Slowing your dog

M

mlmich@pldi.net

Active member
How do you get your dog to slow down when they are on hot scent? My dog wants to put it in over drive when he is trailing a hot pheasant and no amount of anything will slow him down except the e-collar which will effectively kill the hunt.
Any suggestions?
 
That's always been that age old million dollar question in the wild pheasant hunting world especially these educated bird now. The easy answer is to try and keep up with them. but that's easier said than done especially for my old ass.. I don't know the answer. I've seen guys that have trained their dog to sit on whistle blast, usually waterfowl dogs. They will blast that whistle the dog will sit until you catch up but that takes a ton of training. I'm interest to hear what the top minds in the pheasant hunting world right on these pages have to suggest
 
He is five and does point pretty much, but will on occasion blink on Quail and than circle back and reset. It beats all I've ever seen!
 
Old timers would tie a log chain to them! I would get rid of a dog and ty again before I would do that. When I was young, I'd just jog for hours on end. The truth is, you either pour it on, hunt him hard and hope he gets over it. Or whistle break him, similar to what Gobler said.
 
You can adjust his range with the e collar. You can also train to stop and hold when he hits sent. Both will take a great deal of effort. It's probably the most common problem in the sport. Some dogs figure it out, some don't.
 
If the problem is that he is ranging further than you can see, and you can't find him, a GPS collar is a solution for that. I prefer that to the constant beeping of various beeper collars.
 
A combination of me running behind him and beeping his collar with a couple "slow your ass down" calls thrown in. I am 32 and in good shape so I know as I get older I will need to figure out a better way. He is a waterfowl dog from Sep-Nov and then an upland dog from Nov-Jan so we will work on the whistle sit this offseason. Sounds like a good idea (he just turned 1)
 
I know others use launcher training to make dog more cautious. I haven't done it personally. If the dog has hunted a lot and been exposed to a lot of bird encounters, and is still running through them, it might not be in its nature to be cautious. Maybe rewards in the form of treats and affection and giving him a bird when he acts appropriately (all positive reinforcement methods) could turn that around?
 
I had a lab once that was impossible to slow down once she got on a hot pheasant smell. It all would happen so quickly that I didn't really have time to know or understand what was going on before it was over. I learned to keep an eye on her at all times and pace myself to her all the time. That wasn't an issue as long as she was hunting quail, chukar, huns etc, but a running pheasant..... I needed to keep my head on a swivel and my legs loosened up.

Once she got to old to hunt I started googling "slow" methodical" "pointing" hunting dogs and ended up with a Griffon that is exactly those things and she actually slows down when she gets on a running pheasant and I can read her like a book, mostly because she is always within 30 yards of me.

In short, I am to old and slow to keep up with a lab and ditto with a long ranging setter. Perhaps my next dog might even be slower like a clumber spaniel or St. Bernard.
 
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Drew said:
I had a lab once that was impossible to slow down once she got on a hot pheasant smell. It all would happen so quickly that I didn't really have time to know or understand what was going on before it was over. I learned to keep an eye on her at all times and pace myself to her all the time. That wasn't an issue as long as she was hunting quail, chukar, huns etc, but a running pheasant..... I needed to keep my head on a swivel and my legs loosened up.

Once she got to hold to hunt I started googling "slow" methodical" "pointing" hunting dogs and ended up with a Griffon that is exactly those things and she actually slows down when she gets on a running pheasant and I can read her like a book, mostly because she is always within 30 yards of me.

In short, I am to old and slow to keep up with a lab and ditto with a long ranging setter. Perhaps my next dog might even be slower like a clumber spaniel or St. Bernard.
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My newfoundland would have been to your liking. He would walk ahead of me, slowly. If he started getting a little too far, I'd say "Ben, stay closer" and he'd comply. When he would get on scent, he'd track it. When he got to the bird, he'd stop several yards away, pause for about 3-5 seconds, and then flush.

He was a great retriever in the yard. With birds, he'd mark them (maybe better than any dog I've had), find them, and hold them, waiting for me to approach and take them.
 
First thing you can do starting today is dont shoot bumped birds.. I deal with this all the time on blues, on one hand they are running so tracking and relocating are happening fast, and if they lock up on first scent that bird is gone. It’s a tough decision not to shoot after so much was done right.
 
I try to keep up and let it happen, one day when my legs give out it won’t be possible. My dog tracked and pushed a rooster a few weeks ago in crp all the way across the field, couple hundred yards. In the end it didn’t work out but we got the bird up right out of range, my thought was what a hunt!
 
Limitless said:
My newfoundland would have been to your liking. He would walk ahead of me, slowly. If he started getting a little too far, I'd say "Ben, stay closer" and he'd comply. When he would get on scent, he'd track it. When he got to the bird, he'd stop several yards away, pause for about 3-5 seconds, and then flush.

He was a great retriever in the yard. With birds, he'd mark them (maybe better than any dog I've had), find them, and hold them, waiting for me to approach and take them.
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Perhaps we will all be hunting Newfoundlands one day.
 
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