Home Forums Birds & Dogs Hunting Dogs Taking out Lab Pup on First Pheasant Hunt

A friend of mine asked me to train his 9 month Lab for hunting. I last trained my only Lab 22 years ago, but he was a good one. I'm retired and had the time and remembered what I did and still had my training books. When I got him he had been obedience trained to sit, stay (sometimes), come, fetch and knew "drop-it". Working 3 days a week for an hour each day for the past month I have him: following a scent trail of a scent freshened pheasant wing wrapped around a training dummy and finding it, stopping on "whoa" and/or whistle, heeling, following, marking thrown dummies, solidly staying until giving the "back" command to retrieve a dummy, and have started him on "over" with hand signals. He understand "break" releases him from a command. He marks well had has a memory to retrieve 2 thrown dummies.

My friend has the perfect place to train a dog. He has a big lawn, with tall growth on the edges, a small stream with a beaver pond and a fairly large woodlot. He'll heel until I give him the command to "find the bird" where he takes off, nose to ground, looking for a scent. If he ranges out too far a 'whoa/whistle" will stop him until I catch up, where I release him. I did some e-collar conditioning and it really helped him hold his "stay" until the "break" or "back" command. He needs improvement on the "hold" command as he is not holding the dummy until it's delivered to hand. He's still wanting to drop it at my feet. We have worked him with fresh-killed pheasant and he's excited about birds, but even with a dead bird he's not solid with holding until given the "drop it" command. I'm still working on that.

I told the owner that it's time to get him in the field to see how he'll do and to hopefully get him on some State-stocked birds. We'll take him out on Sunday. With the Lab I had, it took him a couple days afield to put all that training together and to get the idea of what it's all about. My Lab was 1.5 yrs old on his first outing but I think this pup is ready at 10 months. Hopefully it will all start to gel for him and that we actually can find some left-over birds (they usually stock a day before the weekend and they get hunted pretty heavily).

How is he on gunfire ?

The dog's owner owns a small gun shop and has several ranges on his property. He says the dog is good with gunfire as he hears it quite frequently. I've not shot over him, so I'll take his word on that.

Hearing Gunfire in the distance and actually shooting over a dog are two completely different things. I would work with the dog slowly then, working up to shoot over him implementing it into his training with live birds..

He did just fine. He worked between the two of us and worked close. He responded to commands and explored thick cover. Unfortunately he did not put up any birds but he did find several piles of feather from predation by fox or coyote, so his nose was working well. We moved off to another location where another hunter put up a bird and it came our way. I fired at it but missed. The dog didn't flinch and watched the bird in flight. He worked hard all morning and didn't get bored. We left feeling very positive.

I later found out that it had been awhile since the State stocked that area with birds. I told the owner that he should take him to a preserve to guarantee that he'll encounter birds. I'm working with him again tomorrow at the owner's house and will do some scent training, work some more on hold, and do some land and water retrieves.