Raining this morning so no road training today.
Rick & Olga
Today the birds were released on top of Ahtanum Ridge about 1,200 feet overlooking the city of Mabton, WA. The air has cleared up overnight with constant winds out of the N and NW, today they had a 10-15 mph head wind all the way home.
Plan is to train up on top of the ridge a few more times getting the birds used to coming out of the mountains from the SE. Once we feel they have this down pat we will start to train directly south on the other side of the hills to the west where they should come on calm days, on W to NW wind days which we usually have they will be coming out of the SE. The purpose of training them on the E side before the W side is to help alleviate any big losses in training if the birds end up on the wrong side of the hills that run N and S from Goldendale to Toppenish, a 60 mile stretch. Basically, weare trying to get them used to the different ridgelines and valleys they will see on race day when we get even the slightest westerly winds which is the prevailing wind here.
It would be nice if we were on a flat course, would be much easier and quicker to get some real distance on these birds and get the activation race knocked out with few losses. Please understand that on this course the birds will cross the high desert, mountains, traverse several ridgelines and valleys, and hardest of all the Columbia River which averages 1 mile in width which proves to be our biggest adversary every year!
In other words breeders, the Apple Cup is no Cupcake course! If you have birds that can win here, well then you have some darn tough pigeons and you should be proud of them!
Please be patient on the Activation Race, hopefully we will be there in a few weeks.
We had planned on taking them out to our 35 mile station however the closer we got the more hazy it became. We turned around and released them at the base of the ridgeline in Toppenish which is 20 miles for them. We are supposed to get a N to NW wind the next few days which should blow most if not all of this smoke out that has drifted in from the fires to the east. We hope to get at least one more good toss in before we shut down for the first few days in September when dove hunting opens.
The birds were released between 0920-0950 in 6 groups.
Most of the fires here in the PNW are E and NE of us, a slight breeze continues to blow out of the E which has created a light haze over the area. Tonight the wind is supposed to shift to coming out of the W which is exactly what we need to clear up the haze out here. If tomorrow looks clear from the W wind overnight we may train in the morning but by Wednesday temps are supposed to drop and we should have clear skies by then, if we do we will start training again on Wednesday.
The birds were released today in 6 groups between 0820-0850. The birds were not clocking so when I got back to the loft I did some troubleshooting to figure out what was going on. A mouse had chewed through a cable running from the clock to the clocking pads, a quick replacement of the cable and all is good again. I sealed up all of the openings where something could get in there and chew on the cables so this should never happen again.
At the time of posting this over 2000 are already in the loft and it appears that most if not all are outside still trapping. Temps have finally dropped so the birds are enjoying some cool weather.
If you have been watching the news you know that we have had a lot of fires here in the Pacific NW and also north of us in Canada. Where we are situated right in the middle of the state of WA there are no signifigant fires to our west, they are however located to our north up in Canada, to our east in the eastern part of the state, and to our south down in OR and northern CA.
Today the wind blew out of the west so we now have clear air again, thank God! If it is still clear in the morning we plan to train due south to our regular 20 mile spot so we can get their heads screwed back on straight. Our last toss was on the 16th so we want to give them at least one toss from a spot their are well accustomed to, if they do well tomorrow we will increase distance later in the week.
Everyone have a nice evening.
Training will resume when smoke clears out of our area.
Yesterday's toss obviously did not go as planned. They came out of the trailer under nice clear skies and no wind, the wind shifted to coming out of the east and it blew in some smoke that was about 25 miles away. East wind is very unusual here, we usually have a N to NW wind. Most of the birds got home ahead of the smoke but we feel that those that struggled must of encountered it due to returns, by early afternoon we had smoke lingering here in the Yakima Valley and this morning it is clear.
We are currently still out less than 100 birds, we will give them all another day to regroup before looking forward at possible training opportunities.
Today was our second day at 20 miles, same spot as yesterday. All of the birds flew off to the west today, then as far as I could tell with the naked eye they started to head north toward the loft to cross the ridge in 15 miles which is 5 miles from the loft.
Some of the birds struggled today so tomorrow we will keep the inventory running in hopes of pulling in those who got discombobulated! Very odd since yesterday was their first day at this same spot and they shot straight north home, young birds drive me crazy sometimes!
The birds were released at the base of Rattlesnake Ridge today between 0830-0930 in 7 groups, the second ridgeline they must cross on all trainers and races 20 miles south of the loft. Most of the birds are in, we will see how long it takes to get the rest in today to determine our next move tomorrow.
Everything is going great, birds are responding to training well and health is great!
