Hunting pheasants

Barlie has been playing and growing and we've been working with her and pheasants or chuckers. We had grand intentions of getting out there in the field with her on New Year's day, but it was raining. So Sunday we went out to the field. It started out with Todd, me, Barlie and a shotgun - he wanted to make sure she wasn't afraid of the noise the shotgun would make.



Not a chance - she knew what she was supposed to be doing. But....Todd felt that he needed to be with her while she pointed at the chuckers. And someone needed to shoot them out of the air once she flushed them so she could retreive them.



I offered to shoot the gun....but Todd said ....you need to be able to HIT the flying bird and bring it down... and I am not a very good shot at moving targets:)



So we called on a good friend of ours, Andy, who in turn brought his 2 kids along for the fun.



Barlie spent lots of time running back and forth....

Until she would find the chucker and point at it:

One got away into what we call "the swamps." We let her run back and forth in there for a few minutes to see if she could find where it landed ......

There's a bird in here somewhere...

Andy stands ready with the shotgun

Of course, the little boys had to pull out their bb guns....

I spy a birdie.....

And if you are 7 and 6, and get bored, you can always make sure the chucker that was shot is really dead.....

And another birdie....

This is getting fun....

The grand total? Out of 5 birds, 2 were shot and Barlie "sort of" retrieved them.....she is not really good yet on coming when called but......Todd says his uncle's 2 german wirehairs aren't really good at that either, and they have a number of years on Barlie.....

If the weather cooperates we will be out there again with her one night this week after work and a few more birds.....