Hunting Turkeys, Ducks, Geese, Pheasants, and Quail With Bird Dogs

What Are the Prime Locations for Trapping Pigeons?

Online Editors — Wed, 23 May 2012 14:56:20 -0400

by Chad Love

I've previously blogged about the importance of using live birds for training and how it's smart to use a mixture of both pigeons and pen-raised birds. While I try to mix it up between the two, I have to admit that pigeons are what I use the most. Why? In theory, off-season training with live gamebirds sounds great. In practice, however, there are some issues.

First off, live gamebirds can get expensive. In my area, adult quail generally will run you four to five bucks apiece, chukars and huns will go slightly higher, and pheasants will set you back up to $13 per bird. On top of the initial expense, trying to keep gamebirds healthy, alive and in re-usable condition can sometimes be a struggle. Not to mention the fact that you can't take a bunch of quail out to a remote field, turn them out and then expect them to find their way home.

You're pretty much restricted to one training location and a johnny house/callback pen set-up if you turn out free-roaming quail. And if they're not adequately flight-conditioned enough to, well, actually fly away from your dog, then it pretty much defeats your purpose.

That's why so many of us rely on pigeons, both trapped and coop birds, for our training. They're free (if you can trap them) or cheap (if you have to buy), they're very hardy, easy to keep and raise, and are strong fliers. If they're adequately homed or imprinted on your pen or coop, even normal barn pigeons will (mostly) find their way back home from distant training sites. You can either buy barn pigeons or homers on Craigslist (barn pigeons normally got for two or three bucks a piece, culled homers a bit higher) or you can choose to trap your own.

I'm cheap, so I trap my own. Which is why I've been driving around town lately looking for likely pigeon-trapping locations. I just received two commercial pigeon traps made by SW Cage (available from Gundog Supply). I'll be talking more about the traps and my pigeon-trapping experiences in a future blog, but for now I have to figure out where and how to place them. That's where you come in.

I need some suggestions on where to trap for maximum skyrat catch rates. Any ideas? Downtown buildings, old grain elevators, underpasses or bridges--I've seen a few pigeons in these spots in my town, (which doesn’t have a huge pigeon population to begin with) but I'm not sure I've seen enough to make placing a trap worthwhile. Do you have a surefire, under-the-radar pigeon-trapping spot or technique? I'd love to hear it.

CA Bill to Ban Hunting Bears and Bobcats With Dogs Passes Senate

Sarah Smith — Tue, 22 May 2012 09:28:22 -0400

--Chad Love

California is one step closer to banning hunting bears and bobcats with dogs after this bill passed the state senate yesterday.

From this story on sfgate.com:
The state Senate voted Monday to ban the use of dogs to hunt bears and bobcats, a practice the bill's author compared with shooting animals in a zoo. State Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, introduced the legislation after a California fish and game commissioner posed for photos with a mountain lion he killed during a legal hound hunt in Idaho.

Before the vote, Lieu described the practice in which packs of dogs chase the animals until they are exhausted and climb trees, holding them until the hunter arrives. "It's been likened to shooting a bear at a zoo," Lieu said. "It's simply not fair." He also noted that dogs are sometimes injured or killed and called the practice inhumane and unsportsmanlike.

Thoughts? Reaction? Anyone want to place odds on the next low-hanging fruit anti-hunters try to grab are gundog field trials? Or even hunting with dogs altogether?

Study: Dogs May be Evolutionary Reason Humans Beat Out Neanderthals

Sarah Smith — Mon, 21 May 2012 14:12:52 -0400

by Chad Love

We all know that dogs have been hanging around the campfire for a long, long time, and that as a result they have become quite distinct from their wolf ancestors. But now some researchers are positing that the human/dog connection goes way deeper than we ever beleived. In fact, dogs may have been an important clue in one of the biggest evolutionary mysteries in science: how and why did early humans thrive even as the Neanderthals disappeared?

From this story in the Atlantic:
One of the most compelling -- and enduring -- mysteries in archaeology concerns the rise of early humans and the decline of Neanderthals. For about 250,000 years, Neanderthals lived and evolved, quite successfully, in the area that is now Europe. Somewhere between 45,000 and 35,000 years ago, early humans came along. They proliferated in their new environment, their population increasing tenfold in the 10,000 years after they arrived; Neanderthals declined and finally died away. What happened? What went so wrong for the Neanderthals -- and what went so right for us humans?

According to the story, some researchers now believe early humans may have had significant help from their recently domesticated friends. Anthropologist Pat Shipman argues that early humans owe much of their evolutionary success to the domestication of dogs, basically making early humans more efficient and effective predators, which in turn gave humans an important leg up on their Neanderthal rivals.

From the story: Shipman speculates that the affinity between humans and dogs manifested itself mainly in the way that it would go on to do for many more thousands of years: in the hunt. Dogs would help humans to identify their prey; but they would also work, the theory goes, as beasts of burden...The possible result, Shipman argues, was a virtuous circle of cooperation -- one in which humans and their canine friends got stronger, together, over time.

The Atlantic piece is a great summary of the research and worth a read, but the original story on americanscientist.com is a fascinating read as well and worth the time for anyone interested in our evolutionary relationship with dogs.

The 35 Best Photos From Field & Stream's 2012 Spring Trail Cam Contest: Round II

Dave_Maccar — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:15:02 -0400

Who says trail cams are only fun in the fall? Set yours out this spring, then send us your best photos. You could win a new Bushnell Trophy Cam HD (MSRP $323.95).

Here's how it works. This contest will have three rounds. The first, Round I, began, March 12, and closed on April 12. Round II ran from April 12 to May 12, and Round III from May 14 to June 14. We're giving away three Bushnell Trophy Cam HDs (MSRP: $323.95) in each round, one cam each to the top three entries, as chosen by our editors.

Congrats to users luna, mod70 and Semibald, who each have won a Trophy Cam for their shots in Round II.

So go set your trail cams up already. And have fun! --The Editors

Click here for more info on the prizes.

Click here to enter ROUND III of the 2012 SPRING TRAIL CAM CONTEST

New TV Channel Created Just for Your Dog's Entertainment

Sarah Smith — Fri, 11 May 2012 12:05:44 -0400

by Chad Love

So you think the media merchants of mindless pap are content to only lobotomize us into drooling, slack-jawed consumers? Think again, fellow zombies, because now they're after our dogs, too. Welcome to the future of canine entertainment, and the end of civilization as we know it.

From this story on businessweek.com:
Gilad Neumann wants to be clear: He does not want to turn your dog into a couch potato. But if you’re going out for a few hours, he hopes that soon you’ll leave your television on and tuned to his new cable channel, Dog TV, the first channel directly targeting canine viewers. “Veterinary associations like the Humane Society and the ASPCA have been recommending for dog owners to leave the TV or radio on when they leave their dog home alone for many hours,” says Neumann, Dog TV’s founder and chief executive officer.

However, “not every video that you leave your dog with is appropriate,” he says. “[Anything that contains] fireworks or gunfire could scare your dog and create more stress than no TV.” Dog TV’s programming, on the other hand, is meant to soothe your dog’s abandonment anxiety—and spare your furniture—while he or she is alone.

That's right. Dog TV. It's here, but only if you live in the lone test market of San Diego, California and only if you have Time Warner Cable or Cox Media. The channel went live in San Diego on Feb. 12, but if it takes off, the Israeli company behind Dog TV hope to take it nationwide by the end of the year and start charging $4.99 per month for the privilege.

So what, pray tell, does Dog TV consist of? Oh, completely awesome(less) stuff like this. According to the story, that's the kind of stuff your dog wants to see.

From the story...Dog TV, after all, isn’t for humans. For one thing, the colors will seem off, since they’ve been calibrated to suit dogs’ limited vision. (Essentially color-blind, dogs can only see shades of blue and yellow.) “We’re constantly doing … you can call them focus groups for groups for dogs,” says Neumann. “We’ve noticed, for example, that dogs are not thrilled about barking on the channel, so we’ve removed almost all barking.”

Really? I think maybe they need to expand their "focus groups" past the dog park, because I'm pretty sure my dogs want to see programming like this.

So...if that's the kind of stuff non-sporting dogs like to watch, and if there's a market for it, might there be a market for a channel dedicated to sporting dog programming? What do you think your dog would like to watch? Would you pay for it?

And while we're riffing the possibilities, what about subliminal dog training programs? Hour after hour of exciting gundog footage that's not only entertaining old Spot, but subconsciously teaching him important training concepts? Might that be the future of gundog training? Training DVDs and programs, not for us, but the dogs?

Hmmm, I just might be on to something there...

Share Your Gun Dog Tips, Win a FireKnife

Sarah Smith — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:43:49 -0400

by Chad Love

Who wants to win a really cool knife? I mean it, I've been playing around with one for the past couple weeks, and I gotta say the new Swedish Fireknife is a very well-designed and comfortable knife, so much so that mine is now a permanent addition to my knockaround/training bag. It's light, ergonomic, razor-sharp and the blade design lends itself well to a variety of tasks. The question is, who wouldn’t want to win one?

All you have to do is continue sending in your training tips to fsgundogtips@gmail.com for the chance to win. I've got several of these knives to give away, so the more tips you send the more chances you have to win one. Your tip can be about any aspect of training, ownership or hunting with your dogs. It can be a useful piece of gear (homemade or otherwise), a time-saving piece of advice or a novel or unusual way to teach a concept.

Our first winner, Bill Maggart, gave us a cool tip to help introduce a pup to water. I thought using Cheetos to lure a pup into the water was a pretty creative way to overcome an issue many puppy owners struggle with, and this week's winner from reader Lee Nelson is similar in that it uses a treat in an unorthodox way to help us out with a task that is sometimes difficult with an active dog: trimming toenails.

Ever have a dog that fights you non-stop while trying to do his periodic claw trimming? Maybe a bad past experience or one of those who just can't sit still. Rather than fighting with him, found the key is total distraction. What dog doesn't love a good treat? I'll take a slice of very fresh white bread. You know the kind. The type you can wad up into a tight dough ball. Slather it up with peanut butter. Open the dog's mouth. Stick the slice up in the roof of his mouth, peanut butter side up. He'll be so busy trying to get it down with his tongue, he won't care what you're doing! The only challenge to this technique is to stop laughing long enough to get the deed done! Enjoy!

Interesting. I'm lucky in that all of my dogs are used to me trimming their toes, but some dogs can get happy feet when you're trying to trim, and it's no fun when you accidentally cut into your dog's quick because they're bouncing around so much. Curious, I decided to try this tip out on my pup this morning, and I gotta say, it worked like a charm.

Now, I know some of you expressed concern with the last tip about giving a dog human food. Personally, I think that as long as you're not feeding your dog table scraps every day and buying them candy bars, chips and beer on a regular basis, occasionally giving them a treat like Cheetos or a bit of peanut butter isn't the end of the world. I can certainly think of worse things for a dog to endure.

Congratulations to Lee Nelson (Lee, I'll send you an e-mail shortly...) and remember, please keep those tips coming.

Wild Chef's Best: Fish and Turkey Recipes

Online Editors — Wed, 02 May 2012 15:16:11 -0400

A Call to Action: CA Battle Over Hunting With Hounds Heats Up

Sarah Smith — Wed, 02 May 2012 13:42:14 -0400

by Chad Love

Gundog owners are used to low-grade attacks on our way of life. Not even the loony fringe believes outright bans on hunting dog ownership can work. Yet, there are any number of ways that anti-hunting and anti-pet ownership forces can nickel and dime us with laws that, on the surface seem fairly benign or even well-intentioned. I mean, who isn’t against puppy mills, irresponsible dog owners and animal cruelty, right?

So these groups trot out, mostly on the local level but increasingly on the state level as well, proposed legislation like spay and neuter requirements, dog limit requirements, "kennel licensing" requirements, breeding restrictions, etc., that would make owning, breeding, training, and hunting with dogs as difficult and expensive as possible.

But gundog owners in California need to sit up and take notice on a piece of legislation. The battle over hunting bears and bobcats with hounds is heating up in the Golden State, with round one going to the anti-hunters. But this is much more than just another piece of anti-hunting legislation. Hunting dog owners in California - all hunting dog owners, not just houndsmen, need to fight this.

From this story in the Mount Shasta News:

Hundreds on both sides of the hound hunting debate testified before the state senate’s Natural Resources Committee in Sacramento last week before a bill that would ban the practice was moved forward to the appropriations committee. The vote was 5-3 to approve the legislation, which would make it illegal to use hounds while hunting bear and bobcats in the state of California.

Sounds grim for Golden State houndsmen, but the legislation, known as SB 1221, still has a ways to go before it can be signed into law. It now goes to the state senate appropriations committee, then if passed goes on to the full senate floor, then to the state assembly and the governor's office. If California sportsmen can get mobilized, maybe they can halt its passage. If not, then all hunting for bears and bobcats with hounds will be outlawed, and then what? Emboldened, will they come next for our beagles? Coursing hounds? Coon hounds? Working terriers?

If you live in California and you own a hunting dog - any kind of hunting dog - then you need to start calling your elected representatives, making placards, sending letters, whatever it takes. The right you save may be your own...

The 50 Best Field & Stream Reader Photos from April 2012

Dave_Maccar — Wed, 02 May 2012 09:25:49 -0400

Each month, Field & Stream editors review the hundreds of photos submitted by readers to our Trophy Room. If your photo is chosen to be printed in the Game Faces section of the magazine, you’ll win a Rapala Fish ‘N Fillet knife!

Submit your photos here!

Here are the other best reader photo collections from this year:

January 2012

February 2012

March 2012

Planet of the Dogs: K-9s Groom Humans as Personal Well-Being Tools

Sarah Smith — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:58:38 -0400

by Chad Love

A few years back, the world got its shortpants in a wad over the beating IBM's "Deep Blue" computer administered to world chess champion Gary Kasparav. They bunched even tighter last year when IBM's "Watson" computer thoroughly trounced the best human "Jeopardy!" players on the planet. In the wake of these and myriad other examples of the growing superiority of the silicone chip-based servant over its carbon-based creator, there was much bloviating about the nature of sentience, logic, intelligence, reason, and whether computers would eventually overtake humans in all these heretofore exclusively and uniquely human categories.

To which I say (to myself, since no one listens to me): What a waste of time and apparently not-so-unique-after-all thought. Seriously. That's the problem with academics; they're too damn academic. Devious cunning and opposable thumbs got us where we are today and devious cunning and opposable thumbs will always insure that computers will never become our robot masters, so forget the Matrix.

But dogs, on the other hand, well, I can easily see them going all Planet of the Apes on us. If you ever stop for a second and think about it, I mean really think about it, I believe you'd come to the conclusion that there's not a damn thing a dog can't be trained to do, and do it better than pretty much anything else out there. Dogs can find people buried under tons of rubble, they can sniff out bombs and drugs, they can be trained to detect cancer, pick up shed antlers, help guide the blind, I mean, the list literally goes on forever. And although they do seem to lack our devious cunning and handy extra digit, dogs are our superiors in virtually every other way imaginable. We may be the "masters" in this eons-old relationship, but who's really controlling whom here?

According to some recent research, dogs have evolved not so much to please us, but to groom us as their personal well-being tools.

From this story on scientificamerican.com:

By sharing an environment with humans, dogs left behind their ancestral environment and found a place in a new one. No longer would they have to hunt to eat; humans would come to provide for their care and feeding. It is probably no accident that the relationship between dogs and their owners mirrors the attachment relationship between parents and their children, behaviorally and physiologically. Indeed, humans who have strong bonds with their dogs have higher levels of oxytocin in their urine than those with weaker bonds.

But it isn’t only the source of their food that changed as wolves became dogs; their entire social ecology changed. Instead of sharing social space primarily with other wolves, dogs came to treat humans as social partners. This is one of the critical differences between a domesticate and a wild animal that is simply habituated to the presence of humans. Domestication is a genetic process; habituation is an experiential one. Domestication alters nature, habituation is nurture.

Several years ago, scientists at Eotvos University in Budapest wanted to determine whether the social-cognitive differences among dogs and wolves was primarily genetic or experiential. To do this, they hand-raised a group of dog puppies and a group of wolf pups from birth, resulting in roughly equivalent experiences. Any differences between the two groups’ social cognitive skills, then, would be attributable to genetics.

What the researchers found was that despite being raised under identical circumstances, wolves and dogs exhibited completely different behaviors in terms of problem-solving. When given a task that was essentially impossible, dogs almost always looked to their humans for cues, or "help" if you will, while wolves did not.

In one simple task, a plate of food was presented to the wolf pups (at 9 weeks) or to the dog puppies (both at 5 weeks and at 9 weeks). However, the food was inaccessible to the animals; human help would be required to access it. The trick to getting the food was simple: all the animals had to do was make eye contact with the experimenter, and he or she would reward the dog with the food from the plate. Initially, all the animals attempted in vain to reach the food. However, by the second minute of testing, dogs began to look towards the humans.

This increased over time and by the fourth minute there was a statistical difference. Dogs were more likely to initiate eye contact with the human experimenter than the wolves were. This is no small feat; initiating eye contact with the experimenter requires that the animal refocus its attention from the food to the human. Not only did the wolf pups not spontaneously initiate eye contact with the human experimenter, but they also failed to learn that eye contact was the key to solving their problem.

Other experiments in the research projects had the same result. The rest of the story is a fascinating read and well worth the time for anyone interested in dogs. It reinforces the notion that dogs truly are distinct from wild canids. They aren't just friendly wolves, but the unique genetic result of thousands of years of mutually beneficial domestication, if that's what you want to call it. They've "trained" us as much as we've trained them, a fact the researchers point out

It’s not that wolves are unintelligent; it’s quite the opposite, in fact. Wolves are cooperative hunters, skilled at negotiating within their own social networks. It’s just that even after being raised by humans, wolves simply do not see humans as potential social partners. The dogs, however, quite rapidly took a social approach to solving each problem they were given. In one sense, this is a remarkable example of tool use. Only in this case, the humans were the tools, and the dogs the tool-users.

So remember that, and be kind to your dogs. Your smart, deeply-intelligent, human-training, always-watching, always-adaptable dogs. Treat them well, or in a few more millennia of canine evolution it won't be HAL 9000, Skynet or some malevolent toaster we have to worry about, it'll be our canine masters.