Pheasant hunting for the big 3-Oh!

This weekend was a milestone birthday for Jenny who turned 30 yesterday.  It’s funny how much your life can change in a few years.  Jenny spent her 18th birthday as a Symphony Guild Debutante — those unfamiliar with debutantes, think big white dress, big Texas curtsey, and a presentation to society.  12 years later, the birthday outfit of choice was blaze orange and brush pants!  That’s right, we took to the fields and celebrated the day watching the kiddos do their favortie thing — hunt pheasants!

We started our weekend Friday night, driving the RV out to Laybourne’s hunting preserve in Cope, Colorado.  The trip was organized by the Vizsla Club of Colorado, and it was too much fun to have so many friends around.  We rolled in late Friday night, hooked up to the electricity, and went to bed after visiting with a few friends.  Well actually, Marc hooked up the RV and Jenny visited with friends 🙂

Saturday morning we ate breakfast with everyone in the lodge and then split up to hit the fields.   We ended up getting paired with Tim which is great since we hunt together every year.  It’s nice to hunt with someone where you can just hit the field and go — no need to figure out how the other person (and their dogs work).  If you want to read about our previous hunting trips with Tim and his late wife, Liz, you can click on Pheasant Hunting 2009 or Pheasant Hunting 2010.  What we didn’t expect was to find our birds so early!  Pheasant season doesn’t officially open until next weekend, but Laybourne’s is a game preserve, so they could let us hunt early.  They had just harvested and we were the first to hunt pheasant on their grounds this season.  Man, did it show!!  We had so much fun, and the birds were so plentiful that Marc and Tim only took shots at roosters even though the hens can be shot on Laybourne’s land.  Hunting was too funny — Indy and Caymus are Master Hunters and follow the rules.  Steady to flush and shot and wait to be released.  Gavi and Karma on the other hand didn’t have quite the same manners.  Gavi is 11, so she doesn’t have to follow rules anymore, and Karma is allowed to break on the shot at her training level, even though we don’t particularly like it.  Needless to say, Gavi had quite the advantage for retrieves — and in her defense, *most* of the retrieves were rightly hers.  Gavi is a hunting machine.  She is quite the tracker and was so happy to be out hunting.  Marc and Jenny both commented separately that “Liz would be so happy that Gavi got so many birds.”  Gavi was Liz’s heart dog and we just know she was smiling down watching Gavi hunt and retrieve this weekend 🙂  After 8 birds (the limit was 4 per hunter) we headed back to the lodge for lunch.  It was mighty nice to walk in for lunch and be done for the day!

Saturday night, the club planned a little birthday surprise for Jenny.  There was cake, decorations, and even a gift!!  A beautiful silver dog tag from Aspen engraved with Karma’s name.  It was so nice, and they even signed two cards — one from all the humans and one from all the dogs!  It was pretty cute!

Sunday was more of the same — another great day of hunting, limiting out, and then we headed home to clean out the RV and put all our hard earned pheasants in the freezer…looks like we are going to ned to find some new recipes for all the birds!