"Ken Fortenberry" wrote


The B&W is a good idea. I bought orange plastic dummies because I
figured she could see it in B&W against the sky but would have a
hard time picking it out of green grass.



One thing that surprises many hunters is that the best marking dogs in the
world are started by being encouraged to look for the retrieving object with
their eyes as they run into the area of the fall ..... not just their nose.
Pup finds mom's milk supply with her nose as the first act of life, and dogs
naturally use their noses constantly, but they don't naturally use their
eyes nearly as much for hunting. Strange as it may seem you, as a hunter,
you want to avoid building an animal that hunts ONLY with it's nose.

When she gets to the point where she's running, ... head high up and
looking, ... into the area of the fall and nearly always sees the white
bumper/bird on the way there, it's time to substitute the orange for a
while, and start working in deeper cover so that the nose must be used.
That head high approach will not only help her succeed by doubling the
senses she's using, it will improve scenting ability over her more natural
nose to the ground approach that will too soon develop if she doesn't learn
to look too, and keep that head up in the air flow doing so. ( nose to
ground = problem unless she's actually on a 'trail' ... it's a poor position
to scent anyting but very close things from ... watch a big going hard
running, head high, pointer whip his head around from 40 yards or more as
his heald high nose sucks in bird scent ... think about the times that
you've followed a head down Springer following a trail that curved back
upon itself and ended up at a bird that probably would have been smelled and
flushed sooner if Fido's nose had been up in the breeze .... head down
'trailng' is good for trailing and only trailing .. not for marking, or for
finding a trail to follow in the first place ... 'nose' is a very overrated
thing by hunters, which is not to say it isn't greatly important )

National quality dogs that can go out and do quadruple retrieves with birds
across incredible terrain changes and in heavy cover at hundreds of yards,
are maintained ( to a degree ) and re-sharpened when they start to weaken by
being given single retrieves of white pigeons on low cover to get those eyes
working again and that head up in the breeze.


So, use situations where only the nose can possibly know, for sure ..... but
don't sacrifice other senses in the process

You are on the right track if, when the retrieve is in cover, the area she
chooses to start hunting is clearly the result of paying attention to her
eyes ... "it looked like it landed near this bush" ... and she neither stops
to hunt any place that smells a bit interesting nor only stops when she wind
scents the retrieve as she runs past it with no intention of stoppping at
the visual clues her eyes should have given her if she was using them

Larry L ( who has seen many 'hunting dogs' come back for tune ups after a
season in the pheasant fields that couldn't do a short mark on short grass.
If they happened to scent something interesting on the way, even though the
bird to be retrieved was in plain sight a few yards away they'd take forever
to find it as the circled around following the lead of their first priority
sense, smell )

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I just flashed back on a photo-memory of Jenny hunting around in front of me
and off to my right quarter, turning hard to the left, accelerating to full
speed and vaulting over the berm of an irrigation ditch as the rooster that
heard her coming took flight. He didn't make it far. I looked to make
sure Jenny did her sit to flush thing properly, than raised the 20 ga and
managed to connect. Again I looked to the dog to make sure steady to shot
and fall was being maintained before sending her to retrieve. I ended up
giggling nearly too hard to issue the release as she fought to spit out the
mouthful of PT nymph material she had grabbed as the bird shot up out of the
ditch.

The total distance from where she turned towards the scent and where she sat
to watch the shot was at least 60 yards, my far right quarter to nearly too
far to my left side. That kind of 'nose' doesn't happen when said nose is
planted on the ground.

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Have fun with the pup and remember that gun dog training is a journey and
that journey itself can be more fun than the destination