Early Season Hunt in Montana: '24

Ila: Camp Dog Superior

Hello gang! Well, that is likely an ambitious statement theses days since I have not been regularly making blog posts for a while now. I do hope to correct that moving forward, and possibly win your hearts and minds back.

We recently returned from a bit of a whirlwind tour of Montana for some "early season" birds. This trip we were accompanied by Sam and Sage, with the intent to show them the ropes of hunting Montana. I think we did our jobs right. We got Sam and Sage on Sage Grouse, Huns, Sharptail, and mass of pre-season Pheasant, and contact with Blue Grouse. It is hard to shake a stick at that!

We dealt with some extreme weather, high winds, and poor shooting - yeah. It seems our shooting mojo got left in the garage... Seriously, never omit that from your packing list. Ever. Additionally, and rather regrettably, I failed to pack my good camera. Temperatures were surprisingly cool for this trip. So much so my phone case hardened up, which made the "quick camera launch" feature impossible to use.

Fortunately for me, Ila and Rye can and will hold a point. I'm standing there like a fool trying to capture images, gloved hands, camera not activating... at a certain point a guy has to come to terms with losing the photos for the attempt to bag a bird. Hence the dearth of photos from what was otherwise a good trip.

Rye and Ila worked well together, and backed one another with very little or no intervention - that work is starting to pay its dividends! Sage hunted very well, and for what was essentially her first "big girl" hunt, she did fantastic! She was field trained entirely in-house as well. She hunted her own hunts, she made solid points and backed/co-hunted like a much more experienced dog - this was exciting to see as her breeder and trainer.

We'll be getting back out there with the whole horde soon - maybe we'll see you?

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