Cove Mountain Kennels

I’ve been struggling finding good chukar numbers around home, so I traveled down to Southern Utah to look for Gambel’s quail and chukars. It was a spectacular day with fresh snow on the ground. The quail were a bust, but we did find a fair number of chukars. Problem was, that like Homer’s Sirens, they called us from just a ways up the hill, then a little farther. Before I knew it, I was at the top of the mountain, it was getting dark and they were calling me from just the next mountain over.

 

 

With these last three storms we have gotten a fair bit of snow. It’s been fun to romp in, but the cold does present challenges in caring for dogs. First, with no electricity to the kennels, it’s hard to keep free-water for them to drink, and second, it’s cold, especially for short coated dogs.

If it is cold enough to freeze the water fairly quickly, we only fill the water bucket up about 3 – 4”. That’s enough water for them to drink immediately before the rest freezes and it leaves room in their water bucket for more. A couple more times during the day we can carry out water in a bucket and add another 3 – 4” of fresh water. This way they have several opportunities to drink. At night we bring the frozen water buckets in to thaw. Usually a couple hours in the house and you can dump the ice out. (We have metal water bucket and don’t like to bang them, as they get dented up.) If you do have electricity near your kennel, you can use the heated dog bowls. Be careful to ensure that the dog cannot get at the cord. I have heard numerous stories of dogs pulling the water dish around the kennel and exposing the unprotected part of the cord and chewing it and getting shocked. Also watch anywhere they can get at extension cords.

As for the cold, we use the K-9 Kondo Dog Den and have really liked it. We have found that grass hay (like timothy or brome) works the best for insulation. Unlike wood chips and straw, it doesn’t compress and doesn’t soak up water and stay wet and get moldy. Blankets don’t work because they will jam the two-way swinging door, plus the dogs tear them up for fun. In some parts of the country, like ours, grass hay can be really hard to come by. Around here everything is alfalfa, which is not a good choice, as it gets wet and matted. So we keep a close eye out for grass and stockpile a couple of bales. Some folks like cedar shavings. We have never used them. Since they are much bigger shavings, they may be better than pine and aspen shavings as far as not soaking up and holding water, but since dogs smell on the order of 150,000 times better than we do, We don’t like cedar for its aromatic properties. Whatever you use, make it deep so the dog can make a nest and be well insulated underneath.

In the evenings once we are home from work, the dogs are inside the house with us and really enjoy laying by the heater. Any non-house dogs we have staying with us are kenneled in the garage at night in dog boxes. The garage is insulated and we have a small heater in there, so even on the coldest nights it stays at a moderate temperature. The dogs seem to enjoy this, plus it gives us another couple of times to interact with the dogs.

                                                          (Photo: Me looking for our lost dog during a blizzard.)

We went out to cut a Christmas tree and took the dogs. Lilly, a cute, caffienated French Brittany was with us as we looked for a tree, circling out and back like when we hunt for blue grouse. After cutting the tree we noticed she had been gone for a few minutes longer than usual. We immediately started looking for her. That’s when the blizzard blew in and started dumping snow. We looked for four hours in the blizzard before it got dark. We went home and I got better geared up for snow and went back up looking. I spent the next two days covering every inch of the area to no avail.

I feared the worst. I didn’t know if she had gotten caught in a trap, eaten by a lion, or what. It just wasn’t like her not to come around after just a few minutes. She had just vanished. God smiled upon us and this little dog. Two days later I got a call from a land surveyor working in the area. He found Lilly trotting down the road toward town.  We were so glad to see her and she us. Needless to say, she hasn’t left my side for a week.

 

A limit of ring-necks, prairie chickens, sharp-tail and a bobwhite. What a day.

I have been thinking of how we can get the idea across to land owners that wildlife is important and that there is a value for wildlife. Part of the problem is that too many of these landowners, they see no value to wildlife, or maybe even perceive a negative value to them. They only see animals (mainly deer and pronghorn) eating their crops and the hassle of having to deal with hunters and trespassing.  I spoke at the last Division of Wildlife upland game public meeting (Regional Advisory Council) about extending the pheasant season from its current 10 day season to a 30 day season; the response I got from landowners at the meeting was that they didn’t want a longer season because they don’t want to have to put up with hunters and trespassing any longer than they already do. It’s hard to convince someone like this that leaving any possible cover for wildlife is important.

I have been thinking of how to change private landowner perception of the value of leaving wildlife cover, because the other day I saw the owner of a beautiful 10 acre field of tall grass out mowing the field with his tractor and PTO mower. I had been watching this field all season and had seen several pheasants fly into this thick cover. The grass cover was waist high, thick and fairly uniform and provided excellent hiding and overwinter cover for pheasants. Best of all, the field was adjacent to a corn field, now corn stubble, which provided an abundance of waste corn feed.  The proximity of the feed to the cover was excellent, because minimizing exposure to predators is critical for a pheasant.

Unfortunately, the owner mowed the field to look about like a putting green. I believe he did so for several reasons, first, he didn’t see the value it provided to wildlife. Second, around here a clean manicured field says something about your self-perception as a farmer, and third, let’s face it, it’s fun to drive a tractor around and hack stuff down. The tragedy is that in our rural valley this provided some great pheasant habitat, that’s now gone. On a small scale it is a minor loss of habitat for a few pheasants, but cumulatively on a county-wide scale it is a significant loss.

Somehow we need to find ways to make wildlife more valuable to private land owners.

While pheasant hunting in Nebraska this year I was thrilled with my lab’s performance. Because of the condition she is in from daily roading, and early season grouse and chukar hunting, Allie was a powerhouse. She hit the tall grass CRP fields with leaps and bounds and quartered over every inch of the fields. Best of all, she listened to and followed my quiet commands.  She stayed within gun range and put up roosters for me.  I was proud of her.

I did, however miss my Drahthaar Aika. This new dog helped me recognized some of the strengths of that old dog; mainly her tracking ability. There was one rooster in particular that drove this point home. We were working a tall grassy edge that ended in a plumb thicket adjacent to a plowed field. All at once about six roosters erupted from the back side of the covert. Five of them flew left and away out of range, but one came up a little closer and crossed to my right over the plowed field. When he cackled from the cover his tail feathers seemed to just keep coming. He was one of the longest tailed birds I have ever seen.  I rocked him at about 50 yards with the first barrel and dropped him with the second barrel. He went down hard, but immediately jumped up and sprinted 150 yards across the bare field to a nasty thick field of standing cane. We raced over to where he crossed under the fence and entered the cover and Allie started down his track, but after a short search came back empty. I wanted that bird and worked and worked to find him to with no success.

With Aika, I can honestly say that I didn’t lose many birds. If you put a bird down, that dog would track it down and find it.  Looking back now I can see she was an amazing tracker. I remember one pheasant I knocked down in a thick weedy patch of tall corn stubble. I sent her for the bird, certain I had killed it and that it would be a quick retrieve. She hit the area, worked around then headed off down our back trail. I called her back several times and each time she would head off. Soon she was gone. I yelled and whistled for her and she was just gone. I waited probably ten minutes before she reappeared, rooster in her mouth. I couldn’t have been more pleased. To this day I wonder how far she tracked that running Ringneck.

One of the things that I really saw on this pheasant hunt is how individual dogs have different strengths. I appreciated how much energy Allie had and how easy she was to handle and follow my commands. But I also recognized my Drahthaar’s hard headedness and her amazing tracking ability.

This year around us chukars have been hard to come by. Numbers seem to be down quite a bit. Saturday I had a great day out with the dogs and a new friend who shares a passion for upland game.  We hunted hard over some rough steep country. Luckily I was able to end up with at least one chukar.

I remember three or four years ago chukar numbers were really up. I could go out and see numerous coveys and consistently shoot a limit. I remember one Saturday I stayed home to get some yard chores done before the snow flew. I worked as long as I could before I had to get out and at least try for some chukars. With just an hour of light left I was lucky enough to pull down a limit of chukars. I am confident that numbers will be back, but until then, I’ll have to keep pounding the hillsides. One hard-earned chukar is real trophy and it tastes that much better.