2016 turned out to be a much better your than even 2015 was for me and really was shaped by our new family member – an Australian Labradoodle puppy we named Lira (river in Aboriginal Australian).   Catherine and I had been talking about getting a dog again and I wanted one that could hunt since I got back into hunting as well as be a good family dog.  We also wanted a non-shedding dog if possible.  This narrowed our options down to basically two breeds – a Pudelpointer or a Labradoodle.   We were on waiting lists for Pudelpointers when I found a breeder that had hunting doodles as well as Pudelpointers and after talking to her decided that the doodle would be a better dog for us.

We went to Portland in March to visit Killara Ridge Kennel and met the little ball of fur that was soon to be our puppy.  She was totally full of energy and very friendly, taking to us immediately but showing she was pretty bold.  We both had trips coming up in early April so couldn’t pick her up until afterwards but decided that day that we’d take her.   Little did we know how much this little addition to our family was going to change our lives.

After I got back from Iowa and Catherine returned from California we headed back to Portland to pick her up.  By then we’d named her Lira and had completely stocked up on dog supplies and puppy-proofed the house.   By the time we got her she had grown a bit but was definitely still a crazy puppy and had a lot to learn.   Luckily she is a smart little girl and got house broken in about a week and began to learn to sit, come and fetch.  She also began going after pheasant wings immediately.

Within weeks training began and Lira got exposed to her first birds, pigeons, and definitely showed a strong prey drive.   I got several pigeons for home and began getting her on them almost daily.   She also had her quail and chukar dummy that she used for fetch in the yard.   Before she was five months old she was retrieving pigeons regularly without harming them and had even managed to track and retrieve her first hen pheasant.   I was really excited about the coming pheasant season in the fall.

We spent the summer working on basic obedience, retrieving and slowly ramping her up fitness wise sticking to the 5 minutes per month of age for her daily walks.  I got her out to the local training grounds and began shooting over her to get her used to gunfire.  Near the end of summer I added the e-collar to her training and began walking her off leash with the collar.   I finally got her out in September for her first “real” hunt at the Cooke Canyon Hunt Club and she did pretty well after some initial craziness.   In October and November we went hunting a lot locally and a few more trips to Cooke Canyon and Lira kept improving with each outing.   She got her first snow hunt in December and loved that.   She isn’t perfect but she points well and retrieves most of the time, a bit more work this coming year and she should be really ready to go next season.

Bird hunting with Lira wasn’t the only hunting I did this year.   I did some deer hunting locally to no avail looking for blacktail with my muzzleloader that seemed to disappear as soon as the season opened.   I also did a week long trip to south central Idaho in the Sawtooth Range which was an incredible trip where we saw about 300 deer and 5 moose and I got my first buck, a 4×3 two year old mule deer that I dropped on the spot with a 330 yard shot.   This was my first experience with rifle hunting and my first experience processing a large animal but I managed to fill a big chunk of the freezer with venison that should last us through the year.

All of the hunting, trap shooting and rifle target shooting ate into my fishing time this year but I still managed to get out on the local lakes in the spring, the small mountain rivers in the summer and did a week long trip to the Deschutes and Yakima in the fall.  The Deschutes trip wasn’t quite as productive as last year but I did get my steelhead on the trip and had quite a few grab and it was good to spend a week fishing with Jeff.  I also went on a trip to the Quinault where the goal was to get salmon for the freezer, it was a pretty good outing and supplied us with quite a few fish meals on top of the trout I had stocked up on in the spring.

The other big adventure Catherine and I had this year was watching the triplets for almost two weeks this summer.  The first week the kids were in camp during the day and with us in the morning and evening playing with Lira mostly and camping out in the studio.  The second week we went up to Mazama with Annemarie and Gary where the kids got to catch trout, hike and do a bit of geocaching.   All of them caught nice trout and by the end were all pretty proficient fishermen.   We are looking forward to next summer and doing it all over again.

My health improved a lot over the course of the year.  I was much better in 2015 but wasn’t fully healed and back to my normal weight.   This year I began the year running quite a bit finishing the Winter Trail Run Series,  a half marathon and even did a 25k in Iowa in April, setting new PRs on the long distances but the distance took my weight down to around 150 again so I stopped running and got back on weights.   I struggled with weight much of the summer but in the fall it started going up again and by the end of the year i was finally at my goal of 165.  I’ve stuck between 164-167 for the whole month of December, high point of 167.8, so I think that maybe my weight issues are finally resolved.   My diet expanded further this year to where I’m no longer even strict Paleo.  I now eat some gluten-free grains like oats, rice, corn and quinoa and eat gluten-free baked goods at times.   I can eat pretty much everything now except gluten grains and dairy.  I think the SIBO is completely behind me and feel like I really got lucky, most people seem to keep relapsing over and over with this so having no relapses in 18 months now is really big.

I also took up ukulele this year, buying my first one right after Christmas and then taking classes at Dusty Strings through the winter and early spring.  Here I learned most of the common chords and a bunch of old songs but now I mostly play Sublime, Death Cab, Iron & Wine and other reggae or alt-rock music each day.

How did I do towards my 2016 goals?

• Health – keep healing up my gut and getting my weight to stabilize in the coming year.   DONE!!!   My gut has healed up a lot during the year, my diet has expanded and my weight is finally where I want it to be.
• Work
  • Finish IIN Training in March and decide what I want to do with it.   DONE!   After working with some test clients though during school I decided I don’t want to do this as a real job, I’d rather keep up my SIBO group and helping people on the side as needed.  
  • Get v2.5 of my Zenso app out the door finally getting it ready for iPhone 6/6S and fixing a nasty bug.  DONE!  
• Outdoors
  • Backpacking – get in at least 3-4 backpacking trips including at least one on part or all of the Wonderland Trail in Mt. Rainier.   Nope.  We got a dog instead.
  • Fishing – I’ll never top last year in number of days but just try to keep my usual 100 days or so of fly fishing.  Nope.  I fished a lot less, again due to having a pup but it was worth it.   Only fished 41 days but add to that my hunt days and it is closer to my normal time spent outdoors.
  • Hunting – I need to spend a bit more time at Trap this summer to get in good shape for the fall.  Hopefully we will get a dog too.  Otherwise, a spring trip to Red’s or Cookes and then hunting again in the fall.  I’ll try again for a deer tag too in 2016.  DONE!   While I didn’t fish a lot I spent a lot of time training Lira and managed to get in 30 days of hunting bagging my first buck and at least two dozen pheasants.  
• Running
  • Winter Trail Run Series 2015/16 – DONE!  
  • Hawkeyes 25k – April 8 in Iowa City – DONE!  I even shattered my 25k record time.  
  • Whoos in El Moro 25k – May 7 in SoCal – No, stopped running in April when my weight was down 
  • Sun Mountain 25k – in May if I’m not wiped out from the other 25k runs – No

What is ahead for 2017?

• Health – I’m just going to try and keep my weight in the right range and hopefully not be dealing with health like it is even a part-time job this coming year.  Keep up lots of walking/hiking and weight work.
• Outdoors
  • Backpacking – We  should be able to get in a backpacking trip or two with Lira in 2017, she’ll be grown enough to seriously hike come backpacking season.
  • Fishing – I should be able to fish more in 2017 since I can start taking Lira along on tenkara trips.  Would like to be sure and hit the pink run in the late summer to get fish in the freezer again.
  • Hunting –  I’d really like to ramp up hunting to the point where we don’t need to buy much meat for 2017/2018
    • Birds – Get Lira out once a month at preserves through the winter.  Get another membership at Cooke Canyon for next fall/winter just to make sure Lira sees lots of birds but will hunt the Snoqualmie units 3-4 days a week for the whole season next year and hopefully get on some wild birds too.  Want to get a turkey in the spring this year too as well as some waterfowl in the winter.
    • Big Game –  I’m going to need more than one mule deer in 2017 to hit my goal, either two deer, a deer and an antelope or a small elk will be needed.  Probably hunt muzzleloader in WA but take a rifle trip to ID, MT or WY.
• Running – I’m sticking to hiking until Lira is old enough to do some running then I may try to build up to short distance trail runs again.
• Work
  • Add HealthKit integration to Zenso app
  • Work on new version of SIBO app when Dr. Siebecker gets dietary update done
  • Finish the Swift app I started on this last year in an attempt to learn a new language
  • Maybe contract work for winter