Back after 'The Professor"

I got out of work a little early, so I figured I'd try to get up to camp in hopes of getting an afternoon hunt in with one of my employees who is an experienced "Harlequin of the fields" hunter, and had only kicked up grouse on the way to his deer stand and had always wanted to try hunting them. It had started to drizzle and the wind was blowing a good 20 mph with low, grey, clouds speedily moving their way across the sky.
I knew we had to get to a place that had a bit of a windbreak. I decided to try the "professors" cover first. The "professor" is a huge grey phase who got his name last season as my brother in law and myself flushed him three times, EACH time he flew DIRECTLY at our heads almost having to duck in self defense.
The professors lair:



Dottie the (CLOSE WORKING POINTER)
was ecstatic to see they were actually doing more cutting around that particular cover, so she can finish out here life in this great little piece of heaven.



It didn't take long before she got really birdy, and I thought she was on His majesty, she locked up and the bird flushed about 3 seconds later.
Two quick IN THE OPEN shots for Luke yielding nothing but curse words and "holy crap those things are twice as fast as a pheasant". All I could think to myself was ,"finally, another convert".
We followed up for a reflush, when Dottie locked up again, I heard the bird and JUST caught a fleeting glimpse when I touched off the more open of my two barrels, To my surprise she fell. It wasn't the Professor, but I'm guessing it was one of his redhaired ladies:



Not wanting to take any other of his harem, we decided to move on.
The next cover was VERY small, Dottie wasn't 5 minutes in when she locked up on a nice little timberdoodle, which Luke claimed as his first, a bigger smile I don't think I've ever seen on his face.


The wind was really starting to rip now, so we carefully watched the enormous oaks, and cedars swaying with each heavier gust. Then stopped the bell. About 40 yards to my right the absolute largest Ruff I've ever shot without question presented me with a small window to connect. With a whole lotta luck the back trigger did its job, you can see from this picture just HOW big this bird was. the other bird its next to was an adult from a little later.



It was honestly our plan to hope for the best once we got back to camp and watched the evening forecast for wind. After seeing sustained and gusts even heavier than today, we decided  the only thing we'd be hitting for the weekend was this, and hit it we did, HARD.

this morning was awful