Until Saturday, about all Hank's been up to is a day or so a week pointing pigeons in launchers. He's gotten to the point where he points them and just doesn't barge in and try to grab them. This Saturday, my schedule and the weather cooperated so him and I headed to a local preserve. I had 5 quail put out and marked. He found all 5 and had 3 good points. The other two he pointed but broke too early. Not sure if he's backpedaling or if the bird moving in front of him was just too enticing... smile Either way we were able to bring 4 of the 5 home. One flushed low and inline with him so I wasn't able to get a shot off. We tried our best, but couldn't turn it up later. All in all I was pretty happy with his finding and pointing of birds. Now the retrieving part... frown

He found all of them and started bringing them to me, like he's always done in the past. However, this time he started spitting them out before he got to me. Not sure why he decided to start doing that. He got to where he wouldn't even pick them back up! So, I gave him the sit command, placed the bird in his mouth made him hold it for a bit before giving him the Give command and taking the bird from him. Any suggestions/critiques of if this was the proper thing to do would be greatly appreciated!

I have a few pigeons in the freezer so I thawed one out and did some short retrieving drills in the yard on Sunday after a few bumper tosses. A few times with the pigeon and some treats as rewards and he started bringing it back to me and holding it until I gave the Give command. I'll keep up on this if you folks think this is a good fix.

Now to ask a question. When he does pick up a bird, he's crunching them a bit more than I'd like. Suggestions on how to start working on fixing that? He does also chew his bumpers a bit when retrieving them. The crunching didn't seem to be a big problem with pheasants, but with quail it was too much. Looking forward to hearing some suggestions.

Next Saturday we're going to be back at the same place but for a couple of roosters instead. Now that the days are getting longer I should have a bit more time to get him to the conservation club and we're going to start the process of working on being steady to flush. They have a training table/board setup there that was built for this, so we'll be starting that.

All in all it was a pretty good/fun day!
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