Covey, my English Setter, is a beautiful dog, as the accompanying photo proves. She loves me and my wife almost as much as we love her. She revels in a dog’s life of freedom on the ranch, racing the Polaris Ranger wherever we drive. And of course she’s bird crazy.
Truth be told, however, she’s neither the perfect hunting dog I’ve imagined nor am I the perfect trainer. She tends to creep in and bump too many birds, doesn’t retrieve to hand, and sometimes forgets (if she ever knew it) that we’re supposed to be a team.
Covey on point at Standing Stone Kennels dog training facility.
I’ve been lax in my training, so her failures aren’t her fault. She has the drive and passion. Just needs the direction and reinforcement.
My excuse is time. Or lack of it. After long days of writing, shooting videos, fencing, weeding, watering, bucking firewood, repairing buildings and similar off-grid ranch maintenance, dog training tends to get the short end of the stick. Or no stick at all.
A few months back I had the opportunity to meet Ethan Pippitt from Standing Stone Kennels while on a scaled quail hunt in Texas. He got to see Covey work and said she had great potential! See, I told you she was an amazing dog. (Biased.)
I asked Ethan if his program would be able to help Covey reach her full potential even though she was two years old. Affirmative. Flash forward to today and I’m dropping her off at his place in Kansas for a few months of training. Happily, he will be filming her training sessions and sharing her progress on YouTube. I hope to do regular posts so you can see the full training process as it pertains to an older dog. We might learn some useful tricks!
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This video outlines what the drop-off and check-in process is like at their facility.
In this video Ethan observed me working with Covey in the field to see how she handled, and made notes about what things he needed to focus on most while working with her.
It feels like yesterday, but the first two weeks of Covey’s training have already flown by! Standing Stone just uploaded her two-week progress report and I couldn’t be happier. She is already doing better with pointing and retrieving and they haven’t even started her formal retrieving training yet. It is fascinating watching Standing Stone’s process to help Covey become comfortable and progress quickly. Check out the video below to see Covey’s first two weeks of training unfold.
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Can’t wait for the final results!
The 6.5x57, Paul Mauser’s take on the 6.5mm caliber, preceded todays 6.5mm mania by more than 120 years, yet this “antiquated” cartridge outperforms many of today’s 6.5mm darlings and runs neck and neck with others.
The .28 Nosler might be one of the most useful cartridge inventions of the 21st century. This powerful .284 cartridge is heavy and perfect for long-range shooting. It also doubles as an ideal choice for countless hunting scenarios around the globe. Everything shy of dangerous game will inevitably fall to a properly placed bullet of appropriate construction. All that out of a standard length cartridge with steep shoulders and minimal body taper to increase powder capacity.
I think I have an incurable knife fetish. I’m not happy unless I have a knife in my pocket. I feel incomplete unless I have a sharp fillet knife in my tackle box when fishing. I always carry a folding knife on my belt and a fixed blade knife in my pack if I’m hunting. Keeping my knives sharp is a year-round job.
Should sport hunting even be allowed? Let’s hope so because it’s restored and protected our wildlife and wild places against unfettered meat hunting for more than a century. Sport hunting means rules and regulations the limit killing while funding restoration and maintenance.
The little know 338 Federal is a short-action, surprisingly powerful, flat-shooting cartridge suitable for deer, elk, moose, caribou, bear hunting.
Don’t let the guns and ammo used by hunters fool you into thinking this is war or wildlife.
We were making our way deep into the Chugach Mountains in pursuit of the Alaskan Dall sheep. It was our fourth day of hiking, the opening day of hunting season, and my first official sheep hunt. It rained all night, but we woke to clear skies and clear minds.
If I could fashion my childhood memories into a quilt, I’d sew in a bunch of red squares to memorialize some of my brightest days as a kid.¬
A red cotton T-shirt or flannel was my dad’s usual hunting shirt of choice. He’d pair it with wool pants and add a jacket and blaze orange to complete the woods-ready outfit. Back then, camo wasn’t really the trend and he seldom wore it.
