My golden turned 3 on Veterans Day... she has really started to please me bird hunting this year... my only complaint about her is she just seems to stumble onto scent and then starts to hunt. Is there a way to get her to start quartering a little better? She just kind of walks ahead of me about 5 yards and when she winds something she will hunt it up, but I feel like we are walking by birds in some of the areas that are wider than just a narrow waterway. I know she has a fair nose, but how much range is a dogs nose? I am not sure if a bird is 10 yards away from her she would smell it unless the wind was just right.
Training an old dog new tricks
- Thread starter jbg1219
- Start date
Munster927
Well-known member
Others will chime in on training tips, but every dogs nose is different. My current dog, a Small Munsterlander, has one of the longest noses of any dog I've hunted over. When she was a pup and I was training with my NAVHDA group, one of the trainers there remarked multiple times on her long nose. Not uncommon for her to wind birds within 50 yards on light wind days. Some windy days I swear she smells birds hundreds of yards across a pond we frequently hunt. She'll just stand there and take nosefuls of the wind and stare across the pond until I tell her to hunt em up to get her going again.
Jawilor
Active member
Teach her left, right, and back casting using the baseball drill. Once she knows that, you can take her afield and start planting birds, then cast her left/right to those birds. You can also use tennis balls or bumpers with a little bird scent on them. As you walking you can cast her left, then toss a bumper to the right when she's not looking, then cast her to the bumper, and vice-versa. She get the picture after a few outings.
Gatzby
Well-known member
I have a drill one of the best young dog trainers in MN taught me. I use it on young pups but it works just as well on mature dogs.
Put on your game vest and put a few thawed bird in the pouch. Ducks, pheasants, pigeons, it doesn't matter. I use pigeons as they are easy to carry and cheap. I have a small round pond with a nice variation of cover around it, I'll take the pup for a walk and while he's off sniffing a turtle or something I'll toss a bird into some cover (the thickness of the cover can be mowed grass to heavy cattails depending on the dog). I will then manipulate my walk to get the dog down wind and coax him with a "dead bird, dead bird" repeat this as you walk around the cover. After a few sessions of this you will need to preplant the birds in tougher and tougher cover. After a week or 2 of doing this you will not even get to the spot without the dog starting to cast back and forth looking for a dead bird. At some point replace the dead pigeons with a live pheasant and bring your shotgun. I do this drill with my finished dogs occasionally as they enjoy it so much
Put on your game vest and put a few thawed bird in the pouch. Ducks, pheasants, pigeons, it doesn't matter. I use pigeons as they are easy to carry and cheap. I have a small round pond with a nice variation of cover around it, I'll take the pup for a walk and while he's off sniffing a turtle or something I'll toss a bird into some cover (the thickness of the cover can be mowed grass to heavy cattails depending on the dog). I will then manipulate my walk to get the dog down wind and coax him with a "dead bird, dead bird" repeat this as you walk around the cover. After a few sessions of this you will need to preplant the birds in tougher and tougher cover. After a week or 2 of doing this you will not even get to the spot without the dog starting to cast back and forth looking for a dead bird. At some point replace the dead pigeons with a live pheasant and bring your shotgun. I do this drill with my finished dogs occasionally as they enjoy it so much
BRITTMAN
Well-known member
Gatzby. You can do that hunting too ... but the dead bird used more than once will start to have dog and hunter odors on it.
I usually hunt one dog at a time. When I return to the truck with my youngest dog waiting ... I will lay a bird or two in the grass or other cover about 40 yards away. Once we transition a bit ... exchange dogs ... I take the young dog back to that area and say dead bird ... find it. They are pretty excited when they do. It is a good lesson.
I usually hunt one dog at a time. When I return to the truck with my youngest dog waiting ... I will lay a bird or two in the grass or other cover about 40 yards away. Once we transition a bit ... exchange dogs ... I take the young dog back to that area and say dead bird ... find it. They are pretty excited when they do. It is a good lesson.