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I’m sure you noticed that you can’t make a move your bird dog doesn’t notice. It’s kind of creepy at times finding your dog at the door staring at you the moment the thought crosses your mind to go out  dog training  or hunting, as if they are somehow reading your mind. It’s because they’ve been studying your every move since the day you brought them home. They know things about you that you don’t...

Some say the sweetest springtime sounds come from wild turkeys . As many turkey hunters have experienced, real turkeys aren’t always the ones producing that cacophony of yelps. Oftentimes, on crowded small parcels of land, one may be seduced by the sounds emanating from what turns out to be a hungry hunter, not a hen on the prowl . Hunters using turkey calls have tricked birds and humans alike for...

Bird  dog training  at its core is  behavior modification reliant upon catching your dog in the thought process and being able to read their emotions . Doing so allows us to predict behaviors before they occur, thereby maximizing the potential for learning. Also, the character of the dog at that moment and the behaviors they are exhibiting dictates the amount of pressure required to gain complianc...

Have you ever hunted over a dog with a sixth sense for finding birds? Perhaps the dog had a higher-than-average drive to push out to find game. Or maybe it was highly intelligent and sought the most productive cover. Its exceptional nose could’ve been dialed in. Regardless of the attribute, it must have had a cooperative temperament, trusted its handler’s leadership, and would follow them to the e...

The Ojibwe, the indigenous people of the Great Lakes region, tell a story of how they were starving and aninaatig (sugar maple) fed the tribe with syrup (zhiiwaagamizigan) that gushed forth from its wood. Soon, the people took the gift of sugar from the Creator for granted. They lay under aninaatig all day and just let the syrup drip into their mouths.  One day, the trickster  Nanabozho  saw this...

The instant it takes to drop your car keys from your fingertips to the floor is all the time you have to relay a message to your dog that they are a good dog or a bad dog. This is all the time you have to tag a behavior. Anything after that simply leads to confusion and resentment. When you are reward-based bird  dog training  using food, toys or praise, you must be prepared to reward or correct t...

A black slash slices over red-lined eyes, streaks down the breast, and connects at the keel as it cuts across the body of a flashy chukar partridge. Gray-blue feathers blend seamlessly into shades of dust-brown across its breast and back, but not its sides, where chukar apparently took some inspiration from zebras. Besides  pheasants , chukars are arguably the most exotic-looking game birds in the...

The afternoon sun sat low through the thick cover. It glistened off the saturated ground, small patches of snow still pushing back against the oncoming spring. The sound of my  Wirehaired Pointing Griffon’s  bell came sharply through the undergrowth, occasionally muted by the splash of water as Grim worked his way back and forth. We had been through this cover multiple times in the past week with...

July is an exciting month for us, as it signals the approach of our shooting season, which starts on 12 August—known as The Glorious Twelfth—with the opening of the red grouse season. My husband Ronnie and I live on the northwest coast of Scotland with our ten Hungarian Wirehaired Vizslas. They are a huge part of our lives—they share our house and our sofas and are our family. The breed has a love...

A short while ago, I spoke with a behaviorist friend of mine, Matt McKenny, who also owns  versatile hunting dogs . I specifically asked him his thoughts about his relationship with his dog and how behavioral science contributes to his ability to work with, train and calm his dogs. He provided an in-depth perspective of how we use science knowingly — or not — in our training. If you have spent any...

During my time at Deerfield Elementary School in southern  Wisconsin , my fourth-grade teacher taught us about Wisconsin’s geological history. I recall learning about glaciers, the formation of our local drumlins, and how unique the unglaciated driftless area is when it comes to midwestern landscapes. However, I don’t recall Mr. Meyer teaching my class about the  endangered sandy pine barrens  loc...

“That’s it. I’m sending my dog away to be trained!” So training didn’t go your way today and you are left with an alarmed dog and a bitter taste in your mouth. Hopefully, you called it a day before impacting the trusting relationship you worked so hard to earn. Time for both of you to recover and reset. Take a break, back up and go back to the basics where you both can find success. These are the...

Dog training  methodologies are vast. The long lead’s outward appearance may seem to be a relic of training days gone by. And truth be told, for some, they wouldn’t be wrong. With the invention of the  e-collar  and the now mainstream training approaches of utilizing classical and operant conditioning, many trainers forego the use of the long lead altogether.  I’d argue that the long lead is not o...

When your dog is in a  calm  state, they are ready to learn and will do so even if you’re not intending to teach them anything. I was at a sportsman club in Maine chatting it up with folks when my  German shorthaired pointer  started tugging at the lead. Without much thought I reached in my pocket, called her in and treated her throughout the day. What I had inadvertently done is intermittently re...

Suppose one found themselves reading a newspaper in 1912. The headlines may have read, “New Mexico, Arizona Admitted as 48th and 49th States,” “Titanic Sank on its Maiden Voyage,” and “First Stop Light Invented in Detroit.” Between articles, you might have spotted a Winchester Repeating Firearms announcement for its new shotgun, the Winchester Model 1912. Its sales team coined it “the perfect repe...

The Labrador Duck was a beautiful black and white type of sea duck considered the first species of North American birds to go extinct during modern times. The last Labrador Duck to be hunted was shot in 1878 in Elmira,  New York . It is presumed that the species went extinct shortly after.  The loss of the Labrador duck is not your typical ecological warning about the dangers of over-harvesting, m...

The English Setter was America’s first bird dog. And rightly so; they’re known for being incredible hunting partners regardless of the terrain or quarry. As a result, they have a long history in North America, and evidence of that can be found in classic upland bird hunting texts like  The Upland Shooting Life  by George Bird Evans. However, this  dog breed  was originally developed across the Atl...

Nowadays, when we think of duck hunting, we imagine scenes of wing-shooting  mallards  in a marsh or stubble field. However, before the invention of firearms, ducks were not shot on the wing. They were caught with snares, shot with a bow and arrow or driven into nets. Eventually, techniques were even developed to lure ducks into cages. So for centuries before the invention of the modern shotgun, t...

I grew up during what appears today to be the stone age of upland hunting. It’s hard to believe we could simply throw on a bell and go out hunting. Admittedly, there were plenty of frustrating days when the dogs were having a really good time without us. It was just part of the gig back then. We talked to our dogs a lot, constantly commanding to keep them close and if possible, correcting what we...

When it comes to evaluating  hunting dogs —whether for breeding purposes or bragging rights—the methods and philosophies are as varied as hunters themselves. What constitutes a “good” hunting dog, and whose opinion counts? One hunter’s ideal dog could be a terrible match for someone else’s style, and vice versa.  Non-competitive hunt tests came about as an attempt to standardize the evaluation of...

The sinkbox was effective for  waterfowl hunting  because it was flush with the water’s surface and nearly invisible ducks and geese, particularly to the low approach of  diving ducks . Its popularity began early, three decades before the Civil War, and it remained a waterfowling tool for over a hundred years. Originating on the North Atlantic Seaboard, its use eventually encompassed all the East...

As a new owner of a  versatile hunting dog , you’ve probably been asked about running in a natural ability or puppy hunt test. Some breeders may request or require that puppy buyers run in a test, while other owners may stumble into the puppy test through local club chapters such as  NAVHDA  or AKC. For owners of the German-registered breeds—such as the  Deutsch Drahthaar ,  Deutsch Kurzhaar , Deu...

I have a penchant for watching the weather. My childhood home had a large glass sliding door. It looked west across an open prairie for nearly a mile, and I would stare intently out as spring storms rolled in. My parents called for me to hide under the stairs the entire time, but I just couldn’t get enough. I still can’t, and I love to look at extended forecasts and predicted weather patterns. But...

The Superposed was the last gun designed by John Browning, according to Ned Schwing’s opus, which is aptly titled  The Browning Superposed: John M. Browning’s Last Legacy . Browning was an engineering genius, with many of his designs still in production today. His vision for this particular gun was for it to be a high quality but affordable shotgun, especially considering the price of European ove...

Water spaniels are but a vestige of what they once were. Originally developed in the British Isles for waterfowl retrieving, today only three breeds remain. The American Water Spaniel and its close cousin, the  Boykin , are joined by the  Irish Water Spaniel  as remnants of what was once a broad spectrum of water dogs.  The origin of water spaniels can be traced to Great Britain. Similar dogs were...