Any good tips or ideas for training a dog for pheasant hunting?
May 11, 2007 by blog100
I have a black lab that’s 6 months old now, she’s fairly well trained at this point on the basic commands. I’ve taken her out in the woods for excercise to get her in good shape so that she’d be able to handle hunting in the fields. Just wondering what some good tips or training strategies work best. Especially for staying close, not chasing birds 100 yards away, listening when getting super excited. Those were problems with my previous dog but she learned what to do after a few times. My pups now already knows what BIRD means, I’ve hid a dummy bird with a pheasant winning on it and she’s really good at sniffing it out. So she should know what to look for just a matter of teaching her everything else. Any help on the matter is appreciated.
Wow, we could write a book here. Keep training treats on you at all times.
Option 1, send her to hunting school.
Option 2, read on…
She will have to learn these skills:
1. Identify a target scent
2. Hold her position when she smells the target. (She’s not a pointer, so don’t expect her to assume the classic stance)
3. Continue to hold that position until you flush the bird
4. Continue to hold during the gunshot
5. Watch the bird come down and retrieve it
6. Retrieve it without eating it
7. Give it to you
The biggest hurdles are the scenting, holding (pointing), and steady-to-gun skills. Retreiving is usually a natural skill based on fetching games. Some dogs want to jump the point and get the bird on the ground.
Use some liquied scent the first time out outside, and remember their locations in case you need to help her find them. Put your dog on a long rope lead – anywhere from 50-100 foot of rope and run it under her, between her legs. Take your dog out, and start well downwind of your targets – not too close that she smells them right away. Give her the cue that it’s time to hunt – “Hunt ‘em up!”
The first time out, see what kind of pattern she runs. Teach her to run a wide weaving pattern by giving her commands/whistles for right and left, and use the rope like reigns and nudge her in the direction she should go. (I also practice this on daily walks by giving the command and gently pulling on her lead).
When she nears a bird, you should hold back and watch what she does. She should start to smell the target and focus in on it. She should not approach too fast as she might over-run a bird and scare it up. This is where you teach the “slow” command. You can practice this on daily walks too. My dog knows “slow” and “whoa”. “Whoa” means stop. Slow her down if she’s too fast. Help her out with “whoa” is she’s getting too close to the dummy. She will learn to slow and whoa on her own with practice.
Once she is holding, have her hold her position, and hold, and hold….Keep telling her “whoa” as you walk up next to her. She should continue to hold even if you touch her, move her legs, or even pick her up while she’s in position and move her back a couple feet.
Move past her, and kickup the grass and yell “no bird”!. Call her over and let her smell the scent area and praise her. Move on to the next target.
The next time you go out, use scented dummies. Too much training without a bird “reward” and she won’t understand what the point of all this training is.
Gun Training:
Fire live ammo at a distance from her, and gradually move closer. Praise her after each shot.
Retreiving:
If you really want to train her well, you will need to invest in launching dummies, and even better to invest in launching live birds such as pigeons with a couple drops of pheasant scent on them.
The whole point of this is to integrate the scenting, then holding/pointing, a “bang”, followed by a retreive.
The Gun Dog and Water Dog videos are quite helpful, but theydoes recommend starting at a very young age. I found that my 1 y.o. Weimaraner could run the same drills, and as she learned some skills we stopped focusing on them. She loves to hunt, but she still hates the water.
tons of great info on this site for dog training. i have used the references many times for my pointers and labs. the founder of NAVHDA trained 2 pointers for my father years ago and they were amazing to hunt over.
good luck and have a great time.
check out this website
a very good dog training course