The weekend of October 11th John and I went up to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to hunt with our friends Rick and Candi. This trip was two fold it was to hunt and to bring Glory back home. She was staying with Rick and Candi hunting for the past 6 weeks. This would be John and I second trip to hunt grouse and woodcock with Rick. Gambler, Glory and Guilty went last year, they all did well and got birds. This year would be baby Slammer’s first hunt at 8 months of age.

Since this is Slammer’s first grouse and woodcock hunt he really didn’t know what he was suppose to sniff for so after a woodcock was shot and retrieved by Red Rick let Slammer sniff it so he knew what he was to do.

Slammer was hunting along side Guilty and Red at times and then with Glory and Red at times. He followed along but mainly just ran around the woods on Saturday. We stopped so I could take some portraits of him.

Sunday morning we went back to the hot hole where there were several woodcocks on Saturday. It had snowed over night so we had a beautiful blanket of snow which made it a wet but pretty hunt. We decided to take Slammer out by himself so he could work on his own and not tailgate another dog.

It took a bit but Slammer finally got on a woodcock scent. He work and worked and finally the woodcock flushed. A shot wasn’t available so we watched where the bird flew and went after it.

We took Slammer to the spot where we saw the woodcock go down and he picked up the scent again this time on the flush a shot was taken and Rick got the woodcock. Slammer marked the bird and made the retrieve.

Slammer brought the bird back to us. He had a really nice retrieve.

Once he had a flush and retrieve under his belt we went on to flush and retrieve one more bird. He was all over it now.

We all were very happy with Slammer, the key was to get him out on his own and he proved he could do the work.

Here is a video of one of his retrieves.

This was a fun weekend. A good time was had by all humans and dogs. Many birds were retrieved by all the dogs. A trip we will do each year. We thank Rick and Candi for their hospitality.