How many birds would you lose/find without a dog?

Bob Peters said:
My point is, the dog is gonna find the bird the vast majority of the time, but that doesn't mean you yourself should stop looking.
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Dog will find it the vast, vast, VAST majority of the time. I believe a human should have as little impact on the drop area as possible, so pheasant scent isn't disturbed & human scent isn't introduced. Stay away, preferably downwind. $0.02
 
I'll never go back to hunting without a dog again but I did for years. You'd be surprised. In order to get close enough for a shot you must be very quiet. Flushes are very close and if you get out front and shoot them where they're going you'll lose very few because they will be stone dead when you arrive at the place you marked it. Many many many people THINK they hit that bird hard and couldn't find it. I've been guilty myself. Fact is, if that bird wasn't moving and its head was down when it fell....it'll be there when you get to the spot it dropped. They don't com back alive and hide.
Cripples? I say you'll find very few without a dog. Cripples are tough WITH a dog
 
A5 Sweet 16 said:
Dog will find it the vast, vast, VAST majority of the time. I believe a human should have as little impact on the drop area as possible, so pheasant scent isn't disturbed & human scent isn't introduced. Stay away, preferably downwind. $0.02
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Yeah I agree with this. I guess I would say handling the dog is most important. When the dog has a good visual mark and runs to it to look for the bird you observe carefully and stay out of the way. A couple experiences I had this year. The first one I was hunting with a buddy and I saw a nice big woody bush. The dog was ahead and I managed to flush a big bird by walking right up to said bush, we shot simultaneously and he fell. I'm not sure what the dog saw as she wasn't in my field of view. She hit the grass running and I figured she was tracking him so I let her go. I walked about 20 yards, she was another 25 ahead of me. I saw him laying on the ground dead. A different day she flushed one running him up in crp grass. I marked the spot and was walking that way. She was out front again running. She had overshot the bird, which is rare when she flushes one and I hit it. I saw his wing twitching in his death throes. I called her over so she could get the retrieve. I guess being observant and good dog handling is common sense, or at least something that you learn as you hunt. I know it's something I've gotten better at the longer I've hunted.
 
Probably every bird that your dog returns alive.
2 of us shot 6 birds again today. Probably would have lost 4. One bird I shot going over the top of a ridge. 20 foot high with snow all the way up. I wouldn't have been able to go up there, would have been close to 200 yards for me to get up there. Of course without a dog I wouldn't have taken that shot.
 
I remember one year in Kansas I dropped a rooster at 25 yards going straight away into a freshly picked cornfield about 20 yards from cover. The bird hit the ground hard and gave it everything he had to make it back to the cover bordering the field. He made it about 15 yards before expiring from his injuries. When i cleaned that bird, he had multiple hits - like 4 or 5, the torso, plus a broken wing, yet managed to make it a pretty long ways. Had he been in cover and made it that far, it would've been tricky to recover him without a dog. That taught me a lot about how tough those birds are - dogs are essential to an ethical hunt in my view.
 
I shot a late winter rooster with a load of lead 4's at 25 yards. Hit him hard enough that his flight changed direction. Dropped with the 2nd barrel at 40 yards. Took 30 minutes to find him in a snowed in alfalfa field. He was buried like a arrow.
 
Mosby said:
I probably wouldn't waste my time hunting birds without a dog.
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I "wasted" my time hunting for years without a dog. I just liked to hunt. I enjoyed being outdoors and carrying my shotgun around.

I was young, didn't own a house, and had to travel a lot for work. Having my own dog in that situation didn't make much sense. I still wanted to hunt. I could sometimes go with my Grandpa and/or Uncle who both had a dog, but I hunted by myself a lot too without one.

I still bagged birds. I'll bet I put more birds in the bag than the average hunter out there that has a dog too because I had permission to a lot of private land back then just like I do now.

I hunted different habitat though. It was thinner stuff like tree lines, fencerows, and standing corn where my chances of recovering a bird were higher. I rarely hunted thicker habitat like cattails.

Its obvious that most of you have never hunted over a shitty or poorly trained dog that doesn't listen. Either that or you all think highly of every dog you've encountered. I've hunted over several dogs that ruined a hunt. And I can say with 100% positivity that I would have rather hunted without those 4 legged hell hounds than with them because they ruined the hunt when they were with.

Go ahead and pile on me for buying a license and hunting legally without a dog. I did nothing wrong or illegal for years.

As for losing cripples, I definitely lost some. Its been so long since I hunted without a dog now I wouldn't be able to estimate it.
 
Gimruis, we all had to start somewhere. The learning curve is not a straight line. Enjoy your hunts and your dog while you can. At some point in time, all we will have is memories. Stay safe, always.
 
I ran into these 2 guys from Illinois in a remote spot.I felt sorry for them so I told them about a spot.They had no dog.The next day I hunted it,and there were wounded birds all over the place..bad call by me.
 
HS Strut said:
I'll never go back to hunting without a dog again but I did for years. You'd be surprised. In order to get close enough for a shot you must be very quiet. Flushes are very close and if you get out front and shoot them where they're going you'll lose very few because they will be stone dead when you arrive at the place you marked it. Many many many people THINK they hit that bird hard and couldn't find it. I've been guilty myself. Fact is, if that bird wasn't moving and its head was down when it fell....it'll be there when you get to the spot it dropped. They don't com back alive and hide.
Cripples? I say you'll find very few without a dog. Cripples are tough WITH a dog
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I'm putting a big thumbs down on these dog less hunters.
 
gimruis said:
I "wasted" my time hunting for years without a dog. I just liked to hunt. I enjoyed being outdoors and carrying my shotgun around.

I was young, didn't own a house, and had to travel a lot for work. Having my own dog in that situation didn't make much sense. I still wanted to hunt. I could sometimes go with my Grandpa and/or Uncle who both had a dog, but I hunted by myself a lot too without one.

I still bagged birds. I'll bet I put more birds in the bag than the average hunter out there that has a dog too because I had permission to a lot of private land back then just like I do now.

I hunted different habitat though. It was thinner stuff like tree lines, fencerows, and standing corn where my chances of recovering a bird were higher. I rarely hunted thicker habitat like cattails.

Its obvious that most of you have never hunted over a shitty or poorly trained dog that doesn't listen. Either that or you all think highly of every dog you've encountered. I've hunted over several dogs that ruined a hunt. And I can say with 100% positivity that I would have rather hunted without those 4 legged hell hounds than with them because they ruined the hunt when they were with.

Go ahead and pile on me for buying a license and hunting legally without a dog. I did nothing wrong or illegal for years.

As for losing cripples, I definitely lost some. Its been so long since I hunted without a dog now I wouldn't be able to estimate it.
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Yeah I would still hunt if I couldn't have a dog. I just wouldn't hunt nearly as much. As mentioned earlier here, the dogs do an amazing job of recovering cripples, but is that because we cripple, or because we know the dogs can recover and thus take a bit less optimal shots? I've hunted a ton of blue grouse without a dog, just because they are there while elk hunting. Have never lost one because you can get so much closer and guarantee an easy shot.

But, since I can have dogs, at this point I would never not have one and I'm never going out bird hunting without them.
 
LittleBigHorn22 said:
But, since I can have dogs, at this point I would never not have one and I'm never going out bird hunting without them.
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Agreed. I was only trying to point out that hunting without one isn't unethical or illegal. Some people here seem to think that a dog is a requirement to hunt. Its not. And I proved it for years too.

I wouldn't be pheasant hunting if I only had the option of driving out of state, buying a non-resident license, and pounding highly pressured public land but that doesn't mean no one should be doing it. There's certainly nothing illegal or unethical about it either.
 
So 2 years ago I took a couple friends out pheasant hunting. On the way to the public ground we had 3 roosters walk into ditch ahead of us. Everything was legal for road hunting. We got out and my buddy the experienced hunter and the newbie walked up to where we saw the birds last. 1 bird flushed way out ahead but the other 2 flushed close and were dropped on the otherside of the fence I got the dogs out and they retrieved the birds. We got back in the vehicle and as we were going down the road asked the newbie what they thought about that? They replied well we didn't do anything wrong but it felt wrong. Now I told them if the other guy wasn't with us I would have drove buy honking the horn to educate those birds.

My point is I wasn't going to hunt without my dogs. And yes I have been behind dogs that ruined the hunt. I have just left those situations.
 
Weimdogman said:
So 2 years ago I took a couple friends out pheasant hunting. On the way to the public ground we had 3 roosters walk into ditch ahead of us. Everything was legal for road hunting. We got out and my buddy the experienced hunter and the newbie walked up to where we saw the birds last. 1 bird flushed way out ahead but the other 2 flushed close and were dropped on the otherside of the fence I got the dogs out and they retrieved the birds. We got back in the vehicle and as we were going down the road asked the newbie what they thought about that? They replied well we didn't do anything wrong but it felt wrong. Now I told them if the other guy wasn't with us I would have drove buy honking the horn to educate those birds.

My point is I wasn't going to hunt without my dogs. And yes I have been behind dogs that ruined the hunt. I have just left those situations.
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I think that feeling is because of just getting lucky and having the birds by the road. You didn't "earn" the birds and that wouldn't have changed if you had taken the dogs out to find them or not. But if you walk a field without dogs and flush and kill something, it feels just as rewarding as if your dog flushes it.
 
Wind River said:
NOPE
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I think of pheasant hunting as a drug…we are all addicted for different reasons. Does a dog make it great? Oh yeahhhh! Late 90s took two college buddies to family farm shot 6 roosters with no dog. One of the best hunts of my life. Got one of those without even shooting. Dog work is up there on favorite part but strategy and conquest are up there too.
 
Weimdogman said:
And yes I have been behind dogs that ruined the hunt. I have just left those situations.
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Those guys didn't get invited back to hunt with me. Its difficult to tell someone you know that their dog isn't welcome. They often take it very personally. Its like telling someone that their kid is a failure. I imagine its very tough to hear.

But sometimes you gotta shoot a hostage.
 
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