Introducing Your Retriever to Upland Hunting

One of the most common questions I'm asked when I'm doing training demos for SportDOG is this one: “How do I keep my retriever hunting within range?” Without a doubt, keeping your dog from getting too far ahead of you when he's on the scent of a running pheasant or grouse can be a massive challenge.

I've got some real basic training drills I begin with when me dogs are young, and then I've got more advanced tactics to sort out problems if they pop up as the dog gets older. Let me start with the basics.

I start by taking a pup for walks in light scrub as soon as he's ready. 8 or 10 weeks old is not too young to get started on this. I always walk back and forth as we move down a paddock because that's how you'll want him to work when it's time to go hunting. You want to instil that desire to search and cover lots of ground.

As my dog gets a bit older and bolder, we do these walks with a 50-foot check cord. The second he starts to stretch the limits of that rope, I give a little tug on it and tell him, 'Too far.' The dog quickly learns he can go side to side all he wants, but running straight out and constantly testing the limits of the check cord is not the way to go.

As your dog gets older and you've shown him the ropes with the remote training collar, now you can back up that tug on the lead with a static stimulation on the collar. So the correction goes like this: 'Too far,' followed straight away by a pull on the leash with a simultaneous stimulation. If you've done the right groundwork to get your dog used to the remote training collar you should know what setting gets a reaction from your dog. There'll be times when you'll need to crank it up a notch if he's not listening. Often a dog that's hyped up will need a stronger correction than what he needed in obedience training.

Now the purpose of the check cord and e-collar correction isn't to make him come running all the way back to you. You don't want to turn him off from the excitement of getting out and searching for birds. You're just reinforcing his limits and showing him over and over again what's acceptable.

Since the whole point of these drills is to get your dog out searching for birds, you'll want to chuck in some training birds into the mix pretty early on in the piece. I want my dog to be successful, gain confidence, and have a good time all at once. So now I stash a mix of dead and live pigeons out in the paddock. For example, I'll plant a dead one on the left, a dead one on the right, and then a live one somewhere near the middle. Next time I might switch it up and maybe put a live one on the left and right and a dead one smack bang in the centre.

When your dog flushes a pigeon and it flies off, your dog will want to chase it. Don't let him go running off over the horizon. Keep the check cord on him for these drills. Tell him 'No bird' and bring him back to you, then give him a good pat for doing a great job. Then encourage him to get out and hunt again and look for the next bird.

To really get him going, I'll round up a couple of mates and have 'em walk alongside us on each side of the paddock. As we start getting close to where a dead or live chook's been put down, one of the mates will shout, 'Oi, oi!' and wave his hat to direct the doggo that way. I might even get the mate to wave a flapping, wing-clipped pigeon and then stash the bird behind his back or chuck it in his hunting bag as the dog makes a beeline for it. The point isn't for the mate to be the source of the bird, it's just to catch the dog's eye. Every time this goes down, the dog finds a bird, and this keeps drumming in the pattern of zigzagging rather than legging it straight out.

These drills are pretty straightforward, and it's quite easy to keep things under control since you're the one planting the birds. But things can get heaps more complicated in real hunting situations when you come across running pheasants, multiple flushes, heaps of gunfire, and so on. In my next article I'll yarn about ways to get ready for those sorts of challenges and how to sort out common issues.

Please check all of your local and state regulations before training.