Vanishing Act

My sister's boyfriend Kyle made the trek to St. Cloud yesterday to go chase some roosters around. He brought his lab, which was relatively inexperienced and not highly trained, but did a nice job helping us beat down the cattails.

We went back to the same WMA that I kicked 10 hens out of last week, with quite different results. In contrast to last weekend's snowstorm, today was sunny and warm. The birds seemed to be making the most of these conditions and were on the run most of the day. We saw plenty of tracks and the dogs got on several scent trails of 100 yards or more, but nothing would fly.

Bandit had a tough time pushing through the 8+ inches of snow on the ground, but still had a good time regardless. While it would have been nice to see some birds, I'm still thankful that I was able to get out and enjoy what may be one of the last nice days we have this year.

Birdless Weekend

I had a free afternoon on Saturday and decided to take Bandit out to scout several spots in the vicinity of St. Cloud. I checked probably 10 different WMA's, most of which didn't look particularly promising for late-season roosters. The two that looked good were already occupied by groups of hunters so I kept on driving. I had forgotten to bring non-toxic shot, so I had to pass on a couple Waterfowl Producation Areas as well. After 160 miles, I ended up at a WMA near Paynesville that has great habitat but never seems to hold any birds. I heard one rooster cackling as it flushed out of range, and that was it for the day.

I made plans a couple weeks ago to go hunting with a buddy on Sunday, no matter what the weather. We started out just south of Avon, where we walked for about 30 minutes without even seeing tracks. We left and went to another WMA a bit West of there. Given the 30+ mph wind and dropping temps, we knew the birds would be in the thick stuff. There was a frozen lake ringed with cattails that looked promising, so off we went. We ended up flushing 10 hens, but no roosters. 6 of them flushed wild, while Bandit put the other 4 into the air. I've never seen that many hens without even one single rooster!

I don't really like to work cattails, but figured that's where the birds would be weathering the storm. We pushed a couple out of a red willow thicket, but most were holed up tight in the 'tails.

The thick cover and heavy snow tired Bandit out to the point where he just stayed close to me and would only venture out if he got on scent or I cast him into a birdy-looking piece of cover. Considering the fact that my 200lb self was having trouble walking through it, I wasn't expecting much.

I'm hoping the weather warms up a bit so I can get out a few more times before the season ends.

CRP

Why, when my taxes are paying for the Conservation Reserve Program to set aside land for wildlife, can I not hunt on this land? If the public is paying for this land, the public should be able to hunt on it.

Not only would this more than double the amount of public land that people are able to hunt (totally making that up, I have no idea how many acres are public vs. private), it would lessen the pressure on all public hunting grounds which would improve the hunting experience for everyone.

If people want to have truly "private" land, they should bear the financial burden. Some of these land-owners are even double-dipping by charging people to hunt on land that they're already receiving money for.

How Did You Train Him To Hunt?

That's a question I get a lot. The answer is pretty simple: I didn't. I don't think anyone can train a dog to hunt. Sure, you can train him to quarter, retrieve, and point, but if a dog doesn't have "hunt" built into his DNA, it's not something that can be taught. The desire is either there or it isn't.

Luckily for me, terriers are killing machines. They love nothing more than searching for and chasing small game of any kind.

That being said, Bandit was as hard-headed a puppy as you've ever seen. We went through obedience classes and endured hours upon weeks upon months upon years of training. In the meantime, we became best friends and got to the point where we understand what the other is thinking. It has made training (and life) a lot easier.

Sometimes when we're out pheasant hunting and he's tracking a runner he'll stop and look back at me as if to say, "I'm taking off after this thing, so if you want a chance to shoot it you better get your ass moving!". Then, if I don't stop him, he's off like a rocket. There's nothing more fun than seeing his tail wagging at warp speed in anticipation of a flush, and that's something that cant be taught.

Conditioning

I do most of Bandit's conditioning on our local mountain bike trails. For the most part, he just follows, usually mere inches from my rear wheel. Sometimes it can be a pain when I don't notice that he's bolted after a rabbit, but for the most part we both have a blast. He can easily hang with me (riding at full speed) for over an hour without even seeming winded.

I take this to mean he's in pretty good shape, but once we're out hunting he seems to fade after about 90 minutes. Maybe it's just that he pushes himself so hard during that time...and I'm certian that it has something to do with the fact that he's so small and is pushing through thick cover.

When I first got him, he was bulging muscles everywhere. He looked like he was on steroids! Now that he's 6 years old and has gone through a bout of Lyme Disease, he doesn't have nearly the same muscle tone he used to. This winter I'm going to try strapping a harness on him and letting him pull my on my XC skis. He used to pull me on my rollerblades all the time, so he should know what to do.

I'll switch to rollerblades in the summer, combined with some long slow runs to enhance his cardiovascular system. By next fall I hope to have him able to hunt hard for 3 hours.

Breakthrough

I discovered today that the key to getting a good retrieve is to offer no praise to Bandit until after the dummy has been delivered! I had gotten in the habit of praising him on his way to the dummy, then when he picks it up, then on his way back. He probably figured that he had done a good job and ready to go on his merry way.

After about 5-6 repetitions today where I didn't say anything during the retrieve (except "come" if he wanted to play with the dummy) he was delievering right to hand and wagging his tail at me waiting for praise. Sometimes it's something so simple...

I'd still like it if he wouldn't play with the dummy at all before returning with it, but we'll work on that.

Retriever Training

I've been working more on getting Bandit to retrieve birds to me. Sometimes he will bring them to within 5 feet of me and drop them, but if he sees that I'm close enough to grab the bird myself, he'll just stand next to it (if it's dead) or hold it down (if it's alive).

In the yard, he's an absolute retrieving fool. I can go out at night, pick up a stick, and throw it into a big pile of other sticks and he'll find the one that I threw. In the dark. Crazy. Tennis balls, raquetballs, frizbees...he fetches all of them perfectly. We even use him as a catcher when we play baseball outside!

He gets REALLY excited when I get out the dummies, and I've had trouble with him not returning immediately because he wants to play with the dummy, especially if there are pheasant wings attached. He also doesn't like to give it back, and will move his mouth away from me so I can't get it from him. It's really been a source of frustration for me, but I think we had a breakthrough last night.

I made him sit while I threw the dummy into some tall grass and sent him for the retrieve. He disappeared into the grass and started searching. I assumed he was still looking for the dummy, when I realized he was right next to me, dummy in mouth. I praised him and let him hold onto it for a while, then took it from him without issue.

Wanting to see if it was a fluke, I made him sit and threw the dummy again. As I watched him, he ran out to the dummy, picked it up, and made a big circle back to me. Again I let him hold it in his mouth for a bit, and he gave it up with no fuss.

It seems that all he wants is more time with the dummy in his mouth, a desire I can hardly fault him for. Previously, I would call him back to me immediately after I saw him pick up the dummy, and he would start playing around with it. It seems that if I don't say anything, he'll bring it back just fine. He obviously knows what is expected of him, and if letting him take a round-about route back to me with dummies/birds is what it takes to have him retrieving reliably, I'm OK with that.

Many trainers wouldn't find this an acceptable solution, but I personally like a bit of "attitude" in my dog, and if taking an extra 3 seconds to retrieve a bird makes him happy, I'm fine with it.

I've got two pheasants in the freezer, so I'll start working on those after another week or so of good retrieves on the dummies.

Next Year

This year all my days in the field were basically last-minute adventures. Unfortunately, many of these days weren't very productive because I didn't set aside enough time to go to places where the birds are thick. I would either drive 1 hour North for grouse or 1 hour South for pheasants, just to get on the fringe of the habitat, where birds are often scarce.

I'm already starting to make plans for next year to ensure that I get good hunting. A 4-day weekend in northern MN for the grouse opener, a 3-day weekend in southern MN for the pheasant opener. 5 days in South Dakota at the beginning of November. 4 days in northern MN for nore grouse at the end of November. Back to southern MN at the end of November. Back to South Dakota in the middle of December. Southern MN will be hit one last time over the holidays.

That's the plan, anyway. I'll be happy if I even get to half of them. With two small children and wife who works every other weekend, free time is at a premium. Luckily, my extended family lives in southern MN so it's easy to combine family visits with bird hunting. Only a few more years till I can start bringing my son on hunting trips. That will open up a lot of options.

Game Farm Pheasants

I took Bandit to Sand Pines Pheasants yesterday with Ted and Roman, where we had 8 birds set out. Yet again, my shooting left much to be desired. I don't think I hit anything on my first shot, but took down several on my 2nd or 3rd shots.

Bandit hunted hard and stayed close, except for once incident where he got on a runner in some standing corn and I didn't notice and two roosters got up out of range. No one to blame but myself for that one.

He also had a couple retrieves, but not to hand. He doesn't like feathers in his mouth, but he knows I want the bird, so he'll bring it to within about 5 feet of me and drop it. Good enough for me! He also is obsessed with biting the tail feathers of the birds after I pick them up. As you can see in the photo, only like 3 of birds have tail feathers left! Gotta work on that.

We had one bird that we wing-tipped and it sailed about 75 yards and hit the ground running. Bandit trailed it for close to 300 yards before finally rooting it out of a clump of grass and taking it down. Very nice work, and a lot of fun to watch!

Game farm birds aren't quite like wild pheasants, but since there aren't many wild birds in the immediate area, it's a fun way to spend the afternoon.

As we were nearing the end of the field, Roman flushed a bird that ended up flying into a tree after being hit. Here's the video of that. Only the first 30 seconds or so are interesting, but it was pretty funny!

Black Friday Pheasant Hunt

Bandit and I hit up a WMA just West of New Ulm, MN yesterday to try to get flush some pheasants. I didn't have to wait long! Bandit flushed a rooster less than 50 yards from the car. Of course, I gave it the ol' two-shot salute as he flew away. I've really got to work on my shooting for next year. The dog is doing his part, now I've got to do mine.

I didn't have any real idea of how we were going to hunt this odd-shaped WMA, so I basically just followed Bandit to where he thought we should go. He led me to a cattail slough where we immediately flushed 3 hens. Bandit was really birdy in the cattails, but couldn't get any more birds to flush. He's small enough to get underneath the thick stuff into the lanes that the pheasants use, but they must have really been running on him.

After 90 minutes of pushing through cattails he was pretty beat, so we worked some edge cover without seeing any birds, then headed toward a feed plot that I had seen. Unfortunately, there were two other hunters there by the time we arrived, so we took a round-about route back to the car, flushing one hen out the way.

Bandit seems to excel when I don't try to control him too much and just let him do his thing. That's hard to do with more than one hunter, but it works well when it's just the two of us. He seems to be having a bit of trouble distinguishing between fresh scent and old scent, because we got on quite a few "hot" scent trails that never materialized into anything. Although I guess it could have been that the birds had run ahead and flushed without me noticing.

Overall, I was quite please with our success at a heavily-used public hunting area. Next time maybe I'll hold up my end of the bargain and put some birds in the bag!

Bandit spent the rest of the day taking a well-deserved nap.

Quartering

Since I want to get a new dog in the near future, I figured I should prove to myself that I've got what it takes to do the training. I've been a bit resistant to doing any "formal" hunting training with Bandit because, well, he's a terrier. I no longer care. It's fun for me. It's fun for him. Other people get a kick out of it. Why not?

I've decided it's time I put some real effort into training Bandit to quarter properly in the field. He has little to no natural quartering instinct, so I know I've got my work cut out for me. When he was a pup, I did some work with a check cord to teach him to turn on the whistle, but never really taught him to quarter on his own.

All the techniques I've seen in videos and books calls for assistants and birds, neither of which I have. I've improvised by using dummies in conjunction with pheasant wings and scent. I start out by planting them in the field, then I work Bandit into the wind until he finds them all. Then I continue casting him side to side with two whistle toots, every once in a while tooting the whistle twice and throwing a dummy in the opposite direction.

He's getting the idea, but I think it's going to take several more lessons for it to sink in. I may try to enlist the help of my wife and son over the weekend to really drill the lessons home. Currently he's going about 10 yards to the left and right, and I need to double that.

I haven't the slightest idea how to acquire pigeons or quail for training, so I guess the dummies are going to have to suffice.

I know I've got to get Bandit on more birds before the end of the season, so I'm hoping to get him quartering well, then parlay that over to some game farm work in which he has some good success while quartering.

The one thing that I have in my favor is that Bandit is very mentally tough, and very tolerant of my half-assed training methods. When there are birds (or rabbits or squirrels or deer or...) around, nothing can break his spirit.

Grousin'

My buddy Pete and I took the day off work today to chase some grouse around Meadowbrooke WMA just north of Motley, MN. I didn't know if Bandit knew what a grouse smelled like, but he seemed to do fine.

The cover was pretty marginal, but we still ended up flushing two birds within gun range in 2 hours. This is only the 3rd time I've ever been grouse hunting, and the first time I've actually witnessed a real flush, so it was pretty exciting.

I was shooting my 20 gauge pump, which I haven't shot for quite some time. That, combined with the fact that grouse are incredibly quick, resulted in zero birds in the game bag.

I read in a book recently that "real" grouse hunters value a flush almost as much as a shot bird. I guess I'll just call myself a "real" grouse hunter then!

3 Years Ago

My nephew shot his first pheasant EVER over my Jack Russell Terrier. It was a great day. One of those days where the dog does exactly what he's supposed to.

I was 15 (I think) when I shot my first pheasant over a point by my uncle's Shorthair/Lab cross, Cedar. She's my favorite dog of all time that wasn't mine.

Dog Games

I zip-tied pheasant wings to several dummies and hid them out in the field behind our house. Little bugger found 'em all!

The first one I dragged for about 50 yards, and he had no trouble tracking it.

A Bit More

I grew up on a farm in Southern Minnesota where the pheasants were plentiful, as were the dogs on our farm. I've had too many labs to count (they don't always have long lives on a farm) and one phenomenal Springer.

My step-dad and brother were killed in a hunting accident when I was 16, so I no longer hunt ducks.

I moved to St. Cloud to attend college, where I met and subsequently knocked up my wife. When my son Max was 8 moths old I was cleared to get a dog, which I'd been begging for. My wife wanted a Pomeranian and I wanted a Springer. There was a short stalemate during which we decided to go look at a Jack Russell Terrier puppy. I don't think it's possible to visit puppies without bringing one home, so that's how we came to own Bandit.


I was determined to make the best of the situation, so I began the arduous task of teaching him to hunt. To my surprise (and the surprise of EVERYONE around me), he excelled.

The defining moment of Bandit's young life was a day out at the game farm when he was less than 2 years old. We were hunting with a family member and his well-trained lab. 12 birds were released, 10 of which were flushed by my little white lightening bolt (much to the dismay of the lab's owner!).



He's got an excellent nose and is exceedingly intelligent, almost to a fault. However, he's not without his flaws. He doesn't like to retrieve a bird that's nearly his size, although he will on occasion, albiet begrudgingly. Also, due to his size (19 pounds and 14 inches tall) he has trouble in the "thick stuff" where pheasants invariably seem to be hiding out. He's a bit of a "sprinter" like his dad, and will run balls-out for about 15 minutes. If he's not hot on birds in that amount of time it's pretty tough to keep him motivated to hunt.

Bandit is currently nursing a rash on his belly, which he gets frequently due to skin allergies. For as much as he loves to hunt, his poor little body isn't always quite cut out for it.


We work through our issues and we have a lot of fun together. We've been out hunting wild pheasant 3 times this year on public land, but have only flushed hens. We've also been to the game farm a few times, where our success was obviously much better.

I've recently decided that there may be room in my heart and home for another hunting dog, and have been putting a lot of thought into which breed will suit me the best. More on that later...

Hola!

I'm Taylor, and I'm a blogger. It's good to be here.

I've spent the last several years blogging primarily about cycling on my other blog at tenacious-t.blogspot.com.

After competing at nationals the last two years, I'm a bit burned out on cycling and have decided to get back to my roots. Namely, upland bird hunting with excellent dogs.

Since most cyclists don't care about hunting (and vice versa...likely even more so!) I decided to start a second blog to chronical my upland adventures with my Jack Russell Terrier, Bandit.