Wind – How much is Too much?

[Susan]

I think I know the answer to that. Yesterday for the area we hunted it was too much. They said 30 mph with gusts to 40+. We were looking for sharp-tail in a big CRP field. Much of it has been mowed. We headed down some headland thinking the birds might be resting there. Blue ran along it, seemed to be using the wind, turned in and ran right into 2 sharp-tail. He slammed to a halt and looked at me seeming to say “woops” – Well he has heard that before so likely exactly what he was thinking 🙂 He slowed,  searched and pointed a single in the same area. Thinking they would all be on the sheltered side of the hills we hunted those areas but only found a few more sitting on the windy hill tops where the grass was thinner. I think because of the wind noise they sit on the tops so they can see their predators. We had better luck later in shorter grass near an old homestead with buildings to break up the wind where Blue pointed a nice flock of Hungarian partridge. Wish I had the time to take a picture of that scene. Old homestead in the background, sun reflecting off of beautiful rust colored huns rising in front of a really spectacular point.

I don’t spend much time in the deep woods but here wind is always the first consideration as to which direction we hunt and where we hunt. It seems that in the woods there is little and sometimes no breeze.

I’d like to hear others thoughts on wind both in the woods and prairie.

Happy Hunting…oh and today 40-50 Mph winds. Both dogs are tired, we will stay home today.

[Firelight Setters]

I can clearly imagine the scene you describe with Blue and the homestead Huns, you are fortunate to live there.  I did not have much experience dealing with wind until I moved to Kansas and started hunting Montana. I don’t know exactly what mph winds we find difficult since we usually did not have access to weather info while remote camping but I do know that when significant storms blow through that we would move the RV to safety behind some type of windblock.   As I read your telling about the sharpies I was remembering the many times that we would find Huns on the leeward side of the hills.  We typically found sharpies tucked in there as well but I agree that they like the look-out position on top of hills.  I believe they are pretty closely related to prairie chickens and they notoriously use elevation to look out.  Wind is a frequent issue in Kansas also and I find that my voice and lip-whistle do not carry well there at all.  So this year I have begun to train the dogs that the tone sound on their GPS collar means the same as my ‘come around’ command.  I am hunting woods grouse right now so it is not as important but I think that it will be helpful once I’m back in KS.  Do you use a whistle or collar tone or what?

[Susan]

We have been using the tone collar as you describe. We also carry pea whistles and agree,  the sound just doesnt carry well in the wind. We use the tone same as the whistle…multiple tone blasts to bring them in and one tone to turn them. It works well but the dogs are not always aware of our location. I think the pea whistle is more effective in calmer conditions as the dogs can pin point our location. I imagine using the tone as we do would cause some problems if we tried to use a locator collar on our dogs. Surely they would be confused. We run them with bells in the woods.

[Author]

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