Eerie pheasant hunt occurrence in Iowa

S

scott county vizsla

Member
This past Saturday was shotgun opener for deer here in Iowa, so public ground can turn into a bit of mess as I'm sure most of you know. I decided to check a large public area (Lost Grove Lake) near Davenport to see if any of the areas were free of deer hunters and I was lucky to get a large country block to myself. Around two hours into the hunt, with two roosters in the bag, my Vizsla (Rusty) and I are working down a valley with thick cover when he raised his nose and caught some odd scent. All the hair on his neck and back shoots up as he starts to bay/howl into the wind. This goes on for five to ten seconds while I'm calling him trying to figure out what is going on and calm him down. The only time he has ever done anything resembling a howl is when he is in a really playful mood and it sounds like he trying to talk, this was much different. The dog turns toward me and starts circling me at about 5 yards never looking at me and howling away and scanning the grass as he circled me. Rusty does about 5-7 laps and I start thinking about the increased Mountain Lion sightings in the area over the past few years and how I can't see much in this belly high grass... Time to go! I start backing out of the valley the way we came while the dog continues to circle me and howl. After about 100yds we are in the knee high grass and I go to pet the dog to let him know all is well and he isn't having it, he walks back towards the tall stuff a bit and howls again then starts circling me while scanning and howling. I get us moving again and he won't leave my side even though i'm trying to get him back into hunting mode. Around 500 yards from the start of all this he starts to go back to normal and then, with my pickup over the next hill, he finds me my third rooster which of course I miss with both barrels and the hunt is over. I'll admit I was a bit worried for five minutes or so during this and I can't help but think how much more calm the situation would have been if I had another person or two with me with a few more guns just in case. Anyway, that evening I'm at a fundraiser telling some friends/fellow hunters about my experience and all we can come up with is a mountain lion or maybe a bobcat since my dog is familiar all the other Iowa critters:fox, coyote, badger, raccoon, etc. Then one of the guys' wife shoves her phone in my face showing me a report of a 250# male black bear hit and killed on I-80 100 miles west of us two days prior. No way to know for sure what it was but more large predators are spotted in Iowa every year and I think I almost stumbled upon one. Has anybody ever had a similar experience or reaction like this out of a dog? Also I already tried to use this as an angle to get another Vizsla to no avail "but honey if I ever do get attacked its going to take at least two bird dogs, possibly 3, to save me."
 
Good try on getting another dog angle. Pretty sure my dog would take off running for the truck thinking the whole time I don’t have to out run what ever that was I just have to outrun the heavy set white guy. :). Seriously, I can imagine it made the hair on the back of your neck stand up and sounds like you did everything correct except of course missing bird number three.

Interested to hear what others think could have caused it.
 
Pretty weird. I suppose it could've been just about anything. There have been a few times my dogs have found something in the cattails or buried in cover & started barking their heads off. Rather than offer to go in for them & see what they'd found, I was always able to call them off & get away. A couple years ago my springer Buzz came across an area he would NOT cross. On a piece of public land, on the trail back to the truck. On the way out, he always acted normal. But 2 times on the way back, he stopped & there was nothing I could do to get him to heal. Had to carry him. Don't know if it was a coyote den, badger den, giant mouse turd, or what. Never found evidence of anything out of the ordinary.
 
My experiences with my Lab, if he barks or slightly growls, then it is something with fur and pretty easy to call him off. My dad's lab on the other hand, is all for the fur as well as the feathers. If there's a coon, skunk, or opossum, we're in for fight and the only way to end it is to have on of us kill the animal and the other one of us try and drag the dog away. A few weeks we got into a coon with his dog, long story short while trying to end it, I lost balance and ended up on the ground, the coon was biting my boot pulling me, and the dog was biting the coon dragging all of us. Luckily it all ended fine and was probably quite comical to watch. But if you've ever been on the ground with a very large coon biting your foot staring you in the eyes, it is a little scary.
 
I would rule out the bear as they will run from a dog when they are able. I worked for the federal gov in the YCC program when I was in high school and the first thing they taught us about being in the woods was if you came across a bear to bark like a dog.....
 
Interesting. A dead (or live) human might cause that reaction. But since you and your dog were likely working into the wind you probably would also have smelled a dead body yourself in addition to your dog. My guess is a large cat. For what it's worth, my male GSP likes to chase fox and coyotes, he has run both of these types out of the park behind our house. He does not seem pay a whole lot of attention to fox or coyote scent when we are hunting birds. One time a few years back a very large bobcat squirted out of a plum thicket within less than 50 yards away from me, I don't recall where the dog was but nothing came of it.
 
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