Positive thinking

Once again I took a short drive this morning. I wasn’t on a scouting mission but going up to check on a creek that feeds my pond. Most of the property is private but findings on them can sometimes tell us what we might find on public land. Especially hatching conditions.

My sightings weren’t overly exciting but my mind says they were positive sightings. First of all I finally found some baby turkeys. I was starting to think maybe the rain came at a bad time for the turkey hatch. Turkeys usually hatch two to three weeks before the huns and chukars. They were at about the only spot where a person could see even a full grown turkey because of the cover.

I hoped to see more little ones with two hens but eleven will do. I decided to stop by a rancher friend of mine and see what he’s been seeing. He wasn’t around but his wife described the amount of little turkeys on their ranch as hundreds of those shitting bastards all over the place. She jokingly asked me to come get as many of them as I would like. When I asked her about huns she wasn’t sure what a Hungarian partridge was but described a bird that looked like a pheasant, but smaller, with little ones running down their lane. Supposedly there were several groups of them. I have to look on the positive side and think she was seeing my second favorite bird.

As I was driving out on her lane, I ran into this guy.

He wasn’t in no hurry to get off the road, so I took time to video him as he walked around the truck to get back to the spot where he first entered the road. Obviously, he wanted to get back to something. I like to think positive and say he had a family back in the brush to get to.

It always amazes me how Grady can tell the difference between all other birds and huns and chukars. He see’s and watches them all, even quail, but gets overly excited when it comes to my top two upland birds. As you can hear, he wants to get out after the hun.

So my positive take for the day is that there are lot’s of turkey’s out here with little ones that survived the wet weather so why shouldn’t the other upland birds have done as well. The rancher gal’s description of the coveys of birds she was seeing had to be huns by just the one male I saw on her property. Just had to be.

So think positive, better things are coming. We just got to get through this ugly hot stuff and get to humping.