We had three months of great hunting that we shared with old-time repeaters and new groups that came for the first time.
May had very mild weather. The beginning of the season was very good for the Perdiz and the ponds had a lot of ducks, mostly Whistlers and Brown Pintails. Doves were countless as usual. Even though we see these groups of millions of doves every season, the spectacle is always surprising!
We started the season with a strong supply of new guns after purchasing new Brownings over unders and Benelli semi-autos.
This season began with some changes in the dog team. Mythical Dali, our star of the Perdiz hunt for over 10 years, was retired and is now the old and loved house dog. Nevertheless, our kennels are still full of his offspring for the enjoyment of the hunters to come.
We also retired Nike, Dali’s oldest daughter, but we added two members to our dog team; Dali’s daughters Perla and Maja. Also, we brought a new blood line in from Italy via an excellent hunting dog called Rastro.
There was also some news regarding the staff. This year we were fortunate to add María from South Africa and Agustin from Paysandú, to our field team.
In June we had some colder days, a few below 0 Cº, but the hunting remained very good. We had some new groups that already made their reservations for next year, thus increasing our repeaters percentage.
Customarily, everybody was delighted with San Juan’s food as Lucas, our traditional chef, made his magic in the kitchen as usual.
July was, as usual, particularly good from the hunting point of view. The migration of Rosy-Billed Pochards was very large as well as that of the Brown Pintail.
The Perdiz, even though it was the end of the season, were found in big numbers in the fields which still had good cover.
Regarding the Pigeon hunt; good scouting enabled us to have excellent hunt that led to full satisfaction of our guests, making them say it was the “strawberry of the cake”.
Now that the season has just finished, we are starting to look forward to 2012 hunt experience in San Juan.
Bernardo Barrán
Lodge owner and manager