Race # 3       Date:  October 16th, 2009       Location:  Battle Mountain, NV (245 Miles)      

Release Time:  07:30 AM     Birds Entered:  79   (Note: 80th Bird QLC 9232 was left home due to hawk injury)

Weather:  Clear & Cold @ Release with calm winds.  Light tail winds for next 100 Miles.  Then calm to light winds the last 100+ Miles.  A little warm, daytime high around 80 Degrees.

Perfect weather but a smash race is the best way to sum up Race # 3.  You could not ask for a nicer day and the birds should have been in around 12:30 with speeds in the 1400's but for whatever reason this race turned out terribly slow with really bad returns on the first day.  After 12:45 went by and still no birds I was getting concerned as to what was taking them so long.  Finally a few minutes after 1 PM two birds arrived online out of the east and a few minutes later another single bird came in out of the SE.  I thought they would start coming in steady after that with a main flock coming on the drop but hat never happened.  The time gap between birds became very long and the birds trickled in very slow all afternoon.  We ended up with 34 home on the day which is not a good number at all.  A lot of the birds that came in today were very nervous and jittery but luckily most of them did not look tired.

Who knows what happened to the birds.  I'm guessing either a falcon hit them or they got going down the wrong side of a mountain range somewhere in Nevada or maybe both happened.  Jon reported that they took off great at the release point and were heading home in the correct direction.  Battle Mountain is very close to Valmy which we flew last week and out of the 4 races this is the only race where the birds don't have a 60+ mile jump......so this would have been the least likely race I would of expected this to happen on.

Congratulations to Bud Roan/Randy Haack and Roger Johnsen/Bob Rapp for having the two birds on the first drop. 

Results are updated as of end of Day 2.  The 2nd day returns were not very good with just less than half of the birds out overnight making it back.  Most of the 2nd day birds came out of the NW.  Missing birds are listed at the bottom of the page.  With this many birds out, I'm sure we'll get a couple more back.  This page will be updated if any more return.

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 5

After Day 5

Day 7

Day 7