Your wise on getting that dog into game. One of the first labs I trained took him to an opening day dove hunt when he was 9 months old. I was 17 so we were both pretty green. He was awesome. During training that spring and summer his sight retrieves on land were out to 75 yards and we kept his water retrieves to no more than 20 yards and he was already taking whistle and hand commands. Except I had not introduced him to live game yet.
Get off to myself a bit in a corner on that first dove hunt and was able to get an early loafer to cruise by at 20 yards and knock it down. I am sending Rufus on his first hunting retrieve and he has this shimmering intent look as I send him and he just explodes forward toward the dove but stops short and picks up my shotgun hull that ejected from bottom of pump shotgun. Uggh. It tool some more work but he figured it but he either hated litter or loved plastic. It took years for him to quit trying pick up hulls even if he had game in his mouth and coming back if he ran across a plastic hull he would pick it up to. Dang dog had an incredible nose. He could find old plastic shotgun shells that had been laying in fields for years. There was no leaving any plastic hulls around for him, especially if we were duck hunting and if a hull is floating near the blind had to police it up or he would try and pick it up.
Still remember day that he did not try and pick up a hull on cold duck hunt after a challenging retrieve. Knocked a wood duck down but only crippled him and Rufus had to chase him down and even dove down to get him, which was also a first. He swims back with duck and gets close and eyeballs hull but then just swims by it to deliver the duck. He is standing there looking at the hull and then looking at me as if to say, I have done my part, the least you can do is pickup your hulls. We sort of made a bargain about that issue from then on.
|
Threaded Mode