Monday, August 15, 2011

Back Into The Swing Of Things


Elmo is pretty much back to his old self again. Granted, he is still a tiny bit heavy, and his behavior is indicative of such, but overall, it’s not too bad. His lure response is instant, and he trades off to the lure just fine still…….he is just doing fat bird stuff after he has finished his portion on the fist. This should be cleared up with another five gram adjustment or so, and we will still be a good ten grams or so higher, than when I went on vacation. Saturday we didn’t have any wind, so I just let him fly around for a little bit. He kept pretty close in, and just did numerous SUPER tight circles, as he climbed up above me. He was pumping strong, and I liked what I saw, so when he hit 75 feet or so, I called him down to the lure. Made him do a couple passes, and then I let him have a nice reward on the lure.

We finally had some wind on Sunday, so I sent him up to a quail hanging from the kite a hundred or so feet off the ground. He pumped straight up like he has been doing, and he had already dispatched the quail, by the time I got to him. Up until that point, we were having a hard time getting the light to come on as far as neck bites were concerned, and it had been taking him a second to get the job done. He seemed to figure it all out on Sunday though, so I’m pretty pleased about that. This morning we had wind again, so I sent him up to the kite even higher. For the first time since we started kiting, he wasn’t able to just power straight up to the kite. Instead, he had to ring up to it, and it was pretty obvious that he was working for it today! About ten yards or so below the bait, he hit a nice head wind, and he stalled out for a moment. He was pumping for all he was worth though, and he forced his way through after a few moments. Finally, we are back to making some progress, and hopefully we can get some serious height on him in the not too distant future.
-D-

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