. We get in there and Slick goes loping off, happy dog doing his job. he gets just out of my sight, about 100 yards or so, and starts yipping wildly again, and he's running fast. I pulled out the trainer, cranked it up to full power and laid on the button until he was still and quiet. I hurt him this time, and I meant to. Slick learns fast, and hopefully he learned something about chasing deer yesterday. I called him one time and he came straight to me in a big hurry. That was enough for me. We made the long walk back to the truck and got out of the rain for good. [/COLOR]
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[COLOR= ]We've had some bright spots in the last few weeks. Slick is really staying treed great for me, and I have been shooting really well. The rest of it is just growing pains. Still, this has not been a good squirrel season so far. Squirrels are not too abundant, but I don't know if they simply are few in number or if we've just had bad timing and less than desirable conditions most days. I know that Slick is going to miss a few, and we have been visiting plenty of den trees, indicating that rats are there, just not coming out to play.
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[COLOR= ]I've laid down a lot of boot leather these last three days for 11 squirrels. According to the track log on my Garmin, Slick has gone 23.8 miles in three days. Two of those miles probably covered his deer chasing, though. He's sure got some wheels, and he has really started using them just this week. He's hunting faster than ever, getting out there a ways, too. we stay in and rest today, try and squeeze in a short hunt tomorrow before our Christmas marathon begins as there won't be another hunt until next Wednesday.[/COLOR]
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[COLOR= ]No pics on Thursday, didn't bother with the third squirrel in the rain yesterday. two tails from Thursday on his left, two from our first stop yesterday on the right. [/COLOR]
ickle:
