Jon's Never Ending Odyssey: Mocha does the work, Tallulah tries to take credit

Another evening brought fair weather and deer hunting doldrums. Rachel suggested I take the little termite out for an evening stomp. Our first walk took us to Rachel's old boss's shelterbelt. The corn was out and it was a great opportunity to stretch some legs. About half-way through, Tallulah decided that she wanted to play a running game and took a corn row and bolted. I had to haul after her as 'come' is still a command we are working on....

After collecting the furball, we continued our walk to the end without a bird, we found some corn rows and turned our way back. I was not optimistic, but I have shot plenty of roosters in cut corn fields. At the end of the field in the fallow area around the gravel pit, a lone young rooster flushed wild, and I was unable to pull him down. We were near the car so we collected ourselves and hauled out of there for another spot. Our usual spot has plenty of birds, but they generally don't come out until later due to the standing corn across the road. As the sun goes down they start filtering back into the prairie and that is where we do some slow sneaking on them just before sundown. As we worked to field near the gravel road, Mocha finally pegged one. She pointed, broke, and took off. I did everything I could to keep up as I knew that bird was feet in front of her. By the time I finally caught sight of the rooster, Mocha had pulled a loop again and was chasing the bird right back to me. When he flushed right in front of me I was able to make a great shot with no chasing afterwards. We continued the loop and another rooster had played this game before, and flushed wild 100 yards out. With less than 15 minutes before end of legal we called it an evening and made our way back to the car. We watched as birds poured into the field near where we started, but no roosters in sight. Mocha was having a blast flushing hens left and right in the last leg of our walk. She thought it was the greatest day ever!

When we got home I needed to get photo with my two mutts as this was Lou's first hunt in which we got a bird. She did not know what to think at first when I showed her the rooster out in the field but by the time w got home, she was ready to claim it as her prize.

Mocha knew that she had done the work and got rather huffy with Lou when she tried to run off with the bird while we were sitting there. That was Lou's bird and she wanted everyone to know it, but she was going to have to get through Mocha first....She was a little testy about it.