A fine hunting trip to the North Dakota prairie

A picturesque North Dakota morning. A majestic point by Northwoods Rolls Royce (Blue Shaquille x Houston’s Belle’s Choice, 2013). Not too shabby.

September seems to be when a good number of our clients who live in the Midwest head to North Dakota and Montana. Judging by the reports and the accompanying photos, both owners and dogs had fun.

Jerry, too, headed west. He loaded up our trailer with seven bird dogs—five adults and two puppies.

• Northwoods Grits (Northwoods Blue Ox x Northwoods Chablis, 2011)
• Northwoods Rolls Royce (Blue Shaquille x Houston’s Belle’s Choice, 2013)
• Northwoods Comet (CH Rock Acre Blackhawk x Northwoods Vixen, 2018)
• Northwoods Stardust (RU-CH Erin’s Prometheus x Northwoods Carly Simon, 2019) call name Dusty
• Northwoods Gale (Northwoods Grits x Northwoods Minerva, 2020), call name Windy
• Northwoods Redbreast (Northwoods Rolls Royce x Northwoods Minerva, 2021), call name Robin
• Northwoods Talisker (Swift Rock Jetson x Swift Rock Granny, 2021), call name Tally

The dogs Jerry chose for this hunting trip are (front to back): Grits, Windy, Dusty, Royce, Comet, Robin and Tally.

His first stop was a visit with my brother, Jake, who owns a nice piece of property in east central North Dakota. Jake is a passionate waterfowl hunter but was tickled to take a walk for sharptails with Jerry and a couple setters.

Jerry then headed farther west and teamed up with Minnesota friends Ian Mactavish and Frankie Kartch. Besides the good hunting, they ate well. One tradition is always sharptail kabobs, grilled over charcoal.

Two clients who met Jerry in western North Dakota for a couple days of hunting are Tom Beauchamp with his two tricolor setters Lupin (Northwoods Grits x Northwoods Stardust, 2021) and Ellie (Northwoods Grits x CH I’m Blue Gert, 2014); and Frank Ilijanic with his black-and-white pointers out of CH Rock Acre Blackhawk x Northwoods Vixen, Jade in 2015 and Jax in 2018.

Later, he hunted with Frank Ilijanic and Tom Beauchamp, clients from Michigan and Indiana, respectively. The idea was first hatched this summer when Frank and Tom picked up their eight-week-old setter puppies out of the Northwoods Grits x Northwoods Stardust litter.

Frank’s young pointer Jax (CH Rock Acre Blackhawk x Northwoods Vixen, 2018) bounds across the prairie, happily retrieving a sharptail.

Frank deserves an award of some kind for not only was that setter his second puppy this year—his first a pointer female out of Northwoods Comet by CH True Confidence—but these puppies join two other Northwoods dogs. In 2015, Frank bought Jade, a pointer female out of CH Rock Acre Blackhawk x Northwoods Vixen. He was on our list for a repeat of that breeding in 2018 when he chose a male, Jax.

In addition to Tom’s 2021 puppy, he brought Ellie, his first Northwoods dog, a seven-year-old female setter out of CH I’m Blue Gert by Northwoods Grits.

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