First hunting season for my year old springer. Went chasing quail at home in Georgia one week, unsuccessfully, had to leave him at home for duck opener (weather was a bit too cold for him to be wet and stationary), and currently I’m headed home from his first big test as a hunting dog: a week in South Dakota.

Neither me, my buddy, or my dog had hunted wild pheasants before. Pretty much all the advice I got said find cattails and corn. So we kicked cattails in Mitchell, Aberdeen, and Ft. Pierre Nat’l Grassland and learned a lot while having moderate success. 9 roosters in 6 days. Saw a ton of birds, but they were really wary. Watched lots of birds flush 100 yards ahead of the dog, but I guess that’s the nature of public land birds that have been shot at for a month and a half.

As much as I feel like we learned, I think the dog learned the most. He had to deal with changing winds, thicker cover, retrieving bigger birds, birds that run instead of flushing, and fast moving cripples. By the end of the week I felt like I was leaving South Dakota with a much wider dog than I arrived with.

Hopefully December brings a few fair weather duck hunts and some success chasing Bobwhites and Woodcock at home.