Bells on flushers

B

Bob Peters

Well-known member
I know this is a pointer thing. Today hunting it was very hard for me to keep track of the golden retriever because the cover is tall, her fur matches a lot of it in color, and it was blowing a gale. I was really thinking a bell could be helpful here.
 
I think it's a good idea. I talked my buddy into running a beeper in point mode only, along with a sport dog tracker. That way he's not looking at his tracker constantly. His little setter is pretty wide. I don't know if it's him or the tracker, but he has to walk while looking at it to see if he's getting farther or closer to the pointing dog. It's annoying when you need to get to the dog, but he's walking around in circles. Only problem I have with bells is, the only time I can hear them is when they're at my feet.
 
You will never get a pheasant with that bell on your dog....wait for the replies or read the old threads. I only use them when I am in cover that I can't see my dog when he is more than several yards away, heck in the switch grass I can't see him several feet away. When he locks up I use the "locate" feature on the Sport Dog to find him. The cover is so tall this year, I think he was always within 15 yards and a couple times I needed to locate 3 times for find him. I keep a pair with me, one in the truck and one in a pocket of my hunting coat. Here are the type of snap swivels I use, easy to put on and take off with gloves. You might also need a key-ring. They do wear-out, you can see I "rebuilt" the larger one. One of these days I will anchor a rooster or 2 to show the crowd "it is possible"!
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No bells for this guy. All it does is tip off every bird in the county that you're coming.

Silence is deadly.

FYI I hunt with a lab/flusher but I keep her within shotgun range.
 
I never would consider a bell on a golden. I will also never take them out without their vest on either. The protection and visibility is a must for me. My color perception is getting worse it would seem. A lot fewer burrs to deal with and my 2 year old thinks fences are there to try to run through. A golden is about as close to perfect color to blend in the habitat as you can get.
 
I do think Bob is hunting in the habitat you fellas have never experienced. It sounds like he is drifting into some good old fashion Iowa CRP. It doesn't matter the color of the dog, you can't see your fellow hunter's boots, heck you can't tell if your fellow hunters are wearing pants! This stuff is what you "never use a bell" hunters have never ever been in. Unless you have a dog that freaks-out if they lose sight of you....you will want/need a bell, if venturing into this stuff. Or you are that guy with the GPS, who is standing around watching a screen, who says, the dog is XX number of yards in that direction and then good luck finding him.
 
I can see the usefulness of the bells in fields that are so thick with trall grass that the dog literally disappears from sight. My lab is pretty quiet when in the field, and i can see where a flusher may get a bit too far out on those windy days that they may get turned around in the thick stuff. I make sure I have my bell in the vehilce when we are exploring new fields or when the familiar fileds have grown up so much and so thick that I can't see her. I dont like using it often, but I will use it if there is a chance the grass is too think and tall and we may get too separated from each other.
 
I don't think I could hear a bell on a dead calm day unless it was an over-sized cowbell. Age isn't kind! I use grass/cover movement to find my lab, if I'm lucky. Several places I hunt the cover is over my head so I depend on her to find me. That is usually when the pheasant she's been working flushes out from under my feet and scares the !!!!! out of me.
 
I used to use a bell when I was living and hunting grouse in the mountains of PA. That was pre-gps and the only way to know where your dog was. I still have two bells but haven't used them in years. That said, I hunt some areas where I can't see my dog most of the time and I've thought about putting a bell on them....but I always talk myself out of it.
 
A bell or beeper or a gps collar is the solution to that problem. Putting orange on them helps somewhat, but in a lot of cover they'll still disappear. The good thing about a flusher (without these tools) is at least you'll see them moving soon or later. Worst case, you have an unexpected flush or one out of range. With pointers, if the dog is solid, and you don't have a mechanism to locate them, good luck!

I use a gps collar and it beeps on my handheld when she's on point and then shows an arrow and how far away she is. When you get within 10 yards or so, it says "near". I have walked past her a couple times and had the bird flush behind me in cattails. That's just the way it is. Most times I can find her. The locate feature some people have mentioned would come in handy in those situations. I will say it can be annoying to hunt with someone else who is using that feature a lot, but if someone is hunting alone, not a problem. Same with collars that constantly beep. Bells aren't as annoying to me as constant beeping.

Don't listen to the naysayers about making noise scaring all the birds away. In *normal* pheasant habitat (not the north woods), every single bird knows we are there looooong before we get close to them, just by the noise we and our dogs make going through the cover. They are either going to hold or run or flush. Up to them. Talking at a reasonable volume (not yelling loudly) and bells aren't going to cause them to change their decision. Often even yelling won't get them to flush.

Funny how the naysayers think they can sneak up on pheasants, but still continue to hunt after taking a shot. If the birds are all scrambling to get away due to noises, then a shotgun blast should clear out an entire property. ;)
 
remy3424 said:
I do think Bob is hunting in the habitat you fellas have never experienced. It sounds like he is drifting into some good old fashion Iowa CRP. It doesn't matter the color of the dog, you can't see your fellow hunter's boots, heck you can't tell if your fellow hunters are wearing pants! This stuff is what you "never use a bell" hunters have never ever been in. Unless you have a dog that freaks-out if they lose sight of you....you will want/need a bell, if venturing into this stuff. Or you are that guy with the GPS, who is standing around watching a screen, who says, the dog is XX number of yards in that direction and then good luck finding him.
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On the contrary, I regularly hunt cover much thicker and taller in MN that what you are describing. Waist high?? Seems pretty tame to me! Hell, Saturday I was thinking to myself I would rather walk cattails. 4 miles and I was hurting. A 5 mph wind would make the bell inaudible in my area

Do any self-respecting retriever owners have GPS collars? That's the pointer owners crutch like a bell.....I'm Just jerking your chain;)
 
Golddog said:
Do any self-respecting retriever owners have GPS collars? That's the pointer owners crutch like a bell.....I'm Just jerking your chain;)
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I do own a GPS collar. I bought it my second year of hunting because I would get nervous on some scenarios about losing the dog, a hunter's nightmare. As my confidence grew I quit using it, and haven't put it on the dog in 2 years. That and Garmin makes good stuff, yet their gps/dog remote is clunky and not well designed. I still can't believe they haven't made a better one yet, I could lay out the design in 5 minutes.

Glock, thanks for the offer a your bell. I ordered one a few months ago and it was in my hunting tote yesterday still in the package. If I get into high wind plus thick cover I'll try it out.
 
remy3424 said:
I do think Bob is hunting in the habitat you fellas have never experienced. It sounds like he is drifting into some good old fashion Iowa CRP. It doesn't matter the color of the dog, you can't see your fellow hunter's boots, heck you can't tell if your fellow hunters are wearing pants! This stuff is what you "never use a bell" hunters have never ever been in. Unless you have a dog that freaks-out if they lose sight of you....you will want/need a bell, if venturing into this stuff. Or you are that guy with the GPS, who is standing around watching a screen, who says, the dog is XX number of yards in that direction and then good luck finding him.
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The Iowa CRP can make it hard to keep track of your dog. Pretty simple though, don't hunt that type of cover. For me, it simply isn't worth losing a dog 400 miles from home for me. I have considered getting a GPS collar for hunting the heavy thick CRP. But a bell on a flushing dog, no way.
 
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I hunt with a lab mainly in PA where the cover is so high that i have a hard time following her. A bell is totally necessary. But my pheasants are all released birds.

On trip last year to SD, I determined i would not hunt with a bell for wild pheasants. After 20 minutes, i had to put it back on. The pheasants did not notice at all. This was the first 5 days of the season. Later in the season it may make a difference.
 
Many a Kansas rooster froze upon hearing the bell and flushed and died. Roosters referred to bells as a ding-a-ling death. They never really understood and generations died never comprehending the danger of a dog with a bell. Those CRP fields were 40 to 320 acres and chest to shoulder high. A pedometer said 13-15 miles. My golden would pick up a track and away we go. Tough hunting, you bet, one on one. The local hunters we met only focused on quail. The danger is not knowing where your dog is. All you needed was four roosters.
 
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remy3424 said:
I do think Bob is hunting in the habitat you fellas have never experienced. It sounds like he is drifting into some good old fashion Iowa CRP. It doesn't matter the color of the dog, you can't see your fellow hunter's boots, heck you can't tell if your fellow hunters are wearing pants! This stuff is what you "never use a bell" hunters have never ever been in. Unless you have a dog that freaks-out if they lose sight of you....you will want/need a bell, if venturing into this stuff. Or you are that guy with the GPS, who is standing around watching a screen, who says, the dog is XX number of yards in that direction and then good luck finding him.
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Absolutely, I lost my old (very close hunting 80 lb) Wire in a chest high switchgrass patch once. I made a couple circles around before I tripped over her pointing a hen.
 
I lost dogs 3 times yesterday each of them once and once lost them both together. At one point I thought the little one was truly lost and had to fire shells in the air to help her locate me.
They aren’t the runoff type and do a good job of keeping track of me. I don’t hack at them and make them stay underfoot.Sometimes I’ll let them run a bird we have no chance of killing. The problem with that is a day like yesterday. Noisy and tall and grey and wet.
And they aren’t hundreds of yards away. 75 yards away and lost is still lost.

As an example from when I lost them both. There’s a strip I was hunting where they had come in and tore a bunch of cedars out. It has grown back in weeds and brambles and sunflowers about 8’ tall. We had been running a bird and I was on the edge of it trying to keep up and holding them back as best I could. At a point I got to a plum thicket and had to cross the weed strip to get past it. The dogs followed the bird through the plums and flushed it out the end. I was on the other side and didn’t keep up. They ended up lost for a little while at one point they ran past me at about 25 yards working my track towards where we had come from but it was so thick they didn’t see me. I was hollering and screaming but they didn’t hear me. Eventually they worked my track back to me.
 
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