Just spent 30 minutes doing straight obedience with him at the campsite. Took a few corrections and he was crisp again...for now. We'll see how it translates tomorrow when he's hunting and distracted.
The big one that was really making me mad earlier today was the kennel command. I would take his collar off then tell him to load up and he would jump in the back of the truck. Then when I would tell him kennel he would slink his way around the box, and we would go back and forth where he would do everything he could not to go in the box. Omg would make me so mad cuz I'd have to get up there and grab him to put him in.
Lesson learned, keep collar on.
Worked on that about ten times just now too and got him going right in again.

Guess I'm going to have to do this daily which I should have been doing anyway.

I just made every mistake in the book as far as being prepared in the field. Just got lost and ended up belly button deep in a swamp. Story to come when I get back to camp and dry.

Made me laugh. But i am at work and to be honest would rather be lost and stuck in the forest. So any woodcock seen? Beaver ponds full of wood ducks? Barking squirrels?

Hey john, no woodcock at all but did find a good looking spot that was holding some wood ducks today that I'm hunting in the morning. Either we suck or the woodcock aren't here.
As far as the squirrels go. These out here are as elusive as deer it seems. I'll see one dart across the ground and blue and I'll will both see it go up in a tree but we never see it again. Hunting out here is different and harder in a way than anywhere I've ever hunted.
Plus it has been a steady rain the entire time.

As far as getting lost this evening.
I almost always carry a back pack with first aid kit, flashlight, manual compass, emerg blanket, food, water, etc. well at three today I decided to go rent a canoe and take it across the lake here to try and hunt woodcock in the wma because there's no walk in access from here. So I grabbed my phone, gun and the dog and that's it and take off.
This lake I'm on doesn't really have a clear bank like you would see in a dfw lake. I ended up kayaking into this swampy cove area (one of many) and just sort of tying it to a tree in about 6 inches of water.
The map only showed the lake and land and Google earth only showed tree tops so as far as I knew it was just regular forest. Well this was some really wild ground. It was so thick in spots that I couldn't see the dog after about ten feet.
So I didn't really have a plan and was just following the dog as best I could trying to take the easiest route. Exploring really. Was rainy and a little miserable. Keep in mind it was wet ground everywhere I walked but I was skirting the deep swamps as I went.
Well as it started getting dark I decided to head back so I started going in the direction I thought I had come from. After twenty minutes or so I thought I better check the apple map on my phone and I had been headed straight north that last twenty minutes and I should have been headed southwest (I had luckily dropped a pin where the canoe was)I had no idea and for the first time in my life I realized what to felt like to have no sense of direction.
So I opened the compass on my phone which turned out to be my saving grace, turned southwest and took off in a straight line. Twice I had to readjust because I had drifted course and didn't realize it until I checked the compass.
So Im walking and finally come to a straight up swamp. Looked like the movies with the cypress knuckles sticking up everywhere. So I tried going right a ways and see nothing but swamp. Try going left a ways and see nothing but swamp. So I decided to go straight through because the first ten foot was only about shin deep. So I'm walking and this is where it gets bad. Funny looking back but it felt bad at the time.
I'm walking and drop off straight to my waste. It was cooold. By this time I can see hard ground about 50 yards ahead so I just keep going. There was some sort of thick grass growing in the deep part of the swamp that made it so very hard to walk but it also saved me from falling on my face a few times because I would trip and fall forward and just lay there on that grass catching my breath.
If you're wondering about the dog, he was right behind me. It was sad. At one point I was leaning against a tree in the swamp catching my breath and and realized blue was having the hardest time following me. All I could see was his head and back. I think the thick grass helped him some too as far as resting but it made forward movement really hard.
So about the middle of the swamp I get my phone out again (forgot to mention I put it in my hat when it first got deep, luckily it was in my jacket pocket at that time and not my pants pocket). So I'm checking the compass again and that's when I notice my phone was on 4%. Great, my only compass is about to go dead, it's getting really hard to see, and I'm waste deep in a swamp. Oh, the other dumb move on my part was not using my good Garmin alpha dog collar so I had no map tracking where I had walked. If I had that I would have just retraced my steps.
So back to the swamp. I realized I had to hurry because I might be spending the night if my phone went dead. The rest is sort of anti climatic. I got through the swamp, which was the hardest 50 yards I've ever walked, and easily found the canoe from there.

So, quite the adventure. East Texas is no joke and things could have been a whole lot worse. We're back at camp and will be back at it duck hunting in the morning.

Blue getting warm after his swamp trek.

isn't it nice to be young, dumb, and alive rather than old, stupid and dead

Amen to that.

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards." Edward Abbey

Any luck hunting the wood ducks?

No luck. Saw 15 or 20 ducks but they were all flying high and headed somewhere else.
Who knows. Trying again in the morning.

Tried a different spot. Lots of birds but they just laughed at me. My ten decoys couldn't compete.

I've been going for the past several years and never have seen any one else hunting in the field. I think one year they had like fifty people there but you would never know it. I'll be there this' weekend.

Looks like a 50% chance of rain for that area today thru Friday night. I canceled my hotel reservation, so I no longer have a place to stay. Maybe I will come out Friday.