This morning I was invited to join a summer hunt with Rumi by a befriended hunter. However according to Dutch law it was not a hunt, but it is a part of pest control for farmers as the country is suffering from huge amounts of geese, eating their way through the profit of farmers. It was in the North of NL and I am very impressed by the huge number of geese I saw this morning. I have now seen with my own eyes how incredible the damage on crop is after a goose-stop on a piece of land and I can imagine farmers get really tired of seeing their efforts being ruined by these birds. At the same time, it is an amazing gaze when 500 geese take off into the horizon all together. Such incredible creatures.
We were in the field at 6 o’clock setting up the decoys and building a hiding place. We sat for 4 hours and all the geese had set their minds on the neighbor’s field instead, so Rumi and had little action and a lot of steadyness training.
It was a very enjoyable morning as it was a good example of how much it takes to manage the fields and for hunters to have knowledge of how Nature works, the terrain and also for us handlers to put in practice what we spend years to teach our hunting dogs.
At the end of the morning Rumi and I were asked to search for two birds. One in a grain field and one in a large river with strong current. Both birds were picked up and it was great to see my beautiful girl back in action.
Flatastic flatcoated retrievers 