Opening week MA Spring Turkey Hunt

Turkey Footage

       Here is a little video I filmed with the camera on my bow. I took it out opening day and sat in a ground blind since the weather was terrible... as you will see. I had the opportunity to take a small jake but decided not to since it was the first day I was out and there is a long season ahead of me.  I would have filmed the bird I shot except for the fact that I don't have a mount for a camera on my shotgun. This is something I have been trying to figure out. Enjoy.

Piper Training

      Here is a little training video of some retriever training with Piper. Most people might think that playing fetch with your dog is not really training. It should be fun, the point of all of this is for the puppy to learn that going out and bringing back an item is fun and exciting, like play time. Once she associates playing fetch as fun time you can start to put some controls on retrieving.  German Shorthair Pointers do have a natural instinct to retrieve, but not all GSP owners bring it out. In my opinion the dog training should not stop after the shot. Meaning, after you shoot a bird the dog's work is not over. Finding the birds is the main reason for hunting with a dog, but finding the bird after its shot is just as important, if not more important through an ethical/conservationist standpoint. It does not look very good if hunters go around shooting animals, wounding or killing them and not recovering them. Retriever training is also the start of training to track.

      In this video you will see that all I use is a long lead and something to throw. I have been using a toy pheasant that Piper likes. I also bought a quail training dummy and some orange bumpers. For some reason she could not care less about the orange bumpers. She will run out, smell it and wander off. If I hold the bumper in front of her she will look at me like, "what are you doing? I don't want this." 

     I started off training by using a small room, like the hallway in my house.  I closed all the doors so that when I threw the toy out she would run out and grab it and have no choice but to bring it back. I would reward her and praise her. She got this concept pretty easy so I moved outside. I put her on a lead so that when she runs out and grabs the toy I can coax her back into me, but to be honest she rarely needs reminding to do that. I am going to continue with this kind go training for a few more weeks until I put more controls on her. Right now its just fun time. Once she gets more basic commands like sit and stay I can start to advance. Then I can start using real birds, like frozen ducks... so stay tuned, more to come.

Piper retrieving<------------youtube video

MA quick Reference

Mass Wildlife : A quick reference for all MA hunters<------If you hunt in Mass and you are always finding yourself checking the dates for season, bag limits and so on.... this is a great source taken off the MA wildlife website.  Just waiting for April 30th...

Food for thought...literally<---------Click here.

Piper Training

     Here is a video with Piper training to point. As I said in a previous post, I am not a professional trainer, in fact this is my first pointing dog. All videos that I post I hope can be useful to someone like me, someone training for the first time. In this video you will see me using a wing on a fishing pole. Using the wing to trigger a natural point is much like my beagle seeing a rabbit for the first time. I didn't teach her to point, she just does it. I don't know, maybe I am a tad insane or weird but seeing her point for the first time is exciting! Just like watching my beagle run a rabbit, its just one of those things that unless you experience it you won't know the feeling. In the picture below you will see a point; head down, steady gaze, tail up, and most of the time one of the front paws with come up too.

     I called as many game bird dealers as possible in order to obtain a wing. Many breeders in the region lost a lot of birds due to an early snow storm in October. I was getting frustrated trying to find a wing to use when I talked to one game breeder who told me I could buy a wing from Cabelas. So that is what I did. They were fairly inexpensive, 8 bucks for a pair. I bought a pair of wings from both a pheasant and a quail. I plan on raising live quail so I figured I would start with some quail wings as well. I obtained a permit from MA DEM. I can possess up to 25 live quail. I built the pen already and I used a very useful book, "Training the Versatile Hunting Dog," by Chuck Johnson. If you plan on getting a versatile hunting dog, meaning a dog that can hunt upland game as well as retrieve for waterfowl hunting, I would HIGHLY recommend buying this book. Read the book cover to cover and then reread each section as you prepare to train for each. In the book it even gives blue prints on how to build pigeon and quail pens, dog kennels, and training tables. It has all the information anyone, like myself, who is training a versatile gun dog for the first time, needs. In one of the photos below you can see the quail pen I built. All together building it probably costed around $300 and took 2 days to build. I am currently waiting for the spring hatch to obtain some chicks. "It takes birds to train a bird dog."

Harry Training

       Heres a video of Harry my beagle. The video is a couple quick clips I took from my phone while he was on a rabbit. When I first got Harry I tried to find something on how to train a beagle to chase a rabbit. I did not find a whole heck of a lot. I really could not understand why there wasn't any information on it until our first encounter with one. Upon returning home to my girlfriend's apartment one night in Newport, RI, I spotted a cottontail in the yard. I took Harry out from his crate, put him on a leash and ran him outside. Luckily the rabbit was still there in the yard unsuspecting. I slowly walked Harry over to the rabbit, his eyes were locked on to it. I got closer and closer until finally the rabbit took off. Harry leaped out of my arms and started after it. Luckily I still had him on his leash, as the tiny 3 month old puppy astounded me as he gave me a lesson on gun dog genetics. His DNA told him to chase that rabbit, not me. I was very excited and proud, the only bad thing was now he had the scent in his nose. Every time he went outside in the yard after that he had to be put on a lead because there is always a chance that he will find that scent again and be gone.
      Harry hasn't had a lot of actual hunting experience. I took him out around Christmas time while I was back home in the Berkshires. We didn't find any hare, but he at least got some exercise. I think he slept for two days straight after that.

More pictures of all my dogs. Smokey and Harry in the snow last winter and Piper kicking Smokey off his bed this winter.