Recent content by TAC in CT

My wife and I got a Toller because we like the combination of retriever personality with small dog size -- we thought the dog would be just a pet. But then the dog really wanted to hunt -- on a whim I took her to a hunt test training class and she went crazy. She hated waiting for her turn but...

Last Saturday was the opening day of pheasant season in Connecticut. I was sharing a series of fields with three other guys. I went to one end with my little Toller; they started from the other end with four Springers. The cover was native grasses, shoulder high in a lot of places and thick...

My Toller is a flusher and I love hunting with her, but I also appreciate watching a good pointer at work. I don't feel one way is better than the other -- just different, as is the shooting. By the way, I too know when my dog is about to flush a bird -- the tempo of the tail wagging hits...

Or you might try hunting with a field bred Toller (such dogs do exist -- I have one). Not as efficient or stylish a hunting machine as that Springer, but a Toller is sure to steal your daughter's heart, and it will flush its share of pheasants. And provide lots of laughs, too.

I hunted ducks and geese with my grandfather when I was a kid, but I got my first pheasant only 3 years ago (at age 55) thanks to my Duck Tolling Retriever, Bridie. I bought her as a pet but she comes from a hunting line and she clearly wanted to go out after birds -- I took her to a retriever...

Here in southern New England there is no wild population of pheasants, so I joined a hunting club that stocks its fields throughout the season. It isn't like hunting wild birds, but it's an opportunity to work my dog -- she loves it, and I enjoy hunting with her.

There isn't anything right in Tyrone (the town in which Hillendale is located). My brother and I stayed in State College (hometown of Penn State) which is about 30 miles away. There were lots of places to stay there and several allowed dogs.

I forget which member of this forum directed me to Hillendale Hunting Club in Tyrone, PA, but it was a great tip. I went there with my brother and my Toller last Monday and had a great morning of hunting. We had the whole farm to ourselves for several hours. The pheasants were a mix of...

As I've mentioned in a couple of posts, I am new to pheasant hunting, and so have experience only with the one dog, the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever who decided a couple of years ago that bird hunting is what we should be doing together. She has immense drive and a great nose, but she's a...

For me, the best moment of the hunting season came on the very last day, in December. As I've said elsewhere, I'm new to pheasant hunting -- last season was my second. I took it up because my dog, a little Duck Tolling Retriever bitch just went wild when I took her to a hunting retriever...

Great point! Good to remind all us pure-bred fans of what the original reality of bird hunting was. I remember reading about Navaho sheep dogs -- the Navaho shepherds don't use expensive border collies, they use any mutt that has the herding instinct and the brains to do the job well...

Not the sharpest tool in the shed Okay, so I'm just a beginner here, but still -- shed hunting? What, I thought, tool shed, wood shed, how hard can they be to find and what does the dog do with the shed once it has found it? Then I looked at the photographs with the posts in this thread and...

A bit off topic, but -- A couple of years ago when I was fly fishing in a local trout stream, I wandered up the bank to see how another fisherman was doing. I spotted a mink sitting on a rock about a dozen feet from the fisherman; he (the fisherman) hadn't noticed the mink which was sitting...

That's pure poetry!

None of the above -- my strong-suit is the cooking. I've been stuffing birds with fresh sage and garlic, barding them with strips of bacon and then hot smoking pheasants over apple twigs this fall. Leaves 'em tender and moist and straight out delicious. My dog and Bridie get our share of...