A PSA For Rookie Hunters

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148 – August, 2023

By Chris Robinson

So, your fine conformation champion gun dog has finished his or her show career and has had some field training. (The term “gun dog” is used because not all bird hunting dogs–Airedales and Standard and Miniature Poodles would be prominent exceptions–are included the sporting group; and not all dogs in the sporting group hunt birds as the Lagotto Romagnolo is a truffle hunter.) Maybe your gun dog even owns a hunt test title. Now, you’ve decided, it’s time to find out if your dog can actually do the job the breed was developed to do.

Odds are pretty good, however, that both your dog and you are rookies at hunting so you’ve done the sensible thing which is partner with an experienced hunter. In the best of all worlds, that individual also has an experienced and well-trained hunting dog to help your dog learn this new game as hunting is not like hunt tests although the pointing breed and spaniel tests come fairly close. Retriever hunt tests, however, should have the word “hunt” in quotes because that part of the title is, at best, a joke. Retriever tests bear little resemblance to actually hunting either waterfowl or upland birds–but particularly upland birds–and require considerable retraining to be good hunting dogs.

We had a classic example of the value of an “instructor dog” last fall. My nephew’s Chesapeake is an experienced waterfowl hunter but was a total novice as an upland bird hunter. Bo, my Ches, on the other hand is a very experienced pheasant hunter. After an hour or so of following Bo around on the shooting preserve where we’re members, watching him find, flush and retrieve several pheasants, Stella had pheasant hunting down pat. It was a pleasure watching her go from “What are we doing out here?” to “Hey, I know how to do this” in such a brief time span.

Click here to read the complete article
148 – August, 2023

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