I appreciate the original question in this post, and the answers in the resulting thread, because I bought an 8-week old bird dog pup in late January. With the miserably long winter we had in northeast KS, what with all the deep snow we got, I didn't get much done in the way of field work due to concerns about the pup taking a bad chill from constant contact with deep snow.
I've worked my pup a few times on pen-raised chukars concealed in grass, and this has been very exciting both for my pup and me. First exposure to a hidden chukar, she locked up hard. However, no gunshots were fired until the flushed bird was flying off with the pup in hot pursuit -- and the shot was from a .22 blank pistol. From my pup's reaction it's doubtful the gunshot sound even registered.
I greatly appreciate the comments about NOT taking a pup to a trap or skeet range for the purpose of acclimating the dog to the sound of gunfire; I had been considering doing exactly that as a way of accelerating her adjustment to gunfire noise, but now I think I'll ditch the shooting range idea and stick with the live bird training (expensive though it is).
The important thing is I want my pup to be as ready as a pup can be once real hunting for wild birds starts. Pheasants are gonna drive her nuts, I'm sure of it. But wild pheasants drive just about every hunting dog nuts, so we'll just go out there this fall and do what we can do.
