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of bird pens and dog pens and everything else required to train these dogs. I couldn’t help but think of the hours of work that has to be done daily in keeping the place up. While I was touring around, John was out in the fields on his 4-wheeler placing pheasants and chucker partridge into the cover that we would eventually hunt. Lynn and I got our hunting gear on and I was given a
12 gauge Remington semi-automatic shotgun, while Lynn loaded his 20 gauge. I was a little nervous as I hadn’t hunted with a gun in 15 years except for a spring turkey hunt or two. Knowing that I had to shoot at a flying bird was another story. Enter Bubba, John’s six year old English Pointer, the winner of many competitions with John over the years, and the plantation’s best hunting dog. We walked out to the field as Bubba was taking commands from John, either by a whistle or voice, to hunt our birds. Fifty yards away, Bubba went on point and as we
approached the dog, John set us up on either side of him to get ready for the flush. With Bubba not moving a muscle while on point, John walked in front of the dog through the grass and weeds and suddenly a pheasant exploded from the cover directly in front of me. Up with the gun, I squeezed off a round and dropped the bird some twenty yards in front of me! I have to tell you what a thrill I experienced! John retrieved the bird, and with high fives all around,
Bubba was excited to continue our hunt on John’s command. Off he raced again and in two minutes of hunting Bubba was on point again. This time Lynn was up and fired at the bird only to have his gun jam and see it fly some 100 yards away. A clear miss and so the teasing began! Lynn is a seasoned hunter although it had been a year
since his last bird hunt. Over the next couple hours of walking through this magnificent facility, with Bubba as our boss, we knocked down eight of the 10 birds we saw, which John said was a great half day of hunting. To watch this dog work the birds was worth every penny and you can see why John and Bubba are the champions they are. During our hunt, Mike came out and got the birds and took them back to the facility to clean and pluck them and place them in sealed bags for transportation home. After the hunt, we cleaned up and John served us Pheasant
Pot Pie for lunch. We talked more about the plantation and what it has to offer. John is a breeder and when we were there he showed us 8 five week old Vizsla puppies that were already sold to customers who would be picking them up in a couple weeks. Onpoint Kennels sold some 50 puppies last year to customers all through the continent, you can view pictures and stories of these wonderful animals. At the time of our hunt, John was training ten dogs for other owners. He had a dog from an owner in Florida that he had been training for the past four months and was returning the next day. As you can see, John Reid is one of the best bird dog trainers in North America, and after my experience, I would
JOHN REID AND BUBBA 32 BOUNDER MAGAZINE
www.bounder.ca
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