Let's share some of our Favorite Dog Stories:

DarryH said:
I was hunting with a good friend and his new German Shorthair. This dog was still in the training phase, and had little field time. He did keep his nose to the ground, but that day the only thing he would hunt, and find, were field mice! I was teasing my friend how he had a pretty good mouse dog on his hands. Sadly, that dog developed serious health problems and had to be put down less than a year later. I have only had the chance to hunt with dogs about a half dozen times. I will say that I got more enjoyment watching the dogs work than I did in shooting pheasants.
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I learned a few years ago that field mice actually have a similar scent to pheasants. A trainer friend of mine taught me this. He said it was very common for young dogs to point field mice because of that. Really helped me have better patience when my pup started working field mice.
 
This is my Chocolate Lab Duke. In this picture he was only 10 or 11 months old. He's the first bird dog I've trained. Had a few bird dogs as a kid, but they were Dad's dogs. Duke's an awesome bird dog, and amazing family dog. Last year he made huge strides from our first outing in September for sharptail where he would only range out about 10 feet from me to the last hunt of the season where he was tracking down wild roosters like a veteran.
One of my favorite outings with Duke so far was last year's opening day for pheasants. My best friend who had a litter mate of Duke's and I went hunting together. The two dogs started the day just wanting to play and not focused on hunting if we were hunting close. So we separated and started hunting. Conditions were pretty tough for pheasant hunting. Cover wasn't great, and fresh snow smashed a lot of the cover. But Duke and I gave it a shot. We were walking and hunting a cross wind, and Duke turns on a dime and works up to this small clump of grass. He noses up to it and kind of locks on point, and then backs off a touch and then goes back on point on this clump of grass, and then a rooster jumps up, and I shot it. He made a good retrieve. Pretty awesome. Well we kept hunting and made a hike after finding some better cover with my buddy. Well while we're hiking my buddy sees a few pheasants running ahead, and he's trying to get his dog into position to smell them and try to get them up. Well his pup was oblivious and the two pheasants jump up and he shoots them. Duke saw the first one and ran after it and made about a 125 yard retrieve bringing me the one rooster. My buddy had to work pretty hard to get his pup on the second rooster to be retrieved. Duke's retrieve was pretty impressive for such a young pup. We kept walking and again while walking I watch Duke turn on a time into the wind and his gate changed, and I look and see rooster hunkering down in some cover and Duke points it and then I flush it and shoot it. Good retrieve again. We walked about another 200 yards, and Duke smells a pheasant and it starts running. Duke runs after it and almost caught it before it flew. I shot it and he brought it to me. After that my buddies dog and Duke's litter mate kept wanting to play, and Duke never again gave him the attention. His nose kept to the ground and he hunted hard. It was as if the a switch was flipped, and he knew and understood the game. So fun to see that change.


On one of our last hunts of the season he lead me to some roosters and I took one shot and dropped a rooster. He came back to me from a completely different direction from where I was shooting at the rooster. I was trying to figure out why he made such a loop to bring me this rooster. Well I grab the rooster and its head is up and I ring its neck. Well Duke then runs towards where I shot, and brings me back the rooster I actually shot. I hunted the rest of the day thinking he'd brought me a bird someone else lost, but when I started cleaning the birds later that day the one rooster had no bb's. No broken wings, no broken legs or any issues. He'd caught this rooster I was pretty impressed that he caught this rooster.

This year our first outing was for Sage Grouse in Western Wyoming, and he was a stud. Kept finding birds that we would have walked right past had he not been there. My dad, sister, and my cousin all walked around and didn't see any birds. My cousin's dog wasn't able to get on any birds and would get discouraged when he wasn't having success. Duke kept hunting hard even when times were tough. Made me proud. Definitely makes me look like a better trainer than I am.

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Hey, As I stated in an earlier post, my Brittany Libby and I with three of my cousins went to ND for a week of bird hunting. Long trip on planes for Lib, Fairbanks Ak to Detroit on the way there and Minneapolis back home. She's a great traveler though. We hunted public land or PLOTS land only. We had some pretty tough weather, three of the days we had snow, 15-25 mph winds and it was about 20 degrees colder than normal. The rest of the days just colder than normal and windy. For a dog that's only hunted grouse and ptarmigan she did an awesome job on pheasants. She's 9 and a half years old, she hunted hard, most of the days she hunted all day. It was a great trip, hanging out with my cousins that I don't get to see that often, stopped and visited with a friend in WI and best of all watching Lib do her thing. She made a couple awesome retrieves on birds that were just winged, one of those birds glided a long way and hit the ground running. By the time we got to where the bird went down she wasn't in sight, looked at my harming, she was over a hundred yards away. I went after her while my cousin looked around the area the bird went down in. I was about 40-50 yards away and I see her coming through the brush with a live bird. The other retrieve wasn't that far, but I thought that bird was stone dead when I shot it. The cover there was pretty thick and she's a small Brit, so when I got to where the bird went down and I didn't see her I was a little surprised. A minute later I see her running like mad 50-60 yards ahead of me, then I see the bird try to fly, she snagged it and brought it back. Man, I love that dog! We all had a great trip and we're starting to plan next years trip, we are thinking about hunting ND and SD next year Take Care
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Ricky C said:
Hey, As I stated in an earlier post, my Brittany Libby and I with three of my cousins went to ND for a week of bird hunting. Long trip on planes for Lib, Fairbanks Ak to Detroit on the way there and Minneapolis back home. She's a great traveler though. We hunted public land or PLOTS land only. We had some pretty tough weather, three of the days we had snow, 15-25 mph winds and it was about 20 degrees colder than normal. The rest of the days just colder than normal and windy. For a dog that's only hunted grouse and ptarmigan she did an awesome job on pheasants. She's 9 and a half years old, she hunted hard, most of the days she hunted all day. It was a great trip, hanging out with my cousins that I don't get to see that often, stopped and visited with a friend in WI and best of all watching Lib do her thing. She made a couple awesome retrieves on birds that were just winged, one of those birds glided a long way and hit the ground running. By the time we got to where the bird went down she wasn't in sight, looked at my harming, she was over a hundred yards away. I went after her while my cousin looked around the area the bird went down in. I was about 40-50 yards away and I see her coming through the brush with a live bird. The other retrieve wasn't that far, but I thought that bird was stone dead when I shot it. The cover there was pretty thick and she's a small Brit, so when I got to where the bird went down and I didn't see her I was a little surprised. A minute later I see her running like mad 50-60 yards ahead of me, then I see the bird try to fly, she snagged it and brought it back. Man, I love that dog! We all had a great trip and we're starting to plan next years trip, we are thinking about hunting ND and SD next year Take CareView attachment 222374
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Awesome!!
 
Had a nice trip to NE Montana for a few days. Came home with a limit of pheasants and a few Huns.

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I was going to take my two older GSP's because my younger female rockstar was in full heat. Well- my big male sprained or strained his front right leg because he wiped out on my snow covered driveway. Couldn't take him. So I took the old girl and the dog in heat.

Well THAT was a mistake. My little girl Pearl went bonkers. We were hunting around a dried pond- cattails on the edge and buckbrush on a slope to my left side. She went on point and two birds took off running and she went full bore chase. Two roosters blew out and then Pearls mind was blown more. She hit the hillside about 75 yards from me and blew roosters out like a 4th of July fireworks show. Just nucking futz. She went up and down side to side and 20-50 birds blew off. She looked like a pinball stuck bouncing rapidly between 4 bumpers, just nucking futz.

Note to self- leave b*tches in heat home. Period.

My old girl Dutch (I call her my Honda bird dog) got the job done. I benched Pearl and hunted Dutch three straight days. She's 8 but worked like a 5 year old. Just steady, not fancy, her pointing is subtle- just a turned head. We knocked 'em out. She hunts well with anybody. My 67 year old pal loves this girl and has hunted under her for 6 years. Just a mellow old soul. We took over 20 birds with her.

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Best bird numbers I've seen in a decade. We're going back in December for a late season hunt.
 
Now that I'm done big game hunting (kind-of, headed out to help a friend with late season archery), it's time to focus on birds. Took the puppy out for his first hunt (he's 5 months old). We were primarily chasing chukars but only found Huns and they wouldn't hold for anything (typical.... right). We stopped at a small tract on the way home that my friend has permission to hunt and my little buddy got his first whiff of wild roosters. They were flushing wild and I had little hope of getting a shot. Little buddy (Arrow) pointed a ditch bank that had held multiple birds that had already flushed out. I was happy to see him doing his thing but didn't expect anything to be in there still. I was surprised to have had 1 young rooster pop out 8-10' from his point and somehow managed to hit it. We all laugh and joke about my inability to operate a shotgun, but usually it's no laughing matter (I don't dedicate enough time to practicing).
Arrow shows real signs of promise, he's going to be a good dog.
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When I was 15 years old my grandfather gave me my first real gun other than a 22 it was a double barrel 12 gauge my first hunt would be a duck hunt in Lake okeechobee with my father we took our boat out what what seem to be miles down these canals we ended up setting up our table and chairs and everything on the small island at that time we had a Labrador named Daisy who had never hunted after sitting for nearly an hour and not seeing anything a coot swam out in front of us so my dad shot it walked out in waist deep water retrieved the duck and showed our dog then we set it down next to us and continue to watch the decoys not paying attention to the dog after several minutes it just seemed rather quiet and still so we looked around and Daisy was gone my father and I were in a panic we knew she would be eaten by an alligator after seeing many on the way in well after calling and searching a short distance behind us here she comes through the bushes with a live mallard duck in her mouth we shot an old coot and it seem like she was saying hey the good ducks are over here
 
I've got quite a few stories about my dogs, but here's one from 2 weekends ago.

It was a "solo" weekend at the farm where I'm privileged to be allowed to hunt in central SD. After struggling to find birds that weren't jumping way out of range the day before, we had finally found a good pocket of roosters in thick cover and got 3 birds in relatively short order. The following morning, I got my camper hooked up and ready to pull back to western SD. As soon as legal shooting hours arrived, we took a quick walk to see if I could add a couple of birds to the cooler for the drive home. First up was my 8 year old GWP, Piper, who quickly found a nice, mature bird in a food plot, pointed it, and made a nice retrieve after I dropped the bird in a harvested field. As we were wrapping up our short walk, I was caught off guard by a big, wily, longtailed rooster who waited until the last instant before making a dash for it. I swung hard and slapped the trigger and watched the bird go down. In an instant, my 2 year old Pointing Lab, Remi, was streaking toward the downed bird. Suddenly, the rooster was back in the air, somehow, flying the low-to-the-ground dipsy-doodle flight that usually ends up with the bird back on the ground in 15-20 yards. I've often marveled at how fast Remi is, and this pursuit was no exception. 10 feet behind the still flying rooster meant I didn't dare take a follow-up shot. The bird refused to go down, with Remi equally determined to not let it escape. Eventually, both Remi and the rooster disappeared over the crest of a hill at least 300 yards away. I thought for sure the bird had gotten away. Suddenly, Remi appeared out of the tall prairie grass with the bird in his mouth, pleased as punch with himself! I could not have been more proud of both of my dogs that morning! I know for sure that second bird would have been lost if I'd been hunting without a dog. This picture was taken probably 15 minutes after our short but exciting morning hunt. Can't wait to get back out again!

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