Log Day 42

I need to listen to Ryan better...........period. That is all......WHAT!?! I don't have anything else to say! Stop reading........











Alright fine, I will let you know why. I'm pretty thick headed, so it sometimes takes me a minute to convert information that "I know," to information that "I do". Ryan has tried to engrain it into my brain that, just because a bird "weighs in" at a certain weight, does not mean she is "actually" at that weight. If I feed her up an oz higher for a day, she isn't actually an oz higher...it takes time for that food to be converted into actual body mass, and one can't judge any type of response at that weight until the bird has been there for a few days and ACTUALLY becomes that weight. I know this....it's one of those Duh things, but like anything else, I have to experience it, before it actually gets set into my brain. Dee Dee was at 1025 grams when we caught rabbit number 8. She hadn't cast before that, but I knew that I hadn't given her hardly any casting material, so that weight was probably about spot on (minus a gram or two). The next day, she "weighed" 1067 gram and still hadn't cast, and knowing that she had been given a TON of casting material from rabbit number 8, should have realized that she was actually between 1040 and 1050 grams. Took her out, had the best session thus far concerning focus, intensity in flights, etc, etc, (which makes sense, b/c 1040/1050 is around the weight range she has been catching the majority of the recent bunnies). Anyways, I concluded that 1070 range was her "new" hunting weight area, and I was going to keep pushing it up until she started dicking off. I fed her another big meal (that's two days in a row now...so it's gonna start sticking), and after she cast yesterday afternoon, she was at 1064 grams when I weighed her at 4:30 PM. Got her in the GH, and she started chirping as soon as we started driving down the road and i cranked the tunes up (I think she has connected the groovy vibes on the way to the field as part of her pre-hunt routine just like the hooding/weighing thing...which got her talkin). Anyways, day two in a row for talkin pre-hunt, and she was supposedly 4 grams lighter than she was the day before, so I was expecting perfection. In all actuality, she was probably about 20 grams heavier than yesterday, and about 15 grams higher than I have ever flown her at. It DEF showed in the field. She had a lack of focus, her following was still good, but she was def further away then she usually is, and she was all about self hunting rats. She would come from a mile away for an easy tid bit on the glove, but had no desire to put forth any energy actually hunting. Luckily, she didn't catch any of the rats (b/c she just wasn't trying that hard), so hopefully the behavior wasn't enforced. The whole situation was probably made worse by the fact that I didn't kick up A SINGLE FREAKIN RABBIT THE WHOLE SESSION!!!! Had that happened, I may have been able to get some of the focus back on me, but the combo of no flushs plus higher weight equated to a self hunting bird that was screwing off. That is one thing that puzzles me though....went to the field by the train tracks, where I had kicked up 6 or 7 rabbits the day before, yet yesterday, I saw nothing. The temps where the same, I was only flying about an hour early than the day before....but nothing. The only difference is that it rained yesterday morning, so the ground was soft, but the grass wasn't "wet", so I don't see that keeping the rabbits holed up. I don't know...it was just an over all bummer day yesterday (did I mention I got pulled over at lunch for my expired tag, and the jerk wrote me a ticket for that, one for my insurance (b/c I had left the updated copy at home, and only had the copy that expired a month earlier in the car...come on...just freakin call them and they will tell you it's current, AND it seems my drivers liscense had expire FIVE DAYS AGO, so the dude wrote me up for that too.........three freakin tickets! Sure, my car can get broken into five times while at work, and they can't seem to do anything about that, but lets go ahead and pull me over for expired tags and write the law abiding citizen three tickets......screw cops!!!!!!!!!! That made me late on my lunch break, so I wasn't able to check out that new field I had been given the heads up on, so I didn't fly it yesterday (b/c I always like to do pre-game before I take the bird there....), I probably would have kicked up a thousand rabbits there, and then Dee would have had some focus and maybe had tried some..........GOSH yesterday sucked! It's all the cops fault! So the moral of the rant....listen to Ryan, he is smarter than I am, update your tags cause the cops are trying to make their quota for the month, and don't fly fat hawks!