Recent content by CloseRange

Man, I could look at those three photos all day. You guys are pretty tough to have hunted in what looks to have been a near ground blizzard. Hard-earned birds. At about his age (almost 50 years ago) is when I flushed and dropped my first rooster. I can remember it like it was yesterday.

Appreciate your post, duckn66; it reminded me to apply the monthly dose of flea/tick/heartworm medicine to my dog's skin. BTW, twice in the last week I've found mosquitoes flying around in my truck cab. Unbelievable for December. Makes me wonder what sort of bug surprises the months of...

Thanks for the replies, fellas; you've given me a lot to think about. Climate change-wise, I picked a bad time to buy a bird dog puppy. Last season was my dog's first-ever hunting experience and birds were extremely scarce (at least in the areas where my buddies and I hunted). This year's...

The number of comments being posted in this site this year certainly confirm that the 2012/13 upland bird season is not very good at all. This makes me wonder if the cottontail rabbit population is hurting statewide to the same extent as the pheasant population. Or maybe it's the opposite...

Assuming the sky is mostly clear come Saturday night, a friend and I will inflate a couple of camp mattresses, crawl into our sleeping bags and lie outdoors under the stars in hopes of bagging some Leonids meteors as they blaze into earth's atmosphere. (This annual meteor shower runs from Nov...

After parking at your hunting spot, do everything you can to minimize noise. Don't slam the car or truck doors; instead, gently press the door closed until it latches. No loud talking with your hunt partners; no loud slamming shut of your autoloader's bolt when chambering a round. No yelling...

It's a "virus" alright: just reading it made me reconsider hunting upland birds this fall, after earlier deciding to sit out this entire bird season due to the extreme heat and dryness the birds had to endure for four months. Good article.

I am partial to Wirehaired Pointing Griffons. However, the closest-working bird dog I ever had the pleasure of hunting behind was a friend's Brittany. Griffons do have a reputation for being close-working. I don't know why, because you sure can't confirm that reputation by my experience...

I've never tried raising baby quails or pheasants, and so I didn't know at first what you were inquiring about. So I did a Google search and found lots of interesting YouTube videos. Wow, the Surrogator is one excellent piece of equipment! It offers a fast way to introduce upland birds on a...

The weather and precipitation Kansas gets this coming fall and winter will clue us as to what kind of changes to expect next summer. Or not. For what this is worth, on Wednesday I visited with a wheat farmer who lives outside Ulysses. He told me that while combining a wheat field -- an early...

That's a fine looking pup, amigo. Real good. And now for some rain showers, please, to increase ground cover humidity enough to make it worth your while introducing her to planted live birds in outdoor training situations. It would help, too, if these endless hot, dry, high speed south winds...

I took my dog for an exercise run yesterday evening along the Kansas River. She stopped and began looking into the woods; I followed her gaze thinking she'd spotted a deer but instead I saw two guys plus their dog. I thought they were doing the same thing I was: just out walking their dog...

BritChaser/duckn66: You're both correct on all accounts. PM me and let's go look at the place. The entire hiking route into and back out is across public access land. And the sandbar campsite sits down inside the main river channel at an elevation below the uppermost riverbank edge (the...

We walked the floodplain parallel to the main river channel for about a mile before cutting across a dry side channel onto a timbered highwater island, then after exploring that island we walked down onto the big sandbar that lays at its head. Next morning we bushwhacked an exit route through...

Well, nothing with a shotgun, just some pictures during a Sunday/Monday backpacking trip on the Kansas River. I've canoe camped on the Kansas many times, but this was my first-ever trip where I backpacked to and from one of its sandbars. Beautiful night on the river it was, Sunday night.