Home Forums Birds & Dogs Hunting Dogs labs and upland birds?

Anyone use labs for mostly upland birds? If so any advise. I have a 9 month old pup and looking forward to the season.

My Yellow Lab's main purpose is Pheasant, Grouse, Quail, and Dove, she has pointed since she was 8 weeks old. Does great in the water as well.

I currently have three labs. One is retired at 16 and 1/2, the others are 2 and 1/2 and 3 and 1/2. They have hunted upland birds in Michigan, Illinois and Kansas, mostly Pheasants and Pats, (Grouse). The Labs are great retrivers for all game including ducks and geese and for finding cripples. We hunt Pats in the Upper penisula of Michigan and the Labs have worked great for us. We have had Labs since 1969 and prior to that we had pointers. Labs need a LOT OF ATTENTION and soft handling, praise, petting and treats will do wonders. Spend LOTS of time with them and work on their training to acheive the type of hunter that you want. We think that the Labs that are an internal part of the family work the best in the field. We do not use e- collars so cannot offer any opinions on that subject.

Labs are typically flushers in the uplands. Some are bred to point, but that's a subject for its own thread. Assuming you have the former variety, there's not much training a birdy dog needs. You get basic obedience down and conditioned hold/retrieve or force-fetch (like you would do with any retriever). Then you work on quartering through cover, and staying within gun range.

A smart, birdy dog will learn to focus on likely cover and give the thin stuff a very brief look. You'd be amazed at what you don't need to teach a dog about hunting.

That is good to hear. Most of my hunting buddies have GSH's. So I am going to add the flushing dog to the mix. I hope to have a nice season coming up. Did think of getting some chuckers to train with. Not to hard to get a permit here in Maine to do that. Maybe get a jump on some training. I have to say labs are such a great people dog.