I guess I am not clear on what flushing actually means. Does that mean he runs in the field back and forth and scares up birds or is that more to it that I am missing?
Thanks for the help,
Ben
Not quite, but donâ??t feel bad, the majority of guys who hunt w/ retrievers seem to think that way too.
The fact is that a â??trainedâ?� flushing dog runs the pattern that most effectively uses the wind to bring a birds scent to him.
If you are hunting into the wind, the dog runs from left to right, (perpendicular to the wind). Each cast he takes across the beat he will advance only the distance he has learned that he can cover w/ his nose under that dayâ??s conditions. Some days, heâ??ll recognize the scenting conditions are excellent and he may take bites of 15 yds or more on each cast, other days, he will shorten up how much ground he takes in because he will know that scenting is poor. The way he learns this from experience; if you hunt him enough. In my case, I run my dogs regularly on pigeons or guinea hens. The only way I know what scenting conditions are is by how the dogs work; but they know it.
While Iâ??d love to only hunt w/ the wind in my face, I rarely have someone willing to pick me up at the end of the field. Therefore, I often hunt in a cross-wind both away from the truck & back. If you picture a scent cone emitting from a bird as traveling like smoke from a smoldering fire, youâ??ll understand why a dog running the same pattern I described above would be a huge waste of energy. (hint: he canâ??t smell w/ his tail)
With the wind blowing on my left cheek, my dog should cast to the right & away from me to the far edge of gun range, then turning into the wind, come back at me. Again heâ??s running perpendicular to the wind. As he nears me, heâ??ll turn again into the wind before he heads back out to the far right edge of my gun range. His pattern would look like a banana w/ one end on the far right of gun range and the other end straight to my left.
A down wind (wind at your back) is the least desirable condition mostly because it carries any noise you make to the birds. Again you're dog needs the wind to find birds effectively so he'll learn to take a big cast out to the edge of your gun range and work back toward you. You can let him punch out a little further than normal because if he scents a bird between you & him he'll charge in and most often a rooster will flush away from the dog, sending him back into you.
To get the most out of your flushing dog, youâ??ve got to always be aware of the wind & remember that he can only pick up scent from one general direction. If you just want to use your dog as another pair of feet to bump up birds, (which is what many guys do), although he may come in handy as a retriever, he really wonâ??t find many birds that you wouldnâ??t have bumped w/out a dog.
