Outstanding or crazy dog story's

birddude

birddude

Well-known member
I'll start. I've twice seen dogs leave a point, come get me and take me back! This was back before tracking collars. 1st time my close hunting wire disappeared while grouse hunting. I called and called. I thought maybe she was chasing a turkey. Then she came over a rise. She looked at me with a weird, concerned look on her face and went back. I followed her into a brushy little draw and into a blowdown where she promptly pointed again. I walked up and missed an easy shot. Second time I lost my old GSP while quail hunting. This time I was standing on a hill calling calling him. I figured he was pointing in the weed patch I just left as he seldom made any mistakes. On the way back there, he walked out, saw me, turned and half pointed. When I reached him, he cat creeped 20 yards or so and locked up on a nice covey! The crazy part is I had both these dogs at the same time.
 
Last few minutes of legal shooting time in SD. Dog put up a rooster, I thought I missed, bird keeps flying for A LONG ways. My dog keeps running after it as it's flying away. I'm mad because I missed and because my dog is now running away on a large piece of public land as its getting dark and not coming back nor listening to me at all. The rest of my group was on a hill and had given up on the hunt, but I wanted to finish this walk. They end up cheering because from their angle they could see the bird eventually go down, which I did not believe. Then they cheer again as my dog eventually comes over a hill about a 1/4 mile away. It was a warm SD day, and had hunted several miles that day, hunters and dogs were worn down. Looking at Google Earth later, it looked like it was about a 2/3 mile retrieve. As the dog was bringing it back he had to stop and rest a few times, each time he'd stop and drop the bird, and it would take off running then he'd have to chase it a few times. It was my most memorable bird, and I wish I mounted it - although with how many times the dog had to chase it, there were no tail feathers remaining.
 
Cool thread and enjoyed reading the first two. Was walking a min maintenance with my brother. He was up on the road and i was down in the ditch. Dog went on point and a group of birds jumped up, he dropped one on the road, another in the ditch and i swung behind and dropped one behind. We left the bird on the road as is appeared to be stone dead and started after the other two. The dog made good finds on both and we were sharing a laugh and recounting the moment as we got back up on the road. After a bit i double checked to make sure he got the bird on the road. He had not and assumed i had. Hmm bizarre considering we both were certain it was dead dead. The ditch had at least 3 ft of water on the other side. Got the dog searching again and seemed to pick up the scent and moved 100 or so yards down the ditch through the water. Eventually he crawled under the road embankment where the water had eroded it away and pulled out the rooster soaking wet, fully alive with the eyes open, head cocked look. We couldnt believe it. Man, the memories dogs create
 
Although I generally hunt in small groups, opening weekend is an exception. There were probably at least 8 of us walking a grassy draw. I was on the right side of the line and my dog Tess was working the left side in the thicker cover. This was my first year with an Alpha, and the point alarm went off. The unit suggested that the dog was in front of the line of walkers so I assumed one of the walkers would see the point and flush the bird. It was too far to talk/shout at them. I kept checking the screen and Tess was holding the point and now the walkers were well past her. So I dropped out of the line and headed to Tess. By the time I got there the line was at least 200 yards beyond. Anyway, the point produced a rooster, which I knocked down lightly in the adjoining cut milo field. The bird ran, the dog chased, and shortly I had another point alarm go off showing that Tess was 180 yards away on point in the milo. It was my wounded rooster.
 
SDroosty said:
Hmm bizarre considering we both were certain it was dead dead. The ditch had at least 3 ft of water on the other side. Got the dog searching again and seemed to pick up the scent and moved 100 or so yards down the ditch through the water. Eventually he crawled under the road embankment where the water had eroded it away and pulled out the rooster soaking wet, fully alive with the eyes open, head cocked look. We couldnt believe it. Man, the memories dogs create
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In college (dogless, poor, road hunting) we shot a bird road hunting, I've shot a lot of birds and this bird was as dead as any bird I've seen. No thought in my mind that it was alive. Threw it in the back of the truck under the tonneau cover. Pulled into town later that evening, open up the tailgate and out flys a rooster into the streets of Brookings, SD.
 
Knocked a bird down in a draw and dogs were immediately on it. No find, but they begin to work up the draw. My Golden and my nephews GSP, there are both working ground sent feverishly. This goes on for a 1/4 mile plus, all the way to the road. The road ditch has undercut bank with grass overhanging it. My golden is indicating the bird is right there somewhere and GSP is on point. I lift the grass up and sure enough there are tailfeathers looking back at me. I reach way up under the bank and grab a very lively bird. Neatest retrieve I have been apart of.
2. This year the last minutes of light we jump out of the truck and walk up to a dam and jump a bird, knock it down but its off to the races. Go grab my golden take her to the area immediately she hits sent and is gone for couple of minutes around the dam and comes back with that bird my guess 80 yards.
3. Walking a damn, guys on each side other group knocks down a bird. They cant find it, big dam and its easily 20 minutes before I make it to there side. Tell my Golden to hunt dead and out she comes with it after 5 minutes.
 
Some years ago me and Johnny B on here were walking some knee high grass on the south side of a gravel road we had permission to hunt. Both dogs were working birds and we were walking east to west with the road. My dog in the middle of working the grass makes a hard right and jumps the road to the north side and immediately gets birdy and jumps a bird. Damned hen. He then jumps back to the south side and the two dogs manage to put up a couple roosters for us towards the end. The wind wasn’t that strong and there was a ton of scent in that grass. It was truly a show off moment. Almost as if he knew it was there.
 
jackrabbit said:
In college (dogless, poor, road hunting) we shot a bird road hunting, I've shot a lot of birds and this bird was as dead as any bird I've seen. No thought in my mind that it was alive. Threw it in the back of the truck under the tonneau cover. Pulled into town later that evening, open up the tailgate and out flys a rooster into the streets of Brookings, SD.
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Damm!
 
Here's another. My buddy owned a Ryman/Belton type setter named ol Boss. He was the best grouse dog we had but had some quirks. He would point an old grouse or turkey track as solid as if there was 10 under his nose. He also would back anything white from long distance. He once backed an old refrigerator and wouldn't budge, we finally put a leash on him and drug him off. He was also grumpy and would growl at you if he didn't want to be touched. One day he pointed from a bank down into a gravel road ditch. No cover just leaves in the ditch! We went down the bank and kicked around in the ditch, nothing. Then crossed the road and kicked around, nothing. Walked back up the bank and tried to call him off. Nope. My buddy then got ahold of his collar and drug him a few feet. Thats when ol Boss had enough and growled and snapped at my buddy who immediately let go. Then he walked back and locked up again. We looked at each other and said there's a bird there!! We started back down the bank when the grouse exploded from the ditch! We were so shocked we didn't even shoot. We had both walked past it sitting in the leaves and didn't see it. We still refer to it as the day ol Boss called us stupid S.O.B.'s..
 
My old male Chesapeake would lock his knees up and bounce around in heavy cover like a mule deer. I think he did it to get a bird to move so he could hear it. When he starting doing it you always knew to hold on something special was about to happen.
One day we were out and he started pouncing around and got a bird to running. He took off in chase and put it up a few yds short of catching it . When the bird takes off chip jumps in the air like a frizby dog head had to be close to eight feet in the air and just misses. Bird. flys about seventy five yds sets down chip still in chase and the scene repeats this time getting tail feathers. It goes on a third time seventy five yds and chip catch’s him before he can get into the air. Obviously someone else’s wounded bird but I still kick myself for not pulling out my camera during the first series.
 
BrownDogsCan2 said:
My old male Chesapeake would lock his knees up and bounce around in heavy cover like a mule deer. I think he did it to get a bird to move so he could hear it. When he starting doing it you always knew to hold on something special was about to happen.
One day we were out and he started pouncing around and got a bird to running. He took off in chase and put it up a few yds short of catching it . When the bird takes off chip jumps in the air like a frizby dog head had to be close to eight feet in the air and just misses. Bird. flys about seventy five yds sets down chip still in chase and the scene repeats this time getting tail feathers. It goes on a third time seventy five yds and chip catch’s him before he can get into the air. Obviously someone else’s wounded bird but I still kick myself for not pulling out my camera during the first series.
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I bet Chip sensed it was wounded!
 
I've got 3 stories that i have probably posted here before.

1) I was hunting in SW Iowa with my dad and college roommate and our Brittany. We were hunting private land along a fence line next to some public land as well as a State Park. Our brittany had put up three birds on the public land (huntable) and I was fortunate enough to drop all 3 birds. One bird dead out right and 2 were winged, they were all flying towards the state park. My brit retrieved the dead bird and then she started tracking winged birds and was stopped by the state park fence. I picked her up and placed her over the fence and told her to fetch, after what seemed like 20 minutes i could hear her coming and she appeared with a winged rooster in her mouth. I took and bird and told her to fetch again, thinking what the hell. She was gone longer and I had given up and started walking up to my dad when I heard my buddy yell "Brooke has the other bird", I ran down and sure as sh*t she had the third rooster which had a broken wing. To this day I would love to have watched her find those birds, I don't know if those were the ones winged but they both had freshly broken wings. That brittany was our best brit at finding winged birds, I know there were more pheasants in that state park and how she new which ones to retrieve is beyond me other than the scent of blood.

2) The next crazy story is about the Brittany my dad had when I was born, I was about 7 and he took me hunting in Indiana and I was carrying my Buffalo Bill BB gun. Our Brittany pointed a covey of quail and my dad knocked one down and Nellie was released to retrieve. Next we see here running crazily, whining and pawwing/scratching at the ground. As we got closer we could see that she was running on a shelf of ice and underneath we could see the winged quail running. My dad and I started to break the ice so she could make the retrieve. It was the funniest thing I think I have seen hunting. My description doesn't do it justice.

3) The last is with Nellie my dad's britt. We were hunting in Indiana and she was infront of hunting in tall grass. All of a sudden we could hear that she was fighting with some animal, my dad was calling for her but she wasn't coming and the fight was continuing. We quickened our pace and the noise stopped, he called her again and she emerged from the grass with what looked like a mink wrap around her neck. We she got to us we saw it was a woodchuck and she had killed. Again another crazy experience from the field.
 
I made a silly bet with my son if he won he got a puppy. I lost but had friend breeding his own line of gsp with ep nicked as a outcrops. Hard hunting trainable,albeit stubborn dogs. Anyways the dog would play fetch forever but only retrieved 3 downed birds all involved water. Dog would always find downed birds even stand on cripples but just wouldn't retrieve to hand.
Brother in law was keeping her and took her out 1 nice afternoon. Shot a rooster which flew a few hundred yards died and came down on the opposite shore of a big slough. Dog was off running the bank,waded,swam across a outlet,and retrieved the bird from the water. Back the same way run swim,run.
I was hunting early winter and shot a bird which fell across the river. Ice was way to thin for me but dog ran over picked up the bird and retrieved to hand.
Shot a bird which landed on a frozen slough. Dog ran out to it and ice broke. 18" of water but between slippery ice and soft bottom she couldn't get out. I went out breaking ice and then standing on ice then breaking ice. Stuck my barrel between her collar and neck and pulled her out with the bird.
 
When I was a kid, we lived at the edge of the river bottoms. Endless sloughs, tree lines and ditches. It was a dreamland for a kid with a gun! When I got my driver's license, I went to work for my buddy's dad who was a watermelon farmer. They lived 5 miles upriver also at the edge of the bottoms. This all will be pertain latter. So, my buddies' sister drug home a black lab puppy. I knew it was a lab, because at 16 I was already a self-proclaimed dog expert, owning a shorthair another buddies dad gave me. Flash forwards a couple years. The watermelon operation was on the other side of a paved road from the house. Multiple tractors, semis, not to mention 5 teenage boys in all kinds of jalopies. That dog only got hit once in all those years (read till the end). She was a constant tagalong! She knew ever house for miles that might pet her or get a treat. One day I drove in and dumped my shorthair out for an afternoon of hunting. My buddy gathered his stuff and gave his sister orders to keep Hogan (the Lab) inside until we got gone. That was the day the years long battel of wills started! We were a couple miles from the house when guess who showed up! Hogan was ecstatic to find us. From that day forward you could not lose her. She would flush the quail, scare away the ducks, splash around while we were fishing, just a general pain in the ass. She must have known by the way we were dressed whether we were going hunting /fishing or to town to chase girls! We would drive a mile towards town, turn back into the bottoms, and a couple hours later, she would find you! One evening we were going to catfish through the night. We'll fool her this time!! We drove towards town, turned away from the bottoms, made a series of maze like turns and went back to then river from a different direction. We then got into the community boat that belonged to another buddy's dad and motored a mile upriver. A few hours later, in the middle of the night we hear splashing. Shined a light towards the bank and here comes Hogan! She swam around the boat a couple times as if to say ha, found you! Swam back to the bank and splashed around the rest of the night, swimming out once in a while just enough make our night miserable. One day I was heading down to go fishing and there she was sitting on the road bank. She recognized my 53 chevy pickup and thought I was going to pull in. She ran down the bank and slipped on the wet grass and in front of the truck. That was the end of old Hogan or so I thought! My buddy's dad came out of the barn after hearing it. Her eyes glassed over and she started kicking, I knew she was dead. I was sick. We carried her to the barn and put her on some straw. I went ahead and went fishing but couldn't stop thinking about it. I decided to stop on the way back, apologize some more and maybe help bury her. When I pulled in, she came staggering out of the barn! I had only knocked her out. It took me years to realize that with some patience and a little training Hogan could have been the greatest asset a bunch of little river rats could have ever had!!
 
Nothing too outlandish but my favorite flush was in a corn field with a weedy draw down the middle in NW KS. I have a GSP mutt I picked up at the pound that doesn't point but will jump in the nastiest weed pile anyone has seen. There is a WIHA draw in the middle of a corn field that I regularly hunt. When we got to the end of the draw about 10 birds flew maybe 100 yards away to a lone deciduous tree in the middle of a wheat field surrounded by maybe a 30 yard circle of downed tree limbs and 6/7 foot tall weeds thick as thieves.

As we approached I saw alot of birds running off through the wheat stubble but figured there would still be a couple deep inside. We walked around 3/4 of the outside of the circle then the ole mutt jumped in the middle of the shit. It took her about 1 minute to work her way deep inside the jumble of limbs/weeds but eventually a rooster flushed and I was able to nail it. I'm not sure if I was more impressed with my dog navigating the downed limbs and weeds or if the Rooster flushing 10ft straight up from that mess of limbs/weeds.
 
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My rescue Brit and I had good pre-season training after I got him. He picked up my hand signals, whoa, and range. I thought we were ready to go in KS come November. We started off on opening day in a drought distressed field of corn stalks. I should have known better than to hunt it. Oh well, not so smart. As we covered the field I realized that my ecollar was not working, and with nothing to hunt in the field my dog just went back to the rig. Smarter than I. The season continued into December in this iffy manner. Then I got the repaired ecollar back. On a cold December day we were hunting by ourselves on a piece of walk-in in Graham County. 3-4 inches of snow from the day before covered the ground. As we worked south down a long draw I saw a plum thicket ahead at the fence row that looked promising. When we got 20 yards from the thicket, pheasants flushed out of it in all directions. My first shot dropped a leg on a bird that flew over the east horizon of the draw. My second shot dropped dead one that had flown north past me up the draw. I found and bagged that one and then looked around for my dog. Nowhere to be seen. After looking in all directions and calling for about two minutes, he came cantering over the east horizon of the draw with a cock in his mouth. The iffiness of previous days of the season vanished. I knew I had a true hunter - and a double!
 
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My weird story goes back to 1970 when my father, father in law, brother in law and I were grouse hunting in the NW mountains of NC. The weather was turning and starting to spit snow which turned into a 18" blizzard. We had my GSP Star and as we broke in to a small clearing we flushed three grouse. They flew about 50 yards and settled in a patch of rhododendrons, a common cover in those mountains. Star proceeded to go into the cover and soon pointed. We positioned ourselves around the cover where we could get shots when the birds flushed . My brother in law moved in to flush the birds which flushed one at a time despite the shooting. The dog which had never been steadied to wing and shot held her point until the last bird flushed. My father exclaimed that he had never seen anything like this and wondered how the dog knew to hold the point until the last bird flushed. I replied " SIMPLE- SHE COUNTED = THREE FLEW IN, - THREE HAD TO FLY OUT' I think we killed one of the three, which is above average for grouse hunting in those mountains and thick cover.
 
I just mentioned in a previous post that my older lab Parker retired before this season. A couple of weeks ago I went down into the basement for something and it smelled. I thought my floor drain P-trap had dried out so filled it with water. The next morning I was down there and the smell seemed a little worse. I thought about a dead mouse so I took a quick look around and didn't find any in the various traps. Later that day I was down there again and the smell seemed even worse, definitely something dead. I asked my wife to come down with her refined "smeller" capabilities and she confirmed that something had died. We made a very determined search with flashlights for forgotten mouse traps or mice that had just dropped dead behind shelving units and boxes. Nothing. She said "I wonder if Parker can find it" so we called him down. Now I'm not sure about you guys but we've never worked on "dead mouse" retrieves so I told him "dead bird-find the bird". In about 2 seconds he went around the corner of a work table and pointed at my hunting vest laying on a box. In the pouch was a dead chukar from an after season pen-raised hunt the week before. I guess I missed that one when I pulled the birds out of my vest at the end of the hunt. Good dog Parker!
 
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