   Strong is good. Happy is good.
Smart is good. Lucky is even better! Carter's Virginia Hurricane Lucky Lady Freis - AKA Lucky. |
  Lucky is a high
energy, old style turkey dog,
carefully bred for centuries by dedicated hunters in Virginia. Click on pictures to
enlarge.
Photos 2012 AWTHDA         |
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Lucky's puppy pictures
- 9 to 12 weeks old:
            |
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     Lucky in training from April to
September '12 (when she turned 1 y.o.). She's not one to
be under your feet.
|
     Lucky runs deep like the Gordon
Setter and English Pointer that she is. When she barks,
she's found
the turkeys and is getting each and every one off the ground. A pleasure to hunt with and look at (click to enlarge). |
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Training
September 2012
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September 2012 - she gets out there!
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Hunting October 2012 - the first of
many turkeys with Lucky. Keena is glad for the help.
|
Training and hunting 2013 and
2014    She's so fast, it's hard to get a good picture.     More eye candy:     This Virginia dog doesn't care if it's 10 degrees outside, if there are turkeys around.     Click here if you want a dog like her. |
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The Fall 2015 season. Lucky is in her
prime, a joy to hunt with and look at.
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Wisconsin Fall & Winter 2016
             ← Winter Solstice → turkey hunt provides holiday dinner by Dan Small. Courtesy Dan Small & Wisconsin Outdoor News |
Fall &
Winter 2017              "I spent all my money on
dogs and hunting. If I had it to do all over again,
I'd do it the same." Jon Freis -
Maribel, WI 1/1/18
Landline: 920-776-1272. Electronic Mail |
|
Finally, Lucky doesn't
have to do all the work. She got some much appreciated
help in 2018 from two young dogs:
Carroll's Turkey Dog Kennel Club Suki and Rose's Virginia Red. Lot's of memories, every picture's got a good story.         "The best thing about hunting and fishing,' the Old Man said, 'is that you don't have to actually do it to enjoy it. You can go to bed every night thinking about how much fun you had twenty years ago, and it all comes back clear as moonlight." "The Old Man's Boy Grows Older," 1957 - Robert Ruark         With all the snow this season, we had the long underwear on so long it hurts to take it off, when the hair grew right through the fabric. |
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Fall and Winter 2019.
Some years everything goes right. This year it was all
uphill, forgot to put a shell in the chamber a
few times, left the dog tracker on all night (dead
battery), walked downwind instead of up, got lost and my
feet hurt. In June I carried water for the trees, after
that it was too wet. If it wasn't for Suki showing me
where the dead turkey is laying, might not have found it
in the flooded woods (1st one below). Other pictures of
the year:          Pictured below, Suki and Red are
feeling rich after their first bath. Washed off
the skunk they had fun chasing.
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| Fall and Winter 2020 When hunting turkeys with a dog, half the fun is watching the turkeys outsmart the hunters. The other half is watching the dogs outsmart the turkeys. Turkeys aren't afraid of dogs, they can outrun most of them. And fly away when they can't.           This year we were rooting for the turkeys. Between Avian Pox, LPDV, predators, and so many people out of work because of the pandemic (Spring and Fall), the turkeys got extra pressure. When we hunt them with dogs, if we don't get one, that's ok. We did our part to help the population, kind of like Catch and Release, but for turkeys. Twenty times the fun, saves twenty times the turkeys.           Anyone concerned about the turkey population should hunt them in Fall, when the vast majority of the magnificent birds get away. In Spring they say: "That's beautiful, let's kill it." In Fall we say: "That's beautiful, watch this." Join the Club. Save the Dogs. Save the Turkeys.      Questions & comments. |
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Highlights of the 2021 Fall and Winter season
(Sept. 18 - Jan. 9, 2022), including predator
control and finding unusual things in the woods. Like a
big dusting area, a Green Heron, a Great Blue Heron
rookery and a 4 y.o. turkey hunter, on a very cold
day - 1/3/2022.
                         |
| Fall and Winter Turkey
Hunting in Wisconsin, September 17, 2022 to January 8,
2023 "Hunting ain't a competition he said. You ain't trying to win any prizes. Hunting is watching the dog work, and taking it easy, and shooting just enough, and walking slow, and enjoying the day..." The Old Man and the Boy - Robert Ruark       We alternated hunting Lucky, Red or Suki every day weather permitted. First, temperatures were in the 70's, too hot to run the dogs until September 22.       Then high winds and dry conditions made for tough scenting many days. Dogs and hunters put on a lot of miles without finding birds.       Pulled a big thorn out of Red's paw one day. Lucky sprained her ankle and Suki got a sore paw, both needed a week or more to recover.       Hunted one woods twice where gangs of toms took Lucky and Suki for a run in a boot-sucking swamp, worried they'd never come back out.       Hunting fall turkeys is mostly about watching the dogs run, and the turkeys getting away.       2 weeks of cold around Christmas time was so extreme, we couldn't hunt. Turkeys probably didn't come down from the roost anyway. Then the season ended with unseasonably warm weather, snow all melted and close to 40 .       How the vast majority of turkeys get away from dogs and hunters is as inexplicable as the mystery of such phenomenal collective behavior as how 30,000 birds instantaneously communicate high-speed synchronous murmurations. |
| Fall and Winter Turkey
Hunting in Wisconsin, September 16, 2023 to January 7,
2024 We had drought, even swamps were dried up, dogs couldn't get a scent. Than more rain in 3 days, than in the last 58. From hot, dry and windy, to hot, humid and no wind. Then a blizzard the end of October to an unusually warm November and December, to finally cold and snow in January. Some of the things we'd of never seen, if it weren't for a dog:       Love to see these dogs stop, look, listen and smell for 15 seconds, before they decide which direction to take off full speed.       One hunter was in the right place at the right time, to witness Red do something never seen before: Red showed the brains of a great turkey dog. And made us proud.       When a dog finds adult male turkeys and pressures them hard enough to make them fly into the trees, that's the best example of fair chase there is.       After 20 years, we're measuring the season by how many days we hunted, not by how many turkeys we got. |
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Fall and Winter Turkey Hunting
in Wisconsin, September 14, 2024 to January 5, 2025
Hot, dry and windy for the first month,
hard for the dogs to get a scent.
Even the swamps are dried up.
      Hard hunting this year. Got .84” of rain in Sept., normal is 3.25”. September '24 was one of the top ten warmest Septembers on record.       While Hurricane Milton floods Florida October 10, Wisconsin is in a drought. By October 15 it was cold and windy. 39°, 31d° windchill. Wind N 16 G 35. Dogs found 10 turkeys at dusk. Got one in the morning.       Compared to the luxury of hunting the strongest, most dominant and aggressive males in Spring, when they're distracted and oblivious to danger, in Fall, we have to hunt more often, longer and do a lot more walking. And compared to hunting like cats in Spring, killing big toms from concealed ambush, in Fall we're like wolves; harvesting the young, old, sick and weak first, before prime adult hens or toms, keeping the flocks healthy. There's not many places to hunt Fall turkey like Wisconsin, with it's long season and generous permits. Good times.       Make a reservation for next year - Join the club |
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