Joe Allegretti writes: Our hunting year started out on opening day of dove season on a friend's farm in the Imperial Valley. It was Pepper's first hunt and she and Ammo retrieved numerous doves for me and my kids as we kept them busy. My daughter shot her first dove limit and my son, on his first ever dove hunt, shot five. We bagged 14 limits for 16 hunters (5 were juniors) that morning.  A few weeks later, I took the kids and Pepper duck hunting. It was an early season draw at Kern, and while there weren't many ducks that day, Pepper was able to retrieve two ducks.

		Richard and Remi
We then took our annual trip to the Cannonball Company in North Dakota. Pepper and Ammo, along with Longplain Remi and my brother's dog, Magnum, survived the 1,500 mile, 24 hour one-way trip. The weather was mild for North Dakota, but very windy.
Ammo performed as expected, flushing and retrieving numerous birds. Pepper wasn't quite sure what to do at first, preferring to walk at heel and retrieve any bird that fell in her line of sight (which were many); she has a great presence for seeing birds on the wing. On the last two days, she got the hang of flushing birds. I was very happy with her performance and the trip seemed to mellow her out a bit.

		Upon our return from North Dakota, we teamed up for a family pheasant hunt in Gorman. Ammo and Pepper worked well together as we flushed every bird in our field, plus two extras. My kids and I were able to bag our six birds, my son bagging his first pheasant. Everyone had a great time.

A week later, I took the dogs and my son on a local quail hunt. We were fortunate enough to find a large covey near Antelope Acres and Pepper retrieved her first quail.

Over New Year's weekend, my friends and I took a trip up to northern Nevada to hunt Canada geese. I left Pepper behind for this trip, but took along Ammo. Huge storms followed by extremely cold temperatures kept the geese away. On the last morning, the geese began to fly. We called in a nice flock and had them land on top of us. One fell dead while another glided one hundred yards prior to falling; Ammo retrieved the glider with no direction, having watched it the entire way. It made me think of Ammo and Pepper's sire, Sting, "the Montana goose dog" who had recently died. It was sad, yet fitting, watching Ammo retrieve my geese. It is extremely satisfying to watch my kids and my dogs enjoying themselves in the field. Longplain dogs are great hunters and companions.

Check out the group's other hunting seasons too:
1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007