Back Below Skyline

This is a place that I first tried last week, and saw two roosters that were out of range. So I have some confidence that we could find birds to go along with the view.






This is an old picture, but it gives a good view of my first big effort of the day. In this picture the horse is ground tied near the middle. On the day that I am now describing, I left the horse clear down near that clump of brush at the bottom of the hill, way down by the trees, and chased the dogs above where I was standing when I took this picture. It looks about twice as far as it was. They were on a good scent trail the whole time. I was determined to flush the bird, but I gave up when the trail took a hard right up a steep face. My legs were gone, and I knew that the horse would be getting concerned after being left so long. We never saw the bird. Two more of these long uphill chases unfolded later on. The birds had lots of room to run, and they were not going to fly unless they had to.





Near the end of the day, and three ridges east of the one that led to the pickup, the dogs went on point facing into the grass where the arrow is pointing in the picture. I slid off the horse, drew the gun out of the scabbard, took three steps towards them, looked back to give the horse one last stern command to "stand!'' when I realised that I had left the reins across his withers instead of on the ground. He was looking back at me and was walking away. I moved towards him to retrieve the reins, but he just broke into a little trot and disappeared over the hill. Back to the job at hand. I walked down to where the dogs were still on point. A rooster flew, I shot it, Lilley retrieved it, then I headed back to find my horse. I was pretty sure that he was too lazy to go very far. I found him standing about 300 yards away. I walked up to him as though nothing had happened, climbed on and headed home.

We wild flushed a nice covey of gray partridge on the way dack, but they were just out of range. Besides I was on the horse, and he did a quick haunch turn 90 degrees to the left, (back feet planted,while front feet leave the ground)  in reaction to the sound. I headed him back down hill, and went on.

Two hours, two shots, one bird, it was well worth it.