90 Days until Hunting Season
It
is now July 1st. People are enjoying the warm weather, swimming,
fishing, hiking, cook outs and going on vacation. The thing that seems
light years away is getting Fido ready for the
opening of bird season. Unfortunately, your dog needs more time to prepare
for hunting season than two to four weeks, but every year we get the phone
calls right before the opening of bird and duck hunting season.
Some
of these conversations are comical and others are frustrating. My question
to you is, “How do you expect to do anything well if you don’t
practice?” We tend do think that dogs think like humans do. However,
they think like dogs think. Dogs that are well bred, smart, and with no
baggage are usually quick studies. The problem is that just because a Brittany
has pointed a wing on a string in your living room or back yard a half dozen
times doesn’t mean that he is capable as a trained dog to hunt , find, point a
grouse, and hold until you get there. It takes practice, practice, and
practice.
The
same is true for your Labrador pup. You have played fetch in your yard or
in a familiar piece of water and he does pretty well. What about that wing
shot Mallard that lands in a three acre piece of chest high grass? Your
pup needs practice. These are just two examples of why people don’t have
proficient dogs to hunt. We are all eternal optimists, we love our dogs, and
because we love them and they are ours, of course they are the best.
I
always say that dogs don’t lie but dog owners do. When someone is bringing
their dog for training I always ask what they have done or not done for
training so I know where to start. Then I take the dog out and physically
see what the dog is doing. Usually, from what the owner said and what the dog
is doing to what I see happening, there are big differences. There are two
real reasons for this. First, when the dog is in a strange environment it
will act differently; but secondly and more importantly for this article, you
may have worked with your dog, but NOT ENOUGH.
How
much is enough? A dog can learn to come,
sit or other simple commands in a few
short training sessions. However, it will take possibly 100-200
repetitions for the dog to be trained or 500 sessions to be bomb proof. There
is also the age variables and consistency in the reinforcement of the
training. If commands are given without the reinforcement of making the
dog follow through, you are actually undoing the training you have already
spent time doing. Getting a dog to point a grouse is a much more complicated
task, and I believe that it takes 500 encounters on grouse for a dog to become
a proficient grouse dog.
So,
if you go hunting 5 times a year and find ten grouse per outing, it will take
ten years for the pointing dog to get the hang of it. You can do the math
to come up with 500 based upon the numbers of outings and numbers of bird
encounters. This is why I suggest to people that a pointing dog for grouse
is not a great choice if you can’t train it, have it trained, or most
importantly if you hunt only 20-30 times a year.
Be
honest about how much you will hunt. When I ask people this time of year
how much they will hunt this fall, they say, “all the time, every chance I
get,” or they give me a number of days. When I talk with them after
hunting season I usually get an entirely different answer. Why? The answer is
simply because these people had hoped to get out more. But between family,
jobs, bad weather, and dog injuries, the average person never gets in enough good
hunting. Without practice before the season begins and without enough
experience during the season, a pointing dog seldom gets enough bird encounters
to make it a proficient bird dog at a young age.
As
far as your retriever goes, the same basic rules apply. Don’t expect your
retriever to handle complex blind retrieves if all you did were simple, visible
marks. Without instruction and practice your retriever can not understand
what you expect of it. Remember, it is not because it is deaf that your
dog is not doing what you’re screaming at it to do. Have you taught and practiced what you are asking the dog
to do?
So
what can you do with 90 days until hunting season? You need to do the 3
most important things: basics, basics, and more basics. When people come
to watch me train they can’t believe how much time we spend on the
foundation. Just like a house that is built on rotten cedar posts, a dog
without the basics won’t function on the same level as a house built on an
eight inch concrete cellar wall. If you can spend an hour a week for the
next 15 weeks you will not believe how much your dog will progress. That
is 15 minutes, three nights a week and 15 minutes on the weekend. You say
you are serious about having a good bird dog or retriever then put the time in
or it will never happen.
One
motivating option is to find someone or a group to train with. You will
have more fun doing what you love when you can share the work with someone who
has the same interest. Also, get some guidance from your breeder or hire a
professional. At the very least read a good book or watch some training
videos. It doesn’t matter if you get a pup from the best hunting or field
trial stock in the country if you don’t teach and practice training
techniques. None of this breeding will count in hunting if you don’t train
before the season.
Some
recommended books for the pointing dogs are:
The Best Way
to Train your Gun Dog: The Delmar Smith Method by Bill Tarrant,
Wing &
Shot by Robert Wehle.
For retrievers:
Tritronics
Retriever Training by Phyllis and Jim
Dobbs,
The 10 Minute
Retriever by John and Amy Dahl.
Most
people who come to me have read or ask about Richard Wolters
and his training book. Remember that Wolters
didn’t train 12 dogs in his entire life. His experience was very limited
and when reading about his techniques and recommendations you should remember
this. On the other hand the six people who wrote the four books I have
listed have trained around 10,000 dogs. They have had plenty of practice
and experience.
One
last recommendation is to train in different locations. After your upland
dog will handle, come when called, and go right and left on command take him
into the woods that you will hunt this fall. This way you can get your dog
actual woods experience and look for new covers. With your retriever, go
to beaver ponds and rivers to do your drill. Or go to an open large lake
to simulate diver duck hunting. Remember that this is a long term
commitment. It takes me as a professional trainer 3 to 4 years to develop a pup
into a functional, bomb proof retriever or grouse dog. You can’t do it in
one season.
This
is not rocket science, it can be done by anyone who will take the time and
apply himself. You should try to enjoy the journey of dog training and not
worry about the finished product or the number of dead birds. If you can
focus on what you have with your companion each time you’re training, you will
have successes the first year of the dog’s life and enjoy continuing the
progress of both your dog and yourself as each day passes.
Good
luck and great hunting
John
goldy©2003