Saturday dawned with some ground fog in the low places, till a beautiful red sun chased it away. Our blew stem was standing tall at the Doris Oler Memorial grounds for that brilliant sunrise, a little surprising after all the snow and ice we have had recently.

Thanks to the efforts of Tom Krause, wo loaded the birds at Phil Ezell’s place Friday afternoon, since Phil had to be out of town on business, and kept them at his own barn overnight then raced the sun to make it to the grounds with time to spare.

The first couple of braces were kind of hard for the dogs as there wasn’t a breath of air moving, remember the ground fog, but that didn’t keep that red setter of Bob Williams Mike from finding birds. It took him about half the brace time to find the first one, but when he figured it out he got down to work and got four fulls, plus a very styling back to post a 187 which stood as the best score for most of the morning. That is till Doug Cross ambled out there with his German Wirehair Ann. Ann is very much the feminine athlete and it only took her about a minute to make her first of seven finds, yup found seven birds. Ann has the ability to run through that tall blue stem without making a sound while other dogs of the same size can sound like a team of horses. Like I said a feminine styling athlete.

The day went along just great, had a nice lunch put together by Harp’s in Inola, and even had a new member, Irvin Pence, come out and check out the goings on. Welcome aboard Irvin hope to meet your dogs soon.

The last brace got under way, and as happens, James Parnell and Sis went on a run. It appeared Sis did not like having to wait on the bench all day while everyone else was having fun. She had a fire in her belly and just wouldn’t stop. She delivered birds to hand at a trot and was off hunting before James could get the bird in his pocket. They had 6 birds in that pocket with full retrieves for a winning score of 258 for the last pair off the field.

It was a nice day with some sun screen being applied in the gallery and plenty of help keeping things moving. Larry Naas kept a legible scoreboard, kept everyone on time and gave out prizes to surprised winners and took first place with his puppy. Gene Gray filled the water barrels and got his stuck truck out of the field without spending a fortune, and as I said Tom Krause did yeoman duty with the birds, and Carl Brown kept everybody legit in the field.

A big thank you to our sponsor, the Oler Family for our beautiful grounds, Purina for the great Pro Plan dog found they donated for prizes, and too our members for their enthusiasm and patience with our volunteer efforts.