Studying the weather forecasts it appears as if Thanksgiving day, the 24th next Thursday is going to be the best day for the final race. We were shooting for Saturday the 26th however it looks like that day is going to have a fairly strong tail wind, we do not want a tail wind final race and we do not think you do either. After this next weekend we are seeing heavy overcast along with snow and rain for a week solid down in southern OR and northern CA where the birds are going to be released. We do not want to wait 10-14 days between the 300 and the 350, this is just as about as bad as purposely flying them through inclement weather.
If you plan to attend RSVP by texting me your loft name at 254-247-9504. We need to get an accurate head count so we know how much food to prepare, also please bring a comfortable chair and very warm clothing.
As always, race days are tentative based upon changing weather conditions. Please read Wincompanion updates daily, if race dates change that is where we will post same.
All of you are more than welcome to text me at 254-247-9504 the day of the race to see if the race is still on before traveling here. Do not call me before the posted release time on the day of the race, I will have enough on my plate that morning until at least 0800 as I haul all the races myself so I can observe conditions and make a decision on whether to release, move to a different location, or cancel to race another day.
Again, please text me at the above phone number to let us know you are attending and how many individuals you are bringing with you.
All birds that came in today went in to their own empty section and have access to feed, grit and water all day. We plan to train on Tuesday in preparation for the final.
Rick & Olga
The first first 150 miles it was sunny and clear, they hit fog for the next 50 miles, the last 100 was sunny and clear again. Hardly a cloud in the sky other than that 50 mile stretch of foggy conditions which again, was not forecasted.
These are some tough pigeons, everyone who had birds return today should be extremely proud of them considering what they went through on this tough course to make it back in the loft.
Looks like we are going to have most of the 1602 pigeons shipped back in the loft today, those who do not make it back will most likely be here tomorrow. Looks like we are going to have a big final race and the overwhelming majority of the breeders who sent pigeons this year will have birds going to the final! Congratulations to all of you!
The first two pigeons arrived a few minutes ahead of the rest today, the two Steves should be very proud.
1st $1,100 Continental Breeding Station
2nd $1,000 Irish Syndicate
3rd $900 Eierson
4th $800 **J-Ireno Loft**
5th $700 Devore Loft
6th-10th $600 ea Dickson Loft, Gao Yin Di, Royal Flush, Alban's Loft, Tim Farr
We will be looking for a good day to hold the final race, please stay tuned for this announcement! We are not looking for a easy day, just a fair day to the pigeons. If you want to attend make sure you pay attention to last minute announcements, if the weather turns for the worse then we will adjust the final race date and this may be the day prior.
Looking at weather reports it looks like the 19th is going to be a nice day for the 300, the 20th is decent. After the 20th it looks like the weather is calling for gray skies, rain, and snow for about a week. We always like to try to have a race on a day that is fair to the birds followed by at least a decent day for second day birds to have a fighting chance to return. This time of year the weather can change hour to hour, we are trying our absolute best to pull off this race series with as many breeders having birds go to the final as possible with a lot of birds on that final race.
Birds are already loaded, heading off for another toss to get these birds bodies and minds right in preparation for the next race!
Today turned out to be a much tougher race than anticipated, here is what happened.
The birds arrived at the release station at 01:30 AM today. It was about 12F at release under sunny skies with no clouds and no wind and this was what all weather reports were showing, one more radar check for storms was conducted before release at 07:30 just to make sure I did not miss something.
The birds grouped up quickly and yours truly headed off north in their direction catching up to them after a few miles whereas they flew above HWY 97 off to my left drivers side window. A few minutes after enjoying the fruits of our labor here at the Apple Cup, the birds and I ran in to fog.....my heart sank. The fog kept up for about 50 miles, cleared up for a few miles, then fog again up to Madras, OR. After Madras which was about their half way point today, there were patchy clouds mixed with some light fog, around Shaniko it cleared up. As I approached the Columbia River there were big heavy clouds above the river, on the other side not so bad and the closer to home I got the more it cleared up until I got to the loft where there was overcast and clouds. Olga was standing in the driveway when I pulled up to the loft, no birds had trapped, she said she was done and at this point I was thinking the same. About 10 minutes later we got a few pigeons, then more, then more, and well they just poured in until it was totally dark. We expect the rest tomorrow morning, it is supposed to be sunny tomorrow so most should make it back.
Again, forecast was for sunny skies, little to no wind, no mention of fog whatsoever.
What we were envisioning as a disaster, well turned out to be a pretty good race after all with the top speed being 1105 YPM.....talk about a good hard working race day.
Below are the top 10 pigeons which won $$$ today, the 300 will pay out the same to the top 10 positions.
Clausing $1,100
Mr. Showtime $1,000
Banat Loft $900
Transilvania Loft $800
Tuggys Loft $700
John Labat, Alvigar Loft 2, SPEEDS-RACERS-EMPIRES-FL, Dean Farmer, and Hawaii Syndicate all won $600 each.
Congratulations to all of the above, as well as to all of you who had birds on a tough hard working race day!
Winter is approaching, in fact it is already here. Here in central WA it is not that harsh yet, however the further south in to OR and northern CA we go for the races it is getting hard to find good weather days suitable for racing. Please understand our situation as we search out the next suitable day for the 300, then ultimately te 350 mile final. We will not have a 400, roads are too scary, days are getting shorter, weather is WAY too unpredictable, we would like to have a 400 but it simply is not in the cards.
Make sure that Wincompanion account is up date please, we use it to ship birds back.
Today we had our 3rd of 6 races at 206 miles, at the time of posting this update most are back in the loft as a few continue to trickle in. Congratulations to Feigel Hill and A P C Loft for having the first two in the clock a few seconds ahead of the rest and congrats to all of you who had birds in good time and continue to have birds return on the day!
Below is the payout based upon 1,000 birds going to the final race with the top 10% earning the prize money. If we have more or less going to the final race we will adjust acordingly. Prize money is based upon 1,984 birds activated X $150, $100 of your $250 per bird fees was our perch fee that we earned ONLY if your bird made it through the activation race at 100 miles.
1,984 X $150 = $297,600 in prize money
Final 350 mile race based upon 1,000 birds going to the final.
1st $20,000
2nd $18,000
3rd $16,000
4th $14,000
5th $12,000
6th $10,000
7th $9,000
8th $8,000
9th $7,000
10th $6,000
11-20 $5,000 ea
21-30 $2,500 ea
31-50 $1,000 ea
51-100 $750 ea
250/300 mile races
1st $1,100
2nd $1,000
3rd $900
4th $800
5th $700
6-10 $600 ea
AVG Speed
1st $9,000
2nd $7,000
3rd $5,000
4th $3,000
5th $2,000
Totals:
Final Race, $252,500
250/300 $15,000, $7,500 ea race
AVG Speed $26,000
Combined total, $293,500
$4,100 is left over. We have some bounced checks and checks that we have not received as of yet, we will withold this amount until those are received. If the breeders do not pay or their checks do not clear again we will remove their birds and this $4,100 should cover most of what we are still owed with us paying a little out of pocket so the payout above does not have to be changed.
We kept 0% of the capital this year.
As mentioned in the last update and we will continue to try to remember to do so in every update from here on out, make sure your Wincompanion account is up to date. We will use the address and phone number on Wincompanion when it comes time to ship your birds back.
Congratulations again to everyone who had birds in the race today and have birds clocked, at any distance this is a great feat on this course!
Stay tuned for the next race. As winter approaches we need to take advantage of nice weather days as they will become fewer and fewer as we get closer to December, this may not always be exactly 7 days from the previous race but we will try to stay as close to that as possible.
Looking forward at the weather it looks like the next acceptable day to have the 3rd race at 200 miles is the 9th which is next Wednesday. However, if forecasts change we may move that up and of course if weather forecasts for the 9th turn bad we will move the next race back a day or two.
As I mentioned in the last update and will mention in every update from now on, make sure that the address and phone number on your Wincompanion account is 100% accurate as this is the address we will use to ship your birds back. If you are part of a syndicate we will ship back your birds to one person and that is the one who is registered under the Loft Name that your birds flew under, gets way too confusing trying to send birds ten different ways under the same loft name. Please do not text us a new address to ship birds to, simply update your Wincompanion account now so shipping goes smoothly. We print out shipping labels several days before we ship birds, the address on Wincompanion is the one we use.
Birds loft flew yesterday and today, we plan to train tomorrow hopefully at 45-50 miles, just depends upon cloud cover.
If you have been reading our updates you know we have been struggling to find good days to train/race. Today looked like the best day followed by 7-10 days of unacceptable weather for a race. The birds had just enough sun to get headed in the right direction so the doors swung open. A few miles down the road my heart sank as it started to snow, a complete white out, totally unforecasted. This weather continued for the next 40 miles, I was sure we would have terrible results. I called Lucas with the Crooked River Challenge who lives in Madras and we discussed weather as he lives just north of where I released, then talked to Rex with the Sooner Challenge who pulled out all his weather aps while I was freaking out on the way home. Needless to say, the birds obviously went around this unforecasted weather system which Lucas even said he did not see coming as he again, lives just north of the release. When Olga called and said we had birds, well I was just a bit suprised to say the least and very thankful!
Congratulations to everyone who had birds today, your birds are true warriors!
Congratulations to those of you who had the first 7 pigeons who were a little ahead of the rest and to M & C Loft for having the first pigeon in the clock. A big shout out to Aziz Loft who had the 2nd bird in the clock who bought up the last 9 pigeons that were available for sale, really appreciated that brother and congratulations on all of your bird's performance today.
Most of the birds came today under a hour, when they arrived Olga and my loft assist Sheila said the birds did not even look tired.
We will look for acceptable training days and the next window in this unpredictable weather we get this time of year for the next race.
Thanks for the kind comments everyone, time for this old guy to take a nap!
We planned on taking the birds on a good 50 mile toss this morning however we woke to heavy overcast skies with a strong west wind on the other side of our ridge where the birds would be coming from. We drove along the ridgeline 20 mile to our south and followed it east trying to get a good 35-45 mile toss without having to go in to the mountains which were visibly socked in with heavy clouds. Arriving at our spot there were very strong head winds, no sun, and signs up now saying no trespassing that were not there before. We sat there 5 minutes and decided to head back to Pumphouse Road back to the west, this is dead south of our loft. It turned out to be a good decision as we have most of the birds in and speeds were not that fast due to the west wind at release.
Game plan was to have the first race Wed, but Thur is looking better now. After Thursday the weather turns to crap for the next 7-10 days down in the area where we will be releasing so we need to get another of these short races in as the closer we get to December the harder it is going to be to find decent racing days.
Dropped by the post office on the way home from the toss and picked up a bunch of checks, looks like we are nearing being completely paid. Once we verify we have all payments to include bounced checks covered we will post a final race predicted payout based upon 1,000 birds. Again if we get more or less than 1,000 birds going to the final race, top 10% winning the prize money, we will adjust the payout accordingly.
Congratulatios to Nanez Family Loft for having the first bird through the trap on today's race, the first race of 6 races this year!
We trapped 88% within the first hour, there are 47 pigeons still out which we are hoping will come in early tomorrow.
It was sunny at release, cloudy coming across the river for a few miles and once on the WA side again it was sunny with few clouds. The clouds most likely were the cause of the birds getting broke up a bit today, that and a possible bird of prey attack which they often times encounter coming across the river.
We will be looking at weather patterns and deciding when the best time is to have the next race is, please stay tuned.
We have some bounced checks and checks promissed that are on the way, once we have everything financially ironed out we will post the projected payout for the final 350 mile race where the top 10% of the birds shipped win the cash! The payout will be progressive, no big jumps between the first pigeons to arrive.
Our goal is the complete these races and have all birds returned before Christmas along with all prize money and refunds sent. We most likely will finish early December since we were again delayed by smoke. There will be a very quick turn around between the completion of the race and birds being sent back, probably birds being shipped back 7 days after we are done as long as it is not too close to Christmas which is a terrible time to try to ship pigeons through the USPS. Make sure that your address and phone number under your Wincompanion account is the correct one as this is the only address we will utilize when it comes time to ship birds back.
We mention the aforementioned to try to be proactive, we will most likely mention this several times again so please bear with us.
Congratulations to everyone who had pigeons return today. Of course this was only a 115 mile race, but your pigeons had to fly over rolling wheat fields, the Columbia River, through mountain passes and over the forest, over 3 ridgelines at 60, 30, and 5 miles. Be proud of your birds today, we sure are!
Thanks to all of you who bought up the birds available for sale that were not activated by their breeders, we can not express how much we appreciate this!
We plan on having the first race tomorrow from Shaniko, OR which is 115 miles if the weather cooperates which it looks like it will so far.
The birds have been scanned and are back in the loft resting in their own environment. We will get up early AM, load the birds the way they are used to being loaded and get to the release point at least a hour early so the birds can get their bearings before release which is 0800.
Good luck to everyone tomorrow!
