Cove Mountain Kennels

Here is a photo of what my kids call the Annabella Town Ghost. He is on Cove Mountain just south of town. They say the ghost only comes out during the winter. You have to use a kid’s imagination. He has two eyes and an open mouth and two upreaching arms, and is spooooky.

 

This is our family’s all time favorite pheasant recipe. (I think you could use it for any game bird, but it is particularly delicious with pheasant.)

Grilled Teriyaki Pheasant

1 cup oil
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 TBSP Garlic Salt
1 TBSP Horse Raddish
1 can sprite (or Mt. Dew)
2 pheasants, quartered

Mix the marinade ingredients and soda, add the pheasant pieces and marinate in refrigerator for 12 to 36 hours, stirring every so often. Grill on BBQ or in oven just until the inside barely starts to loose the pink color. Note that the different pieces (breasts vs leg/thighs) will cook at different rates. The key is not to over cook. Serve hot over mixed wild rice. The grilled pieces are also excellent cold the next day. 

We obtained this recipe from a friend and long-time hunting buddy, Damon Swenson, some 20 years ago and have been enjoying it ever since.

 

Daily exercise is one of the key fundamentals in our training program. So, we are always looking for ways for our clients to get their dogs the exercise they need. Often a good walk for us barely gets the dog warmed up, roading the dog like we do here with a 4-wheeler isn’t possible for many folks that live in more urban areas, so we often recommend  a bike. It must be done with caution however.

Years ago when we lived in Nebraska, we lived right off a great Rails to Trails bike path that, at the time, went more than 20 miles out through the country side (I think now it crosses the whole state). We would regularly take our dogs out on the trail for good long morning run. Not having any other way to do it, we would just hold the leash in one hand while riding. I no longer recommend this, in fact don’t try this unless you have a helmet and body armor. My 2 year old lab took off after a squirrel, crossed me up and sent me over the handlebars where I landed on my forearms and the side of my head. (No helmet of course). I dragged my bike, dog and myself to a nearby house and scared the owner to death, standing there bleeding. She took me and my dog home where I luckily didn’t die from intracranial bleeding.

The “springer,” a setup to run a dog with you bike is a much safer option. The price seems fairly reasonable and has gotten several good reviews. If you are looking for another way to exercise your dog, this may be something to look into.

Image: Web capture. Dog in Copenhagen.

I just found out that the mahogany tree I blogged about finding back in October during a blue-grouse hunt has been nominated as the biggest individual tree of its species in the State of Utah and in the Nation. Pretty cool if you ask me. If you know anything about curl-leaf mahogany trees, you’d know that this one was huge. It was worth the hike into see it. I guess it takes about a year for the registration process, so I’ll be watching for it. It is wild think that this tree was probably a respectable size mahogany when Columbus was playing with toy boats as a kid. (I guess it’s kind of like Boone and Crockett record for trees, eh?).

 

I just bought a new training pistol (starter pistol, blank pistol) from gun dog supply (http://www.gundogsupply.com). After visiting with them about the different options they have, they were very helpful, I decided on the Kimar 209 primer pistol Made by Traditions. I couldn’t be more happy with it. It has a solid feel to it like a real pistol, is loud without being too loud and fits nicely in an Uncle Mike’s Sidekick holster. Also, the 209 primers are cheap and easy to come by. It also comes with a nice plastic case. (I can see that the latches won’t last too long on the case, but it’s a nice touch.) It was a great buy for the money.

Pistols are nice to train with because they can be on your side, grabbed quickly when you want a gunshot, then put away so you have two free hands. If you want to train with a pistol, but can’t justify buying one the few months you’ll need it to train just one pup, if you have a .22 pistol, you can use it. Revolvers, like the Ruger single-six work particularly well with blank loads. (Ah, maybe a good reason to buy a new gun!) Simply use your .22 and purchase .22 blanks. Trust me, even though blanks may cost more than loaded shells, buy them so you don’t have to worry about where the bullet is going to end up. You’ll have enough on your mind training the dog. As a side note, if you buy crimped loads, like for a ramset concrete nail gun, there is some debris (probably acrylic glue in the end of the shell) that shoots out, so don’t point it at anything close.

Another is to make your own shotgun popper loads. If you have a shotgun reloader, simply reprime shotgun hulls and don’t crimp them. These work well in an over/under. If you have a pump, cut the crimp off and they should feed through the magazine fine. This works very well, helps the dog learn to look where the shotgun is pointed and it’s not quite as loud as a pistol. This is a great tool, one that I love to use with young puppies, but I often find myself having to lay my nice shotgun down on the ground so I have use of both hands, then it gets stepped on by a pup.

A final alternative is to use your muzzleloader with only the 209 primer or the cap. This will work just as well as the shotgun popper loads, except that you can shoot twice and they are a pain to clean.

I didn’t make it out for the closing of the waterfowl season. I did, however, have a great day at the pheasant shooting preserve training dogs. It was a chilly day, but beautiful and mostly sunny. We set the birds in thick cover along the river and gave them plenty of time to move around and leave good scent trails. I happend to have had all retrievers (flushers) we were training, so the thick cover was excellent for them. The dogs worked the birds well and the birds flushed with gusto and flew strong. It was a great training day for the dogs. We were able to work on a lot of different aspects: hunting close, not chasing running birds (coming back into gun range when called), flushing, pulling off missed birds, tracking wounded birds, and retrieving. It also tuned us up on our bird shooting. Mike, George’s son-in-law was a newcomer to upland game hunting; he did great and had a ball! Hopefully he’ll be hooked on upland game gunning for good.

We went chukar hunting this weekend. Late season chukar hunting is always tough, but worth getting out. It was a cold, but beautiful sunburn kind of a day. We did find two small coveys of birds high on the mountain, but they were seasoned and got the better of us. We ended up taking only one bird home, but had a great day. Everyone got a great workout and we saw some spectacular scenery. We only have 10 days left in the season!

 

 

4 pheasant breasts (Boneless, skinless)
1/2 cup teriyaki sauce
1 can pineapple slices
bacon
salt and pepper to taste

Marinate pheasant in teriyaki sauce overnight in the refrigerator. Place a slice of pineapple between 2 breast halves and wrap in bacon. Hold together with tooth picks. Salt and pepper to taste. Grill on low heat, basting with marinade, rotating frequently for 20 min. or until cooked through. Serve over wild rice and garnish with left over pineapple.

The key to cooking pheasant, as with most game meat, is not to over cook it. Grill it until the center barely looses the pink color, but is still moist.