July 30, 2025 • 16 mins
This week, Tony explains not only how important bird exposure is to hunting dogs, but how to find more opportunities close to home no matter where you live.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Foundation's podcast. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about how to
get your hunting dog on as many birds as possible
this season. This one is a fun topic for me
because if there's one thing I like to do, it's
to figure out hunting opportunities over on the white tail side.
(00:25):
That's kind of my bread and butter. But it doesn't
end with deer In an awful lot of places. We're
real lucky to have multiple game bird species to hunt,
which often live on public land, and if we don't,
we can get somewhere that usually has them. This is
so important to the development of a gun dog, and
it's what I'm going to talk about right now. A
(00:51):
few weeks back, my twin daughters asked if they could
bring a friend up to our lake cabin. This is
a pretty common request considering they are thirteen, and it
can go a few different ways depend on the friend.
But luckily the girl they invited up is one who
we've coached in sports since they were in second grade,
and we know her and her family well. She's a
sweet kid who, by the reports I got from her parents,
(01:12):
loves to fish, which was perfect because as.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
A family, we love to fish.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
So I took one of my daughters and this girl
out the first day we were up at the lake,
and I handed her a spinning rod with a swimming
jig on it because she had already told me she
knew how to cast, so I figured we're good to go.
I then watched as she held the rod upside down
and made a cast that sounded a little like she
had chucked a pretty good sized rock into the water
about four feet from our boat. It turns out her
family as more of the sit on the pontoon with
(01:39):
spin cast type of setups and fish for sunfish with
bobbers and worms. We are the kind of family that
throws lures all day long to try to catch bass
and northerns. So I gave her a quick tutorial on
how to cast and watch as she figured it out.
What she didn't figure out, because you can't coach someone
through it is how to set the hook and how
to fight fish. You can call only explain to a
(02:00):
newb angler how to cast. And I have so much
that I can hear a cast happen in my boat
and know whether the castor pulled her finger off the
line too early or too late during the arc the
rod swing. You can explain to someone how fast or
slow to reel if there is any action they should
impart with the rod and a whole bunch of stuff.
But what you can't do is explain to someone you know,
(02:23):
like where they're going to clearly understand how to set
the hook well and then how to fight a fish,
at least when it comes to twenty inch smallies or
decent sized northerns or large mouth living up in the
slop and looking to gobble up a fake kermit as
he hops across the lily pads on his way to
miss Piggy's place. You just have to get in the reps.
And when it comes to this skill in the outdoors,
there's just no way around it. You have to set
(02:45):
the hook and lose fish because of it, and you
have to fight fish and lose them. It's a feel thing,
an instinct thing. So in other words, it's not just academic,
no matter how hard we try to make it out
to be. You can't stand in the yard and work
on these when you're not.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
In the boat.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
This, in so many ways is like what happens with
bird dogs and well actual real live birds.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Now, I know what a lot of you are thinking.
I know two things a lot of you are thinking. Actually.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
The first is that you can get fighto exposure to
birds through a trainer who has a bunch of pigeons
or maybe farm raised mallards or pheasants or chuckers. The
second is that you don't have access too much for
wild birds in your county or your state, or your
region or whatever. So let's back up first to the
not wild bird part of the equation first. Whether you
(03:36):
do it yourself or you're hire it out to a
pro live bird exposure in a controlled situation with not
wild birds is a great idea. A young bird dog
getting the right intro into a pigeons or you know,
a sleeved up mallard or whatever is a great way
to hype a dog up without almost any risk of
something going bad.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
That's not a bad thing and it never will be.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
I don't think this stage of this development process, which
will come after wings and scent and not live birds.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Is great. It's important.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
It's a piece of the puzzle that will help a
bird dog get to the right place to be good
with bird encounters. But isn't the end of the journey.
You could expose your dogs through training to tame pigeons
and pheasants and mallards and whatever else a million times,
but that wouldn't necessarily make your dog a really good hunter. Now,
before you fire off angry emails, I'll say this, it
(04:25):
definitely wouldn't hurt your dog if you did it right either.
But eventually, after gunfire intro, you need to get your
dog out to find some birds and point them or
flush them and hopefully retrieve them all in a variety
of environments, which brings me to the second point I
brought up earlier. If some of you don't think you
have access to enough wild birds to really develop a
dog without a game farm type of situation, again, taking
(04:49):
your dog to where the pen raised roosters are and
having them plant it out in the field isn't a
bad idea. It's a good one for an awful lot
of folks.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Now.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
I know some people want to make it seem like
those birds are close enough to wild birds that it
really doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
But those people are.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Wrong, And that's okay because those pen raised roosters, many
of which are a little dizzy from getting spun up
in a burlap sack are another good stepping stone, especially
for folks who really don't have tons of opportunities to
hunt wild birds. Plus, those situations are heavily controlled, which
means you can solve for any of the variables that
might trip your pup up before you ever load the shotgun.
(05:25):
Your dog won't know the difference. And being able to
predict where half of a dozen pheasants are in a
small field and then work them and shoot them it's
not a bad thing. It's a great preseason or postseason
option too. It's also not going to fully prepare your
dog for wild birds and wild places. For that, they
have to go into those wild places with you and
(05:47):
find those wild birds and figure out the whole thing
largely on their own. This is the point where a
lot of bird dog owners hit the wall and can't
quite figure out what to do. This is also what
happened to me when I got married and, like an
absolute moron, moved to the suburbs of the Twin Cities. Now,
I'm not saying everyone who lives here or in similar
(06:07):
areas as a moron, but instead that a guy like
me doesn't belong around four million other people. I felt
that pretty quickly after relocating, first on the fishing front,
and then as I took my young golden retriever out
to hunt the fall, I had no idea how to
find some land to hunt and what to hunt for.
I knew that finding roosters and grouse anywhere near my
(06:27):
house was probably a lost cause, and I was a
bummer because roosters and grouse are my favorite birds to hunt.
I hadn't really hunted doves much at that time because
us near Canadians had only recently started getting dove seasons,
which probably sounds crazy to a lot of you Southern listeners.
I also didn't duck hunt at the time because duck
season and deer season don't play well together. And I
(06:49):
felt at the time and still do a little bit today,
that it's hard to give yourself to both in the
way that you need to. In my mind, you were
either a duck hunter or a bowhunter, but not both.
But being a bow hunter in a place with nowhere
to haunt put me on a lot of pieces of
public land where I live. That means you're also on
land with water, because this is the land of ten
(07:11):
thousand lakes and fifty million swamps and slews and small ponds.
So I started seeing a hell of a lot of
teal and wood ducks, which got me thinking. Then that
first season, you know, while sitting on tree stands and
listening to the distant drone of rush hour traffic, I
saw a hell of a lot of woodcock flying around. Now,
ducks and woodcock aren't my dream birds, but it made
(07:31):
me realize something. Migrators seemed to have no clue that
they were landing on public ground in the suburbs of
the Twin Cities. That first season, Mike Golden and I
stumbled across enough wild birds to help her start to
figure out the flushing side of things and the sit
and weight side of things that comes with ducks as well.
(07:58):
I also noticed something else. Some of the duck ponds
I scouted, or some of the places where the woodcock
seemed to roost, were close to dead trees that doves
liked to land in. That brought my hountmal bird options
up a little bit higher. But more importantly, it gave
us a chance to hunt several types of birds close
to my house and not a couple of hours away,
(08:19):
like the grouse and pheasants that I wanted to hunt.
But what does this mean to you? Well, i'll tell you.
When I moved to the Cities, I was not doing well.
I started a job I hated, which involved a twelve
mile commute that took over an hour each way. I
never got two days off in a row because of
the nature of the business I worked for. It was
torture for real. I was depressed as hell, drinking way
(08:42):
too much and looking at my bird dog like, well, buddy,
I'm sorry I brought you here too. My attitude sucked,
and it was partially because I had convinced myself that
I had nothing to hunt near my house. Then, by
accident and then by intention, I started to piece together
a few opportunities that barely resemble what I actually wanted
to do. But life isn't always great at delivering exactly
(09:05):
what you want. If you get my drift, That's why
Margot Robbie never responds to Cal's DMS, no matter how
many he sends. But you know what, I had a
hell of a lot of fun learning how to be
a small water duck hunter. With Mike Golden. We shot
quite a few wood ducks and some teal, and we
ended up with a few mallards as well. When the
weather turned and the green head started showing up from Canada,
(09:27):
we killed quite a few woodcock and eventually a hell
of a lot of doves. Now, that dog was never
going to be a great bird dog because she didn't
have the blood, but she was good enough for me
at the time, and she brought me a lot of
birds over the years, a lot of birds in places
that I originally thought didn't have a lot of birds. Now,
of course, I took her over to the north woods Wisconsin,
(09:47):
where we mostly messed with rough grouse, but also to
western Minnesota and a couple other prairie heavy states where
the wild roosters roam. But those trips were infrequent, and
there was always this sense of pressure hanging over my
head when we did go, because I knew how limited
our time was. That dog, at that time of my
life made me a duck hunter, albeit not a very
(10:09):
serious or good one. She also opened my eyes to
woodcock and doves, which I started every pup on.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Since it wasn't that.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
I was around enough birds to develop a bird dog,
it's that I thought I wasn't. There's something here that
I hear from people. Often they'll say something like, well,
we don't have the grouse for quail or pheasants or
whatever like we used to. This is often followed by
so we go to South Dakota every year for the
(10:39):
opener and that's our bird hunt. Or we go to
the deershack and mess with the grouse once or twice
a season. Maybe it's a pay by day quail hunt
on a southern plantation. Look you do, you boo. I'm
not trying to convince everyone listening to start duck hunting
or go after a bunch of swamp dwelling worm meters
when they don't want to. But if you have a
good bird dog and you want that dog to be good,
(11:03):
and you want your time with that dog to be good,
then opening up your aperture a little is well good.
Sure to do what you want to might require a
road trip and all that entails. Do that because you
generally won't regret it. But what about those closer to
home opportunities. There's probably something you can get to within
an hour or two of your house that might put
(11:24):
you and your dog on some birds, and at the
very least we'll get you out and trying to find
them with your dog. The easiest way to do this
is to consider all of your options. Your state, or
your region or whatever probably offers up at least a
few in any given season. If that's doves great, You
can scout doves almost easier than any other bird, and
(11:47):
they are highly patternable. They sit on power lines and
dead trees, around ponds, and if you've never had a
bunch of them work into a spinner on a water hole,
then you might not understand what dove hunting can be like.
The traditional pass shooting setup isn't anything to sneeze at either.
Doves are great birds for learning steadiness and who don't
have a pile.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Of retrieves under their belt.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Wounded doves aren't known for scratching at dogs, noses are
pecking eyeballs, and they don't do a lot of running.
Maybe where you live the woodcock migrate through. This is
far more common than a lot of people think, and
woodcock can be a hell of a lot of fun
to hunt. They are perfect for yon dogs too. They
generally don't run, although they kind of can. They often
(12:31):
fly a short distance and then landing in, which is
the ideal setup to bring an inexperienced dog into. They're
the most challenging birds to hit either. Now, maybe you're
a hardcore upland hunter, but you have to settle for
some pond ducts. Again, some birds are highly scutable and
don't require any calling or decoys, although both make the
whole thing more fun. You can pull up on X
(12:54):
find some public with some small water on it, and
then go look at it in person. It's pretty simple
and can provide some wing shooting and good dog work.
Maybe you think you don't have grouse or quail or
roosters around you, or even in your home state. I
hear this a lot here in Minnesota, where hunters say
the good old days are just gone. The crazy thing
(13:15):
about this is that, of course we have plenty of grouse,
but our pheasant numbers are really good too. The western
half of the state is full of wild roosters and
tons of public land, and I was coming on strong
again for roosters, And of course you have that whole
band of the Dakotas and Nebraska and Kansas to think
about it. There are also quail and prairie chickens and
sharptails to mess with in some of those states. And
(13:37):
while I know everyone says there are no bob whites
out there anymore, they're wrong. I'm going to go hunt
them this fall with my lab on public land, and
I bet we don't blank. The key to this stuff
is to forget what you think you know a lot
of times, or forget what most hunters like to say.
Most hunters really don't know what they are talking about
on a lot of this stuff. There are wild birds
(13:58):
out there, and they come in a variety of different species,
and they live in all kinds of different habitats. You know,
they require due diligence to find and often some effort
to scout, and definitely some effort to actually hunt. But
you can start that research now. This is a great
idea in general, but also a huge benefit to folks
who take their dogs on just one big trip a year.
(14:21):
Instead of having the dog show up and be out
of his mind because he finally gets to hunt, you
can try to find those close to home opportunities, you know,
the bite sized after work for a few hours kind
of hunts that allow for some kind of bird exposure.
This is how you develop a bird dog into something
that is comfortable out there, who also doesn't lose his
head when he finally gets into the field because it's
(14:43):
not his first hunt of the year and it won't
be his last. And if you stack up a few
seasons like this with the off season training to anchor
the whole thing, and you'll just have that almost autopilot
dog for the rest of your time with him. That
place is one that is just special to get and
it's something that snowballs so well because if you have
(15:03):
a dog that just figures out how to hunt woodcock
or ducks or something else, it just sets the stage
to go mess with more birds and fine cool opportunities.
It might just convince you to load up that GSP
you head down to quail country or do the Western
road trip for prairie chickens or sharp tails that you
and your buddies always talk about when you're sipping long
(15:24):
necks in the driveway in August and grill and some
hot dogs and hamburgers. I want you to think about this,
because there are a lot of opportunities out there. We
sort of close ourselves off to them. But the more
time we spend in the field with our dogs doing
what our dogs are bred to do. The better they get,
the better we get with working with them, and just
(15:44):
the whole relationship between us and them levels up. Plus
they just become so much better at their jobs. I
want you to think about that as we inch closer
to the season. I want you to come back in
two weeks because I'm going to talk about early season
hunting dangers and how to prepare for them.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
I'm Tony Peterson. This has been The Houndation's podcast. As
I always, thank you so much for listening and for
all your support. I can't tell you how much it
means to Cal and I and the rest of the
crew that you guys show up and you're so loyal.
You really really consume a lot of the content we create,
which is awesome. Now, if you're missing something in your life,
maybe you need some podcasts to listen to for that
(16:24):
road trip I'm talking about. Maybe just want a new recipe,
Maybe you want to read some articles.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Whatever.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
We drop new content almost every day at the meat
eater dot com. Head on over there check it out,
and thanks again for all your support.
Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Foundation's podcast. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about how to
get your hunting dog on as many birds as possible
this season. This one is a fun topic for me
because if there's one thing I like to do, it's
to figure out hunting opportunities over on the white tail side.
(00:25):
That's kind of my bread and butter. But it doesn't
end with deer In an awful lot of places. We're
real lucky to have multiple game bird species to hunt,
which often live on public land, and if we don't,
we can get somewhere that usually has them. This is
so important to the development of a gun dog, and
it's what I'm going to talk about right now. A
(00:51):
few weeks back, my twin daughters asked if they could
bring a friend up to our lake cabin. This is
a pretty common request considering they are thirteen, and it
can go a few different ways depend on the friend.
But luckily the girl they invited up is one who
we've coached in sports since they were in second grade,
and we know her and her family well. She's a
sweet kid who, by the reports I got from her parents,
(01:12):
loves to fish, which was perfect because as.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
A family, we love to fish.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
So I took one of my daughters and this girl
out the first day we were up at the lake,
and I handed her a spinning rod with a swimming
jig on it because she had already told me she
knew how to cast, so I figured we're good to go.
I then watched as she held the rod upside down
and made a cast that sounded a little like she
had chucked a pretty good sized rock into the water
about four feet from our boat. It turns out her
family as more of the sit on the pontoon with
(01:39):
spin cast type of setups and fish for sunfish with
bobbers and worms. We are the kind of family that
throws lures all day long to try to catch bass
and northerns. So I gave her a quick tutorial on
how to cast and watch as she figured it out.
What she didn't figure out, because you can't coach someone
through it is how to set the hook and how
to fight fish. You can call only explain to a
(02:00):
newb angler how to cast. And I have so much
that I can hear a cast happen in my boat
and know whether the castor pulled her finger off the
line too early or too late during the arc the
rod swing. You can explain to someone how fast or
slow to reel if there is any action they should
impart with the rod and a whole bunch of stuff.
But what you can't do is explain to someone you know,
(02:23):
like where they're going to clearly understand how to set
the hook well and then how to fight a fish,
at least when it comes to twenty inch smallies or
decent sized northerns or large mouth living up in the
slop and looking to gobble up a fake kermit as
he hops across the lily pads on his way to
miss Piggy's place. You just have to get in the reps.
And when it comes to this skill in the outdoors,
there's just no way around it. You have to set
(02:45):
the hook and lose fish because of it, and you
have to fight fish and lose them. It's a feel thing,
an instinct thing. So in other words, it's not just academic,
no matter how hard we try to make it out
to be. You can't stand in the yard and work
on these when you're not.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
In the boat.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
This, in so many ways is like what happens with
bird dogs and well actual real live birds.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Now, I know what a lot of you are thinking.
I know two things a lot of you are thinking. Actually.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
The first is that you can get fighto exposure to
birds through a trainer who has a bunch of pigeons
or maybe farm raised mallards or pheasants or chuckers. The
second is that you don't have access too much for
wild birds in your county or your state, or your
region or whatever. So let's back up first to the
not wild bird part of the equation first. Whether you
(03:36):
do it yourself or you're hire it out to a
pro live bird exposure in a controlled situation with not
wild birds is a great idea. A young bird dog
getting the right intro into a pigeons or you know,
a sleeved up mallard or whatever is a great way
to hype a dog up without almost any risk of
something going bad.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
That's not a bad thing and it never will be.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
I don't think this stage of this development process, which
will come after wings and scent and not live birds.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Is great. It's important.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
It's a piece of the puzzle that will help a
bird dog get to the right place to be good
with bird encounters. But isn't the end of the journey.
You could expose your dogs through training to tame pigeons
and pheasants and mallards and whatever else a million times,
but that wouldn't necessarily make your dog a really good hunter. Now,
before you fire off angry emails, I'll say this, it
(04:25):
definitely wouldn't hurt your dog if you did it right either.
But eventually, after gunfire intro, you need to get your
dog out to find some birds and point them or
flush them and hopefully retrieve them all in a variety
of environments, which brings me to the second point I
brought up earlier. If some of you don't think you
have access to enough wild birds to really develop a
dog without a game farm type of situation, again, taking
(04:49):
your dog to where the pen raised roosters are and
having them plant it out in the field isn't a
bad idea. It's a good one for an awful lot
of folks.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Now.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
I know some people want to make it seem like
those birds are close enough to wild birds that it
really doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
But those people are.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Wrong, And that's okay because those pen raised roosters, many
of which are a little dizzy from getting spun up
in a burlap sack are another good stepping stone, especially
for folks who really don't have tons of opportunities to
hunt wild birds. Plus, those situations are heavily controlled, which
means you can solve for any of the variables that
might trip your pup up before you ever load the shotgun.
(05:25):
Your dog won't know the difference. And being able to
predict where half of a dozen pheasants are in a
small field and then work them and shoot them it's
not a bad thing. It's a great preseason or postseason
option too. It's also not going to fully prepare your
dog for wild birds and wild places. For that, they
have to go into those wild places with you and
(05:47):
find those wild birds and figure out the whole thing
largely on their own. This is the point where a
lot of bird dog owners hit the wall and can't
quite figure out what to do. This is also what
happened to me when I got married and, like an
absolute moron, moved to the suburbs of the Twin Cities. Now,
I'm not saying everyone who lives here or in similar
(06:07):
areas as a moron, but instead that a guy like
me doesn't belong around four million other people. I felt
that pretty quickly after relocating, first on the fishing front,
and then as I took my young golden retriever out
to hunt the fall, I had no idea how to
find some land to hunt and what to hunt for.
I knew that finding roosters and grouse anywhere near my
(06:27):
house was probably a lost cause, and I was a
bummer because roosters and grouse are my favorite birds to hunt.
I hadn't really hunted doves much at that time because
us near Canadians had only recently started getting dove seasons,
which probably sounds crazy to a lot of you Southern listeners.
I also didn't duck hunt at the time because duck
season and deer season don't play well together. And I
(06:49):
felt at the time and still do a little bit today,
that it's hard to give yourself to both in the
way that you need to. In my mind, you were
either a duck hunter or a bowhunter, but not both.
But being a bow hunter in a place with nowhere
to haunt put me on a lot of pieces of
public land where I live. That means you're also on
land with water, because this is the land of ten
(07:11):
thousand lakes and fifty million swamps and slews and small ponds.
So I started seeing a hell of a lot of
teal and wood ducks, which got me thinking. Then that
first season, you know, while sitting on tree stands and
listening to the distant drone of rush hour traffic, I
saw a hell of a lot of woodcock flying around. Now,
ducks and woodcock aren't my dream birds, but it made
(07:31):
me realize something. Migrators seemed to have no clue that
they were landing on public ground in the suburbs of
the Twin Cities. That first season, Mike Golden and I
stumbled across enough wild birds to help her start to
figure out the flushing side of things and the sit
and weight side of things that comes with ducks as well.
(07:58):
I also noticed something else. Some of the duck ponds
I scouted, or some of the places where the woodcock
seemed to roost, were close to dead trees that doves
liked to land in. That brought my hountmal bird options
up a little bit higher. But more importantly, it gave
us a chance to hunt several types of birds close
to my house and not a couple of hours away,
(08:19):
like the grouse and pheasants that I wanted to hunt.
But what does this mean to you? Well, i'll tell you.
When I moved to the Cities, I was not doing well.
I started a job I hated, which involved a twelve
mile commute that took over an hour each way. I
never got two days off in a row because of
the nature of the business I worked for. It was
torture for real. I was depressed as hell, drinking way
(08:42):
too much and looking at my bird dog like, well, buddy,
I'm sorry I brought you here too. My attitude sucked,
and it was partially because I had convinced myself that
I had nothing to hunt near my house. Then, by
accident and then by intention, I started to piece together
a few opportunities that barely resemble what I actually wanted
to do. But life isn't always great at delivering exactly
(09:05):
what you want. If you get my drift, That's why
Margot Robbie never responds to Cal's DMS, no matter how
many he sends. But you know what, I had a
hell of a lot of fun learning how to be
a small water duck hunter. With Mike Golden. We shot
quite a few wood ducks and some teal, and we
ended up with a few mallards as well. When the
weather turned and the green head started showing up from Canada,
(09:27):
we killed quite a few woodcock and eventually a hell
of a lot of doves. Now, that dog was never
going to be a great bird dog because she didn't
have the blood, but she was good enough for me
at the time, and she brought me a lot of
birds over the years, a lot of birds in places
that I originally thought didn't have a lot of birds. Now,
of course, I took her over to the north woods Wisconsin,
(09:47):
where we mostly messed with rough grouse, but also to
western Minnesota and a couple other prairie heavy states where
the wild roosters roam. But those trips were infrequent, and
there was always this sense of pressure hanging over my
head when we did go, because I knew how limited
our time was. That dog, at that time of my
life made me a duck hunter, albeit not a very
(10:09):
serious or good one. She also opened my eyes to
woodcock and doves, which I started every pup on.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Since it wasn't that.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
I was around enough birds to develop a bird dog,
it's that I thought I wasn't. There's something here that
I hear from people. Often they'll say something like, well,
we don't have the grouse for quail or pheasants or
whatever like we used to. This is often followed by
so we go to South Dakota every year for the
(10:39):
opener and that's our bird hunt. Or we go to
the deershack and mess with the grouse once or twice
a season. Maybe it's a pay by day quail hunt
on a southern plantation. Look you do, you boo. I'm
not trying to convince everyone listening to start duck hunting
or go after a bunch of swamp dwelling worm meters
when they don't want to. But if you have a
good bird dog and you want that dog to be good,
(11:03):
and you want your time with that dog to be good,
then opening up your aperture a little is well good.
Sure to do what you want to might require a
road trip and all that entails. Do that because you
generally won't regret it. But what about those closer to
home opportunities. There's probably something you can get to within
an hour or two of your house that might put
(11:24):
you and your dog on some birds, and at the
very least we'll get you out and trying to find
them with your dog. The easiest way to do this
is to consider all of your options. Your state, or
your region or whatever probably offers up at least a
few in any given season. If that's doves great, You
can scout doves almost easier than any other bird, and
(11:47):
they are highly patternable. They sit on power lines and
dead trees, around ponds, and if you've never had a
bunch of them work into a spinner on a water hole,
then you might not understand what dove hunting can be like.
The traditional pass shooting setup isn't anything to sneeze at either.
Doves are great birds for learning steadiness and who don't
have a pile.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Of retrieves under their belt.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Wounded doves aren't known for scratching at dogs, noses are
pecking eyeballs, and they don't do a lot of running.
Maybe where you live the woodcock migrate through. This is
far more common than a lot of people think, and
woodcock can be a hell of a lot of fun
to hunt. They are perfect for yon dogs too. They
generally don't run, although they kind of can. They often
(12:31):
fly a short distance and then landing in, which is
the ideal setup to bring an inexperienced dog into. They're
the most challenging birds to hit either. Now, maybe you're
a hardcore upland hunter, but you have to settle for
some pond ducts. Again, some birds are highly scutable and
don't require any calling or decoys, although both make the
whole thing more fun. You can pull up on X
(12:54):
find some public with some small water on it, and
then go look at it in person. It's pretty simple
and can provide some wing shooting and good dog work.
Maybe you think you don't have grouse or quail or
roosters around you, or even in your home state. I
hear this a lot here in Minnesota, where hunters say
the good old days are just gone. The crazy thing
(13:15):
about this is that, of course we have plenty of grouse,
but our pheasant numbers are really good too. The western
half of the state is full of wild roosters and
tons of public land, and I was coming on strong
again for roosters, And of course you have that whole
band of the Dakotas and Nebraska and Kansas to think
about it. There are also quail and prairie chickens and
sharptails to mess with in some of those states. And
(13:37):
while I know everyone says there are no bob whites
out there anymore, they're wrong. I'm going to go hunt
them this fall with my lab on public land, and
I bet we don't blank. The key to this stuff
is to forget what you think you know a lot
of times, or forget what most hunters like to say.
Most hunters really don't know what they are talking about
on a lot of this stuff. There are wild birds
(13:58):
out there, and they come in a variety of different species,
and they live in all kinds of different habitats. You know,
they require due diligence to find and often some effort
to scout, and definitely some effort to actually hunt. But
you can start that research now. This is a great
idea in general, but also a huge benefit to folks
who take their dogs on just one big trip a year.
(14:21):
Instead of having the dog show up and be out
of his mind because he finally gets to hunt, you
can try to find those close to home opportunities, you know,
the bite sized after work for a few hours kind
of hunts that allow for some kind of bird exposure.
This is how you develop a bird dog into something
that is comfortable out there, who also doesn't lose his
head when he finally gets into the field because it's
(14:43):
not his first hunt of the year and it won't
be his last. And if you stack up a few
seasons like this with the off season training to anchor
the whole thing, and you'll just have that almost autopilot
dog for the rest of your time with him. That
place is one that is just special to get and
it's something that snowballs so well because if you have
(15:03):
a dog that just figures out how to hunt woodcock
or ducks or something else, it just sets the stage
to go mess with more birds and fine cool opportunities.
It might just convince you to load up that GSP
you head down to quail country or do the Western
road trip for prairie chickens or sharp tails that you
and your buddies always talk about when you're sipping long
(15:24):
necks in the driveway in August and grill and some
hot dogs and hamburgers. I want you to think about this,
because there are a lot of opportunities out there. We
sort of close ourselves off to them. But the more
time we spend in the field with our dogs doing
what our dogs are bred to do. The better they get,
the better we get with working with them, and just
(15:44):
the whole relationship between us and them levels up. Plus
they just become so much better at their jobs. I
want you to think about that as we inch closer
to the season. I want you to come back in
two weeks because I'm going to talk about early season
hunting dangers and how to prepare for them.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
I'm Tony Peterson. This has been The Houndation's podcast. As
I always, thank you so much for listening and for
all your support. I can't tell you how much it
means to Cal and I and the rest of the
crew that you guys show up and you're so loyal.
You really really consume a lot of the content we create,
which is awesome. Now, if you're missing something in your life,
maybe you need some podcasts to listen to for that
(16:24):
road trip I'm talking about. Maybe just want a new recipe,
Maybe you want to read some articles.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Whatever.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
We drop new content almost every day at the meat
eater dot com. Head on over there check it out,
and thanks again for all your support.
Host
Cal Callaghan
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