Innholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2020 (Puppy) i Gun Dog

I’VE been in love, unconditionally, twice. The first time happened when I was eight years old, and my mom let me pick out my first puppy. She was a black Lab we named Abby. Abby wasn’t a bird dog, but she was great at catching snakes. She wasn’t much for fetch, but she loved when you threw rocks (but she wouldn’t retrieve them). And she was an expert at playing keep-away with one of your shoes. We grew up in rural Ohio together, and on every adventure to the woods or around the farm, Abby was by my side. At night, she slept in my bed, and we would fight over whose head got to lie on the pillow—she usually won. It was hard saying goodbye to Abby when I…

IT’S all too common to talk to puppy owners who delay training so that their dog can get a little older and understand things better. This is a big mistake. The best window in which to introduce training is the moment you get your hands on your new puppy. In fact, I recommend you literally start the moment you pick up your puppy. Since you’ll be holding him and keeping him from the ground and his littermates, he’s most likely going to start squirming to get back to the ground and back to his brothers and sisters. At this point, you have two choices. If you set the puppy down when it does start to resist, you’re sending the message that he’s in control. You don’t want that. Instead, you…

BIRD guns come in many forms, and most of them work just fine. The dog points, the bird flushes, the gun goes “boom,” the bird explodes in a cloud of feathers, a perfect retrieve follows, and everyone’s happy. Repeaters like pumps and semi-autos are well represented in the field, but over/ unders hold the lead by a wide margin and are available from the Spartan to the sybaritic. But the classic side-by-side (S/S) holds a special place in the hearts of connoisseurs of fine guns, as they represent a specialized subclass of game guns. Side-by-sides have numerous unique advantages for hunters. While many view the S/S as an artifact of a bygone era, a lot of folks see them as functional and aesthetic perfection. The classic S/S has a straight…

➔ WE ALL HAVE THAT SPECIAL BIRD DOG IN OUR LIFE. Let's be honest: They're more than just hunting companions. They're family. To all the young-blood puppies in the world...we celebrate you. Here are a few up-and-comers owned by you, our readers.…

MS. Parmley, thanks for the great article in your September 2019 issue (“Wild Bird Road Trip”). We live, hunt, and fish in Wyoming, but we want to hunt upland birds and waterfowl in surrounding states and travel to Canada and Alaska. What type of camping did you do? We’re too old for tents, plus we’re in bear country, so our options are camper trailer, convert a cargo trailer, or slide-in truck camper. We hunt with our dogs. Any thoughts? Mark & Janet Kami | via e-mail After traveling for weeks at a time and pitching a tent each night, I finally decided it was time to purchase my first trailer. I had a few requirements: I wanted to keep it simple (meaning no full-size campers with water tanks and sewage…

CANADA goose legs and thighs are often discarded by hunters who think they are tough and unpalatable. When you embrace the legs and thighs and cook them with care, you’re apt to consider them the best part of the bird. Braising is the best way to make legs fall-off-the-bone tender. Browning the meat, then cooking for a prolonged period in a liquid, will make the legs so tender you can eat every ounce of protein. Unlike many upland species, waterfowl legs do not have fine bones, and the slow cooking turns the chewy parts into collagen and gelatin, adding to the flavor of the meat. A soak in some tasty sauce will make the legs and thighs a family and friend favorite. Remove the legs and thighs as one piece…

ANYONE who knows me well will agree that I do not lack confidence in my ability to train a flushing dog to do the job it was intended to do, both in the hunting field and in competition. Although I know I have the chops to get the most out of the dogs that I work with, or in some cases to fix the problems that arise in a dog as it develops, a trainer’s effectiveness is generally bound by a few key factors that are out of his or her control. What I mean is that in large part, unless a trainer is selecting, developing, and eventually finishing his or her own dogs, there is a pivotal portion of the young flusher’s life over which the trainer has very…

➔ I’VE BEEN KNOWN TO DRIFT AROUND FROM YEAR TO YEAR, AND HONE-IN ON ONE SPECIES FOR A FEW YEARS AND THEN KEEP MOVING. Throughout college it was waterfowl, then big game, another stint of waterfowl, and now upland bird hunting. Because of my nomadic obsessions, a versatile breed was certainly at the top of the list, and I settled on a Deutsch Drahthaar. Annie came into my world when I was on “Duck Kick 2.0,” and she took to the life instantly. Over the following years, she honed her skills and became a terror to any duck that had ambitions of escaping. She is a big girl, bred for power, and while it might take her a while to get there, no matter how thick and nasty the water,…

A crate enables definable boundaries of place, and eliminates the pup’s need to wonder where he physically belongs in the home. Think of the crate as a security blanket, and don’t feel that crate training will impact your relationship with your pup. Giving a young dog a sense of place and clear boundaries is the vital first way to delineate your roles, and to put the pup at ease. It must be clear from the start that you, the owner, are in charge, and that the pup must live within the boundaries that you create and reinforce.…

WHEN a reader asks how to fix a problem with a dog that barks, growls, or in any way threatens people or dogs, or is aggressive toward dogs for no apparent reason, or simply “doesn’t get along” with other dogs, my first two questions usually are: How old was the pup when you brought it home, and what do you know about how the breeder reared the pup? Depending on how these questions are answered, many more questions will be asked dealing specifically with the first 12 weeks of the pup’s life. The time in a pup’s life from three weeks of age to 12 weeks (some will extend that to 14 weeks) is referred to as the “socialization period.”This time period was initially called the “critical period” by John…

➔ AS A YOUNGSTER GROWING UP IN OKLAHOMA IN THE 1960s AND ’70s, QUAIL HUNTING WAS AT ITS PEAK. Bobwhite populations were extremely high, and nearly every family I knew had a bird dog or two that they used to chase quail every weekend during the season. If I heard it once, I heard it a hundred times back then: “DON’T SPOIL YOUR BIRD DOG, OR IT WON’T HUNT FOR YOU.” The mental picture that was painted was if you got just a little too affectionate with your dog—maybe petted it too much, or let it into the house every now and then when it was bitter cold outside—it would be ruined forever. I guess the assumption was that the next time you took the dog hunting, it would just…

THERE weren’t very many rules in my childhood home, but the one that mattered, and that my mother was most likely to enforce, was that dogs weren’t allowed. Dogs were dirty, and that was that. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized why dogs weren’t allowed, and to what extent a seemingly benign disorder can lay stake to someone’s mind like a real drug addiction. To a boy who only wanted a dog, the rule was a source of resentment that I haven’t shaken to this day. It was as if something was stolen from me in my youth, and even now I can only view it through a child’s selfishness and myopia, as if that anger is stuck in a time when I was 14. Getting…