Race # 1       Date:  September 30th, 2009       Location:  Coal Canyon, NV (164.780 Miles)      

Release Time:  08:16 AM     Birds Entered:  89      83 Home as of Day 3 (Missing Birds Listed at Bottom)

Weather:  Pt. Cloudy & Cold @ Release with NE winds @ 10 MPH.  Strong Crosswinds around the 130 to 90 Mile area.  Strong North/NW winds in Foothills/Sacramento with Mostly Sunny Skies.

Race #1 had an interesting combination of everything from cool temperatures, very strong winds, and a large first drop.  The storm from the day/night before had moved through very quickly and cleared out just in time....I could see it to the east of the release point.  I released the birds in partly cloudy skies but much of the course was mostly sunny.  This was definitely the coldest morning the birds have been released in so far.  There was about a 10 MPH Northeast wind at release which is a tailwind however starting about 20 Miles down the road for a stretch of 40 Miles there was a very strong (20-30 MPH) NW wind.  That is a very strong crosswind and I think this is where a lot of the late and missing birds ran into problems.  Once I got into Reno and the mountains the winds were actually pretty calm out of the N/NW.  The NW winds were again very strong on the lower west slope and even worse in Sacramento for any birds that may have over flown.

* Special Note:  Points have been re-calculated on 10/3.  There has been some discussion as to whether the first bird in the trap is to be considered the 'first drop' by itself or whether all 44 birds were to be counted as one drop.  After talking to several people that were actually here when the birds arrived, including multiple breeders who had birds in the large drop it has been determined that Gene Tenbrink's GENE 139 BC was in fact the official first drop as it arrived and landed/scanned before the next drop arrived.  The accounts of what happened fit into the context of the rules as what we define as a 'drop' in the points system link.  Gene's bird arrived ahead of the other birds and landed on the landing board before the next drop had arrived.  From what I have now been told from several people....two birds arrived together online out of the east and landed on the landing board.  One of them was spooked and took off flying (we have no way of knowing which bird that was)  while the other trapped in.  Just as this happened another group of 5 or 6 birds followed a few seconds later by a huge group of birds all appeared and started landing.  It took a couple minutes to get them all to land and trap as they were nervous and had a lot of energy to spare from the cool weather.  The first place bird in the trap scanned 42 seconds ahead of the 2nd drop.  Again this has been confirmed with multiple breeders in attendance who had birds on the drop including the 2nd, 6th and 10th birds in the trap so I think that is a very fair assessment.  Sorry that it took a couple days to sort it out, but better to get it right and be accurate/fair as the first bird in the trap truly did arrive and scan ahead of the next drop.

A few minutes after the large drop later a drop of 4 came and then unfortunately after that they really slowed down and just trickled in very slowly.  We didn't get nearly as many in the late afternoon as I thought we would have.  The birds had really not had to deal with this kind of wind yet and I think it bothered some of them whereas others handled it fine.  A lot of the late birds have been coming out of the south and it looks like they over flew.  What makes it tough is coming back up they are fighting that 20 MPH north wind. 

Congratulations to Gene Tenebrink who won Race #1 and to all of the breeders who had early birds.  All of these birds got a nice head start in the points battle for Overall Ace Pigeon.  I think this year though, birds will have a better chance to come from behind in the coming races as this group of birds doesn't stay together in groups nearly as well as last year's race series.