Cove Mountain Kennels

I just bought a new training pistol (starter pistol, blank pistol) from gun dog supply (http://www.gundogsupply.com). After visiting with them about the different options they have, they were very helpful, I decided on the Kimar 209 primer pistol Made by Traditions. I couldn’t be more happy with it. It has a solid feel to it like a real pistol, is loud without being too loud and fits nicely in an Uncle Mike’s Sidekick holster. Also, the 209 primers are cheap and easy to come by. It also comes with a nice plastic case. (I can see that the latches won’t last too long on the case, but it’s a nice touch.) It was a great buy for the money.

Pistols are nice to train with because they can be on your side, grabbed quickly when you want a gunshot, then put away so you have two free hands. If you want to train with a pistol, but can’t justify buying one the few months you’ll need it to train just one pup, if you have a .22 pistol, you can use it. Revolvers, like the Ruger single-six work particularly well with blank loads. (Ah, maybe a good reason to buy a new gun!) Simply use your .22 and purchase .22 blanks. Trust me, even though blanks may cost more than loaded shells, buy them so you don’t have to worry about where the bullet is going to end up. You’ll have enough on your mind training the dog. As a side note, if you buy crimped loads, like for a ramset concrete nail gun, there is some debris (probably acrylic glue in the end of the shell) that shoots out, so don’t point it at anything close.

Another is to make your own shotgun popper loads. If you have a shotgun reloader, simply reprime shotgun hulls and don’t crimp them. These work well in an over/under. If you have a pump, cut the crimp off and they should feed through the magazine fine. This works very well, helps the dog learn to look where the shotgun is pointed and it’s not quite as loud as a pistol. This is a great tool, one that I love to use with young puppies, but I often find myself having to lay my nice shotgun down on the ground so I have use of both hands, then it gets stepped on by a pup.

A final alternative is to use your muzzleloader with only the 209 primer or the cap. This will work just as well as the shotgun popper loads, except that you can shoot twice and they are a pain to clean.

I didn’t make it out for the closing of the waterfowl season. I did, however, have a great day at the pheasant shooting preserve training dogs. It was a chilly day, but beautiful and mostly sunny. We set the birds in thick cover along the river and gave them plenty of time to move around and leave good scent trails. I happend to have had all retrievers (flushers) we were training, so the thick cover was excellent for them. The dogs worked the birds well and the birds flushed with gusto and flew strong. It was a great training day for the dogs. We were able to work on a lot of different aspects: hunting close, not chasing running birds (coming back into gun range when called), flushing, pulling off missed birds, tracking wounded birds, and retrieving. It also tuned us up on our bird shooting. Mike, George’s son-in-law was a newcomer to upland game hunting; he did great and had a ball! Hopefully he’ll be hooked on upland game gunning for good.

We went chukar hunting this weekend. Late season chukar hunting is always tough, but worth getting out. It was a cold, but beautiful sunburn kind of a day. We did find two small coveys of birds high on the mountain, but they were seasoned and got the better of us. We ended up taking only one bird home, but had a great day. Everyone got a great workout and we saw some spectacular scenery. We only have 10 days left in the season!

 

 

4 pheasant breasts (Boneless, skinless)
1/2 cup teriyaki sauce
1 can pineapple slices
bacon
salt and pepper to taste

Marinate pheasant in teriyaki sauce overnight in the refrigerator. Place a slice of pineapple between 2 breast halves and wrap in bacon. Hold together with tooth picks. Salt and pepper to taste. Grill on low heat, basting with marinade, rotating frequently for 20 min. or until cooked through. Serve over wild rice and garnish with left over pineapple.

The key to cooking pheasant, as with most game meat, is not to over cook it. Grill it until the center barely looses the pink color, but is still moist.

 

Thank goodness it is staying light a little longer now. Tonight it was light until about 6:10. I was able to make it out and train with several dogs this evening. It’s cold though. The cold makes it tough to keep them in water. It is surprising how much water a dog needs in the winter. If you don’t have heated buckets, here are a couple of ideas of how to deal with the cold. Bring the water buckets inside overnight so they thaw out, then in the morning only put about 3″ in. Then right when you get home from work you can add another 3″ of water to the ice in the bottom, then later in the evening you can add another 3″. This way, they can regularly have plenty of water, yet it is fast for you to give them more water. I have found that if you have to go inside and melt out the ice every time, you just don’t do it as often as they can use it.

As far as evening training during the winter when it gets dark so early, another thing that you can do is to use the dark to challenge the dog to use their nose. Tie a long length of string on a freshly killed bird, or a frozen one and drag it trough the snow, laying down a trail. Try not to drag the bird where you are walking so the scent on the bird’s trail is as unique as possible. Drag the bird out to a spot and plunk it down in the snow so it is hidden just a little bit. Then bring out the dog and put them on the scent trail with the “search!” command. Help them work out the trail and find the bird.

 

During the winter when it is snowy and cold it is especially difficult to get out and exercise and train. It’s often dark, cold, and let’s face it, it’s hard to get motivated. Right now it is probably more critical than ever that you get your dog out and exercise. The dog probably spends most of her 24 hour day either curled up keeping warm in the dog house or laid out on the living room floor in front of the heater vent, either way they aren’t getting any exercise or mental stimulation.

It may be tough to go, but just do it. Put the leash on and go for 30 to 45 minutes. When you get back, spend 10 minutes on a training exercise. It will do wonders for your dog, not to mention both your own mental and physical wellbeing. Go do it!

 

Continuing with our previous theme about training during the winter when it is dark, I thought I’d share my roading outfit. Exercising dogs is critical to their overall mental and physical wellbeing, and very important for training. Another reason to get them in shape is that you can take them on a several day hunting trip and they can hunt the whole time, but in the winter when it’s dark before and after work it is difficult to get them out and exercise. When it’s light out, I typically like to take the dogs out on a dead-end back road and let them run free while I run from 2 to 5 miles. They’ll get out a ways from me then I’ll call them back and we all get our exercise, but when it’s dark, I just can’t give them that much freedom.

My solution was to build a roading rig for our 4-wheeler. I saw one advertised for $170 through a hunting dog supply outfit, so I built one for about $25. I made it from the following items:
(1) 10’ length of chain link fence top-rail pipe ($10)
(4) Eye bolts ($2)
(4) Swivels ($5)
(4) Heavy bungee cords ($3)
(4) Brass leash snaps ($5)

I drilled holes 2” and 20” in from each end and installed the eyebolts and swivels, then I cut the ends off the bungee cords threaded the snaps through and tied them in a circle using a zeppelin bend knot. I tied the bungee together so it would be double the strength and so that there were no sharp wires or anything to get cut on. I use 3 nylon straps (NRS) to attach it to the front rack. It holds tight and takes just a second to attach or detach it.

As for harnesses, you have to buy pulling harnesses just for roading. Don’t try buying the walking dog harnesses at the pet store. Trust me on this one, they don’t work. Gun Dog Supply.com has a 1” wide nylon roading harness for $17 that works great. Strap these on the dogs, clip them to the snaps and you’re ready to go.

Most dogs take to it very quickly. Start slowly and make sure the dogs are with you and you are not dragging them. (They will hurt their pads very quickly if they are fighting you and you try to pull them along.)

I find that the dogs do best between 8 and 12 miles an hour. Just this morning (before taking the above photo – notice how calm the dogs are) I ran them a full 4 miles non-stop at 10 miles an hour. When I run them first thing in the morning, they get a great work out, are ready for training and are much calmer all day.

Thankfully we have passed the winter solstice and the days are getting longer.

Pig hunting was a great diversion from bird hunting for a couple of days. Here Jay and I are enjoying a moment over a big sow we shot. I did miss the dogs though.