New Member from Nebraska

[SteveElms]

Hi All. I'm new to the site and new to handling an upland bird dog. My wife and I live in Ogallala and she wants to get started upland bird hunting. I just recently got an 8 year old finished GSP and am gearing up for hunting season in a few short weeks. I'm also trying to learn all I can about handling the dog. I've had labs before but they were focused on water work, and I have a treeing walker coonhound that I hunt with. As far as handling an upland dog, I'm as green as grass. My plan, besides learning all I can here on the site, is to take the dog out and let her hunt, and try to keep up. It should be a fun season.

Steve

[RoostersMom]

Steve,

Welcome to the site. I love Nebraska - lots of opportunity for good hunting (I like your prairie chickens best). I would suggest getting the Perfect Start and Perfect Finish DVD's for you guys. Sounds like you have a good start with a finished dog - but these DVD's are good if you're considering training your own dog. For an upland dog and handling (especially a broke dog) you really don't have to do much - except enforce the commands the dog knows (like whoa means whoa until I say different and here means here absolutely every time).

Have a great season! This will be addicting - and I bet your wife will enjoy working/training/hunt testing etc. with the dogs as well. I sure do. My husband is more the hunting-only type whereas I enjoy playing the dog games as well as hunting.

Elsa from Missouri

[SteveElms]

I've started reading as much as I can about upland bird dogs and will look for the two DVD's that you mentioned. My wife just had a partial knee replacement and now that her knee isn't hurting with every step, she wants to hunt pheasants. I've hunted upland birds for 25+ years but have never had a bird dog to speak of. My lab would retrieve birds all day but he knew nothing about pointing.

[birdshot]

Welcome Steve, if you are looking for a high contact prairie chicken spot PM me.
Steve C.
North Platte.

[SD44]

Welcome to the forum. Hope you and your new hunting partner have a great season.

I have never hunted Nebraska but heard it is a great place to hunt.

[AZ Brittany Guy]

I've started reading as much as I can about upland bird dogs and will look for the two DVD's that you mentioned. My wife just had a partial knee replacement and now that her knee isn't hurting with every step, she wants to hunt pheasants. I've hunted upland birds for 25+ years but have never had a bird dog to speak of. My lab would retrieve birds all day but he knew nothing about pointing.

A few thoughts.... If you can, find the person who trained your dog and ask them if you can spend a morning or two working your dog on birds. He / she may want to charge you a modest fee but well worth the sessions. It is more to train you than anything. The book by Ben O Williams is good and focuses more on the hunting environment that most training books and videos.

Welcome and enjoy your new hunting partner.

[SteveElms]

I just thought I'd post a quick report from this last weekend. It was the youth pheasant weekend where hunters under 15 years old can hunt pheasants. I called a friend and we took his 12 year old out hunting. It was a perfect chance for me to take the dog hunting without being distracted by hunting since only the youth can hunt.

I basically took her out, walked her into the field, cut her loose and observed. This was the first time she had been off leash with me without some kind of containment (house/yard). I did have BOTH the Garmin and Marshall tracking collars on her, just in case. She took off hunting, worked the field well, and for the most part stayed within 100 yards or so of us. There were a couple of times on track where she went to 300+. We were in a CRP field that wasn't too overgrown and we were able to see her work. She did well, pointed 3 solid points, and we flushed 2 birds from her. Unfortunately no shots were fired (1 hen and 1 slow reaction time) but everyone had a good time, mostly me. She also pointed in the middle of a thicket and just before we got there all the birds blew out. There were about 12 in the thicket, but I could see she hadn't moved the entire time so we just chalked that up to "it happens."

Thanks again for the advice and suggestions on training material. I'm definitely going to keep working with her so she can train me. I'm also thinking that this type of bird hunting is going to be very addictive.

Steve

[AZ Brittany Guy]

Sounds like you got yourself a bird dog You will love it more as time goes on. Many of us get to the stage that we enjoy watching the birdwork over shooting the birds.