Looking Forward

[Duck Engr]

Have a decision to make this off-season with my boat. Got it welded up after the subfloor rubbed a hole through the bottom. Discovered what I already figured, which is that the bottom near the back is very thin. This complicated the welding efforts. Have it patched up now but know it’s just a matter of time before I hit the wrong logjam and she leaks again. With my kids getting old enough to go with me I’m considering getting a motor with reverse. I don’t want to scare them going down river and having to run into stuff to get stopped when i zig when I should’ve zagged. For reverse with a mud motor, I’m thinking I’ll need a tall transom boat (current is short transom) to prevent backwash over the transom when in reverse. So, having said all of that, considering selling my current setup and getting another go devil 1844 with round chine but tall transom and a go devil FNR motor. But my goodness are the proud of them now. For what I have in my whole setup I couldn’t even buy a motor today.

Unrelated, I worked June on some caged quail today and her nose really seems to be getting strong. May try to run her with my dad’s pointers next weekend to see if she can pick up the game from them. Dad said they moved 3 coveys yesterday, which is a big day for our farm after the timber cutting operation this September. No doubt june would already have it down if I could work her more often but so it is.

[Rick]

Boat's not growing a new hull and prices aren't going down. "Just sayin'..."

Re: June, you and your father may know something I don't (OK, many things), but I always kept things just between my pointing pups, the birds and I until we had their manners on game well conditioned before adding the complications other dogs can add into the mix.

[5 stand]

Glad you're getting a new boat...
On the upgrades: get the blue lights, I don't like the green ones... Don't zig when you should zag, get the Bose speakers...


Unrelated: Did you get the backyard pony for the Dove Princess? Please post some pictures of said princess and pony...


Hope you and June have a big time trying to find those quail... I think Moe has a good nose, just don't know how much he uses it.
"I tell him all the time he's dang good at running, but I have my doubts about his smelling..."

[Deltaman]

With the season so slow this year, now might be a goodtime to find a lightly used rig.

[5 stand]

With the season so slow this year, now might be a goodtime to find a lightly used rig.

Joking aside, the first thing that came to mind was used also...

[Duck Engr]

Boat's not growing a new hull and prices aren't going down. "Just sayin'..."

Re: June, you and your father may know something I don't (OK, many things), but I always kept things just between my pointing pups, the birds and I until we had their manners on game well conditioned before adding the complications other dogs can add into the mix.

Haha you sound like my buddies, really twisting my arm!

Yep I agree that’s certainly the preferred method had I spent more time with her in this first year. Hunting off of horseback, we’ve found that if we stay on check chord and foot too long, it creates a “shoe shiner” that won’t range far enough for our purposes. We’ve had good luck with the “throw em in the mix with an experienced dog” method while wearing a check chord. Usually how it happens is the experienced dog will point, I’ll call the young dog over once I’ve dismounted my horse, and then grab the end of the check chord for any steadying needed. If the young dog happens upon the birds first and runs them up, that’s ok. Has been our experience that causes their fire to burn brighter and makes them run harder. We’ll whoa em on the next covey. We don’t have enough birds to worry about them running them up too frequently. The experienced dogs know where to look. As with everything, “your results may vary.”

[Duck Engr]

Glad you're getting a new boat...
On the upgrades: get the blue lights, I don't like the green ones... Don't zig when you should zag, get the Bose speakers...


Unrelated: Did you get the backyard pony for the Dove Princess? Please post some pictures of said princess and pony...


Hope you and June have a big time trying to find those quail... I think Moe has a good nose, just don't know how much he uses it.
"I tell him all the time he's dang good at running, but I have my doubts about his smelling..."

Haha don’t get me started on carnival-looking duck boats with music playing!!

I know too many who are good at running and forget the smelling part too!

As for the dove princess, no pony to report thankfully. She and her brother decided she needed a haircut a few weeks back, so she’s missing 8-10” from her locks, much to her poor mother’s chagrin. She’s recently discovered nail polish and takes it rather seriously

[Duck Engr]

With the season so slow this year, now might be a goodtime to find a lightly used rig.

Will certainly be a used hull! I don’t mind going new on the motor. That way I know any and all things that’d happened to it along the way.

[5 stand]

The "princess" part sure does seem fitting...

e22194fc9832d2a467368b2419ccb0f3 dove princess.jpg

Princess updates, never disappoint, thank you very much buddy... I'll repeat myself made my evening...

[5 stand]

The bobwhite quail that we have been hunting over the years have been very forgiving, Moe has not bumped any...
But he cut his teeth on wild pheasants, and they are just the opposite, in my observation... The Prairie Grouse would be pretty hard on a young dog also?
But that's the fun part, figuring it out...

[Duck Engr]

Pheasants can be tough even on a seasoned dog when they run and won’t hold. Can’t imagine trying to train a pup on them.

[5 stand]

Moe and I didn't know any better, and it's all we had at the time...

[Rick]

What is this checkcord you speak of? Kidding, of course, but had stumbled into George Evans' course of teaching whoa at the wee ones' feed bowl and conditioning it with similar daily rewards and distractions to make the command a reliable checkcord by the time the pups had the legs to require one. Though, like George, I also used "hold," instead of "whoa," to eliminate possible confusion with "no".

No internet then, but I was lucky enough to learn the truth in "Lots of ways to train a bird dog." very early on. Best of luck to you and June with yours.

[Duck Engr]

We train whoa every day at the feed bowl but something about being afield seems to make her apt to need a reminder. Have a collar on her but no electricity around birds. The initial whoa is the easy one. It’s the maintained whoa through wing and shot that’s the challenge.

[Rick]

It’s the maintained whoa through wing and shot that’s the challenge.

I can see that. Adopting Jim Marti's "Burnt Creek Method"s philosophy of conditioning steadiness before a chasing habit is developed eased our course immeasurably. He checkcorded, but we make a game of it that I've saved on Word:

Sit or Whoa to Flush or Flight

I have come to prefer making a game of it that conditions the pup to want to sit or stand-to-flush, rather than sit or stand-to-flush/flight being something denying him what he wants.

My first Chessie's greatest shortcoming was the difficulty I had steadying him and keeping him so, which made me receptive to the notion of teaching steadiness from the get-go (rather than continuing to follow the traditional US course of building desire to go and then breaking to steady) when I saw it in an article by or about Robert Milner. And that worked out so well with my next Chesapeake that I was, in turn, receptive to Jim Marti's "Burnt Creek Method" of steadying pointing pups before they could develop a chasing habit.

Marti steadied his pups with a checkcord, much the same as traditional stand or sit-to-flush, only before they were allowed to develop a chasing habit. Which made a lot of sense to me, but also still seemed more pressure than I wanted to put on my pups. So, when I started my next Brittany, we took a more gradual approach that inadvertently turned stopping at flush/flight into a game for the pup and later proved applicable for reconditioning the Chessie I then had and starting subsequent pups.

The great rub with my route is that it employs as many as a half dozen fly-off birds per session, which pretty much mandates maintaining a loft of homing pigeons or very ready access to wild ones. With the great value of using fly-offs being that they're quickly out of sight and mind, which helps put emphasis on the praise Pup receives for not chasing them, rather than what he's missing out on.

My pups have been taught to heel and “sit” or “whoa”/stand (depending on breed) when we stop, both on and off lead, prior to beginning our stop-to process, so that's old hat. And when I add the toss of a fly-off pigeon to a session of heeling on lead, it's initially just proofing a known concept. During which, I quietly and gently as possible enforce compliance with the lead and then praise, as if Pup had sat or stood of his own accord. All about as positive as can be, short of treating. It's not taken too many such sessions with fly-offs before my pups are not just stopping or sitting on their own but have started anticipating the fly-off and wanting to stop when I reach in the bird bag. At that point, it's become a game between us, with my challenge being to keep them moving and make the eventual toss a surprise and theirs being to show me how fast they can hit the brakes and/or get their butts on the ground when they see it.

Once Pup's hooked on our fly-off game, we advance it to heeling off lead and, when that's down pat, while running free in the yard. All the while keeping it fun by backing up, rather than cranking the pressure up, if Pup slips up. When stopping-to-flush/flight gets to the point I can toss birds at the pup and he's happily showing me what an ace he is at stopping (and sitting in the retrievers' case), we've a great foundation that readily transfers not just to stopping/sitting in response to self-flushed birds but to steadiness in general. That, and a great tool to return to when steadiness afield falters.

Works for us.

[Duck Engr]

That was a neat read, thanks for sharing Rick. That’s the approach I took with my first pup, albeit she was a lab, so no pointing involved but concept was the same. I Was so over the top on steadiness that I inadvertently took some drive out of her that I had to coax back in later. So the pendulum is swinging back with this one, and I tried to avoid that. Probably would’ve been fine had she been another lab, but this wire hair breed has another gear of stubbornness/crazy that I don’t think I could knock the drive out of her even if I wanted to. Suspect most chessies are similar, though I’ve never owned one.