That's why they call it hunting! (Saturday)

Our friend Karl made the trip from Washington to do a little bird hunting with us. We were thrilled to see him and his two dogs (Sadie and Grits). Friday Clint and Karl went out to Freezeout Wildlife Management Area and they were able to get one pheasant. (Clint had to be to work at 1100 so it was a short morning) Then we all headed out Saturday morning to the Conrad area to find some birds!
The sunrise was beautiful!

Where is that rascally rabbit???

Well, the wind was HOWLING! It was blowing so hard that it made everything difficult. On the first piece that we stopped at, we hunted pretty hard and only saw one big flock of sharptails. We chased them and bumped them about 3 times but they were flushing so wild that they flew at about 100 yards... So no birds went down. Clint did find a very cute Cottontail rabbit in a pipe...

The blue thing strapped to Clint's back was Dane. I found the coolest full body suit made out of thick fleece. It is very warm and covers every inch of Dane except for his face...

Here is a close up of the cute rabbit. He wasn't coming out of that pipe!

The hatch this spring was affected by our late snow. It appears a lot of chicks didn't make it cause there just aren't very many birds! But, we did see more when we stopped at the
second piece of land. There were about 5 pheasants... But they all flushed as soon as we pulled up. They probably have been hunted numerous times and they get pretty smart about leaving when vehicles pull up. (Okay, all but one pheasant flushed as soon as we pulled up. There was one rooster that I saw hiding on the side of a windrow. Clint was driving and as soon as he stopped I hauled butt over to where I had seen it. I was SO EXCITED! I got close, the rooster flushed, and ........... nothing.......... Rarely do I forget to click off my safety before trying to shoot, but of course that time I did. Needless to say I did say some pretty words after that.)

Well, we still hadn't gotten Karl's birds any retrieves, so we decided to go jump shoot some ducks. Since the wind was still blowing really hard, I felt bad dragging Dane along again. He had been a trooper all morning, but the dirt was getting in all of our eyes and such. So, Dane and I hung out in the car. We had a good time making toys out of water bottles, and all kinds of other fun things! Dane even pretended to drive for a few minutes!
Unfortunately, when Karl and Clint got back they had bad news... Not one bird... Well, as I said before I guess that's why they call it hunting...