Tuesday 3rd November 2009

Black Mountain.
WSW 10.4 < ? Low bright sun.
Ross and I took Chris, Flake, Roxy & Tam to the hill. The intention wasn’t just to give them a blow out but things weren’t quite what we expected so we just left them to get on with it. The secret is that once you decide that it’s a blow out you give no more commands, other than to pick them up at the end.
I took a wind reading down at the car and it was 10.4 mph but by the time we were up on the shoulder it may have been twice that. Scenting probably was difficult but in the end that mattered little. With the Hunter’s Moon the other night we expected there to be a few snipe but there seemed to be snipe everywhere and three woodcock to boot. There were at least two dozen snipe.
Tam was there to improve his fitness so he was allowed to hunt about on his own. I doubt if he was ever out of shotgun range and he flushed several snipe and a woodcock.
We started off running Chris and Roxy for fifteen minutes straight into the wind. I don’t remember when we started to hit snipe but it soon became obvious that the dogs were having difficulty pointing them so we just let them go. The first pair covered a heap of ground at pace and then we started to work down wind back to the car Flake was added to the mix. There were multiple flushes, finds and chases and the dogs at least got a really good run and seemed to enjoy themselves. Chris’ theme tune probably was ” I did it my way.” for he was doing it to please nobody other than himself. Roxy seems to be back in form very quickly after her second season but the star of the show was Flake. I would say she is a kilo or two heavier than when she came to Bangor and she is running with great pace and intensity. She pointed a couple of snipe and that can’t be a bad thing.
There won’t be any more of this for a while it will be back to a strict regime especially the Big Danish B*****d who seems to have his noncompliant head on at the moment.