Pheasant Hunting
We took Luna out for a pheasant hunt last week and she was amazing.She is only four months old and does a great job of retrieving. Granted, she was bred to be a hunting retriever but I have to say I was impressed. The facility placed 5 hen pheasants for us in a field and marked them with flags so we could help Luna learn about finding and flushing birds. Her nose works great but when she found the first bird she got real close to it wiggled a bunch and looked at us expectantly. We told her to 'get the bird' but she just didn't get it. So we had to give it a gentle nudge and it took off, she went into action and chased after it. In all the excitement, I forgot to take a shot at it. She found the next four birds and flushed them. We were excellent shots and as each bird fell, Luna was on top of it and brought it back to us while running full speed. But when she got to us she taunted us with the bird, getting close to our hand and then darting away. She knows what 'Leave it' means but decided not to obey. Thankfully, she does have a soft mouth so she didn't really do any damage to the birds once we were able to get them from her.
The second set of 5 birds were not marked so it was really testing her bird nose abilities. She did great. She found 3 birds, flushed them and raced after them as they fell out of the sky. In total we were able to harvest 6 of the eight birds she flushed. And she retrieved every one of them. This is a major improvement over her first pheasant hunting experience. I wasn't there but Russ took her to this same ranch and did the same procedure with marked and unmarked birds. She could find them but didn't retrieve them. Russ even had to get the birds and put them in her mouth so that she knew what to do. So in only 3 weeks she went from not retrieving to racing after them like an old pro. All that with no formal training on retrieving. She is a great dog!
I cannot wait to get her out in the field with more realistic conditions. We have pheasants on the property and maybe by fall there will be enough for us to hunt and try her out in 'wild' areas rather than put and take ranches. Still the game farm bird method is a great way to get Luna trained/practiced and we get a great day outside and some tastey pheasant for dinner. Luna loved the cooked pheasant livers too!
The second set of 5 birds were not marked so it was really testing her bird nose abilities. She did great. She found 3 birds, flushed them and raced after them as they fell out of the sky. In total we were able to harvest 6 of the eight birds she flushed. And she retrieved every one of them. This is a major improvement over her first pheasant hunting experience. I wasn't there but Russ took her to this same ranch and did the same procedure with marked and unmarked birds. She could find them but didn't retrieve them. Russ even had to get the birds and put them in her mouth so that she knew what to do. So in only 3 weeks she went from not retrieving to racing after them like an old pro. All that with no formal training on retrieving. She is a great dog!
I cannot wait to get her out in the field with more realistic conditions. We have pheasants on the property and maybe by fall there will be enough for us to hunt and try her out in 'wild' areas rather than put and take ranches. Still the game farm bird method is a great way to get Luna trained/practiced and we get a great day outside and some tastey pheasant for dinner. Luna loved the cooked pheasant livers too!
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