One of the things I have enjoyed the most about trainng my hunting dogs, is making new friends and hunting buddies. Dog people tend to stick together but hunting dog folks are an even tighter group. If you are trying to train a new hunting dog it is essential that you find others to train with and to learn from. Not only from a knowledge sharing or educational level, but also for moral support when things go awry. At times training a hunting dog can be frustrating and many common mistakes can be avoided by training with others.
I had a chance to make a new friend this past month in my little town in Utah. I drove by this house under construction every day on the way to the training grounds. I couldn’t help but notice the guy had a Tri-tronics decal in the back window of his truck. I knew he had to be a hunting dog owner. I stopped by one day and introduced myself, and it turned out he was a hunter and a german shorthair owner. We have been hunting a few times since then and I’m glad to have another hunting buddy to learn from.
If you live in a small town you may be surprised that you are not alone. You can sometimes find fellow hunting dog people online on forums like Gun Dog Forum or Shorthairs.net. I recently discovered an online forum for specifically for hunters and field trialers in my area called Utah Bird Dog Forum. I even found a new vet by stopping and talking to a lady I spotted walking her shorthairs, turned out she worked for a vet up the road. Haven’t been to another vet since.
Chased some pheasants this morning before going to work. Abby was in fine form and was slamming her points with style. My buddies dog Biff was getting the hang of backing Abby when she would find a bird. Biff is a good hunter as well but hasn’t had near as many birds as Abby. It has been amazing to watch Abby progress over the past few months as she has gained more experience on both wild and released birds. Each bird pointed is so valuable to the growth and development of a pointing dog.
She backed Biff on one of his points but today it seemed that Abby brought her “A” game. She retrieved 3 roosters that were shot over the water and dropped into the river. We had one that dropped on the other side and she didn’t see it fall. Couldn’t get her to do the blind retrieve thing. She kept looking at me like I was an idiot. Besides the blinds on water, her retrieves are to hand every time. Abby is really shaping up to be a classy hunting dog.
Guided a group of pheasant hunters this week at Rooster Valley Pheasants in Annabella, UT. The weather was beautiful and the dogs were dialed in and finding birds. There were 12 shooters in this large group of hunters, so Russ split them into 3 hunting groups. I took this small group and worked the canal and the river along the Northeast edge of the property. We had a good safe hunt with some good shooters who only missed a few roosters. I think we ended up with around 25 birds at the end of the hunt. Some real nice guys and a great day of hunting pheasant.
I really enjoy the opportunity to get my young dogs out on some more birds and get valuable experience. The roosters were running on us a bit more than usual and the dogs didn’t take long to figure it out. We had to hustle a few time to catch the runners but we only had one give us the slip. Abby looked sharp and was holding her points very well. The wind was just right and she was slamming on point about 20-30 feet in front of the bird. Abby and Annie fought a bit over retrieving but they always brought the bird to hand. Annie had a great find on a wounded bird that lit across the river. She hadn’t seen the rooster dropped so I sent her blind across the river. She was hesitant at first but swam the cold water and finally found the bird 50 feet back in the brambles. I was so proud. Not bad for a couple of young dogs. Annie (Brittany) is 18 months old and Abby (Shorthair) will be two in April.
Over the holidays I was lucky enough to enjoy some pheasant hunting with my two Brothers-in-Law Kyle Simmons and Phil Cherry. Phil is raising a pair of lab pups and is an avid shooter, but this was Kyle’s first time hunting pheasants.
About 20 minutes into the hunt Abby set up on a nice point and held tight. Kyle moved up from the right side to kick the bird out of the cover.
Kyle squared up on the flush and squeezed off a very nice shot. There were feathers flying everywhere and Kyle was all smiles. Abby retrieved the bird to hand and I was very pleased with her performance.
We had a cold snap and a pretty good snow a few days ago that kept me and the dogs from getting out much. Actually, the dogs don’t care about the cold but I try to avoid bird hunting in a white out. The weather warmed up enough on Monday to take a few of our friends out pheasant hunting. Annie performed admirably retrieving several pheasant to hand for me. This big beautiful rooster was the best of her retrieves and she marked it nicely. She had to work efficiently to beat Jared Moss’ shorthairs to the retrieves.
Since she was just 10 weeks old Annie has had a nack for finding stinky smelly things. During our hunting today she brought me a squashed racoon roadkill, a chunk of smelly deer hide and a rotten rabbit’s leg. Each time she brings something I try to praise her for a good find and then get her back to work finding birds. Towards the end of hunt she brought me what appeared to be an old dead hen pheasant from a previous days hunt. When I took it from her, I found that it was still warm with obvious shot marks. Turns out that she had found a wounded bird that some hooligans had shot earlier in the day. They were poaching pheasants on the pheasant farm from a nearby farming road, shooting from their truck. I was pleased that Annie smelled and located this bird and retrieved it to hand.
This past week Annie and I were able to tag along as co-guides at the Rooster Valley Pheasant Farm. The owner’s son Wade was kind enough to let Annie and I tag along with him and his very talented GSP Whitney. We guided a small group of hunters through some great cover along the river and up onto the sage brush flats. Wade had warned me before hand that Whitney was a retrieving fool and that Annie would likely be a spectator. Lucky for us the first point was solid with Annie and Whitney pinning the birds in. Even luckier two birds flushed, a hen and a rooster and both were shot. Annie bolted after the second bird and Whitney got the first so it worked out great.
As we continued hunting Annie was able to get a few more retrieves as Whitney was out of position or on another point. It was fun to watch the seasoned GSP work those pheasant and I believe Annie learned a bit from her. I was especially pleased that Annie behaved nicely and once even retrieved a bird to hand for one of the guests. Usually, she will only bring the birds to me. A big thanks to Wade and Russ at Rooster Valley for letting me and Annie get some more birds under our belts. We hope to get out on some wild chukar this week while the weather is still nice. Abby’s heat cycle should be finished by the weekend so I’ll be back to two hunting dogs instead of one.
Yesterday we made a visit to our neighbor Russ Peterson who runs Rooster Valley Pheasants gamebird farm. Annie is just finishing her basic hunting dog training after spending almost a whole year with Chris Colt of Cove Mountain Kennels. I asked Russ to plant 4 birds in his fields for Annie so we could work on her retrieving and pointing skills. I was very pleased with her birdwork as it was starting to sprinkle and the wind was swirling around every which way. She was quartering nicely and pointed solid on her first bird. I made a nice shot and she was right on the bird. She took a little coaxing to bring it to me, but I let her hold it a few minutes after she came to me. Finally, she simply laid the bird at my feet without any wrestling or problems. The next bird was a little harder as it flushed over an irrigation canal and dropped out of site when I shot it. Annie couldn’t find it, so I called her back and sent her out a second time and she failed again. I called her back a third time and she followed my hand signal a little better and found the bird. She retrieved the bird nicely across the canal and dropped it at my feet after a little praise. The third bird I wounded and Annie ran it down in an open field and retrieved well. We flushed a big rooster but lost it over the river, I was pleased that Annie swam the river and tried to track him down. We ended up with 3 birds in the bag and had a great time. Judging that Annie is barely one year old I am excited about her potential as a long-time hunting partner. It was especially fun to have my son Travis tagging along on the hunt with me.
September 1st was the opening day of the dove hunt in central Utah. My friend Chris Colt of cove mountain kennels invited me to come along as he would be working with my brittany dog Annie. The hunting was pretty tough and the dove were few and far between. We went to a spot where we usually train our hunting dogs and found several other groups already hunting dove there. When we finally did find a Dove it was well out of shooting range. We watched where it landed and sent Chris’ wife Julie in for the flush. She handled the shot nicely and was the only one of us to bag a dove that day. It was still a fun time and a good excuse to get out and work with the dogs.
We went to visit my neighbor and Max had to say hi and pet all the guide dogs at the pheasant farm. Since my neighbor is all but done with pheasants I thought I would hit him up for some leftover feed. My laying hens are eating quite a bit and the bags of laying pellets from the local feed store is getting expensive at $16.00 for a 50lb bag. The stuff Russ is feeding his pheasants is a pretty high protein mix that he buys in bulk from our neighbor who mixes his own hog feed. I wanted to see how my chickens liked it before I comitted to buying a ton of this homemade feed. So far the chickens seem to love it.
Max loves to go with me to do chores and run errands. He wears his cowboy boots everywhere and is contantly tasting new rocks and dirt. Russ let Max help feed the horses which he talked about for hours. He will be two years old in April but is already quite a handful. He especially loves animals and has them broke down into three categories. All livestock are considered “Moos”, all dogs are called “puppies” and anything with wings is a “Chickie”. After gathering the eggs I had to drag Max inside because he didn’t want to stop shoveling manure in the barn. Russ is trying to talk me into rasing 500 Chukar Partridge to compliment his pheasant farm operation. It could work out well for me to have access to birds for dog training.
Only on a pheasant farm can you enjoy pheasant hunting this late (early?) in the season. My friends from Viewpoint Engineering came up for a business meeting with UDOT and we were able to squeeze in one last hunt at our local Utah Pheasant Hunting Farm. It was fun to bat cleanup for the many corporate clients that miss many birds. We bagged eight birds in all and the only one that got away was a big rooster that I missed. My friend holding the shotgun in the picture above was perfect on six birds. Then he got feeling guilty and let me bag one or two. I left my dogs at home in the interest of time and I must say it was fun to watch the game farm dogs do their work. Jakes littermate “Biff” was along for the ride and did well to watch and learn from the pro dogs. I thought the birds would run a lot harder than they did, but they were darn right agreeable. It helped considerably to have the owner personally guide us into all the right spots. He sure knows where they hold up after a few weeks of freedom. With any luck we can go work our dogs a few more times before the farm closes their season at the end of the month.
