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Tonight I got my first deer for this autumn and it
blew away some of the restlessness I had brought home from work. It was nothing
that we use to decorate the x-mas tree with but it fits well into the
freezer.
Jere wrote:
>>>Torsti, When hunting in the mountains - say for the
grouse we call ptarmigan in N
America; pretty much open country with low
scattered cover possibly, but not
flat... Do the setters stay within sight
always? or do they go out of sight down
into depressions or over hills
or ridges some of the time? Do they generally work
to the front and
into the wind with excursions to either side? And if they do
disappear
from view, do they frequently reappear coming from behind (downwind or on
the
ground scent trail; or do they generally seem to be able to know where you
are
going and reappear again to the front (more or less even if off to one
side or the
other)?>>>
Most of us think that the
ptarmigan (lagopus mutus) is too difficult to consciously search and
shoot over pointing dogs. They run nervously here and there among the rocks
when disturbed and if they flush they will be at the edge of the range of a
shotgun. It is said that hard going spaniels are the right medicine, the
birds will never have time to fool around with the dog. Instead the ptarmigan is
killed in wintertime by hunters on skis by scouting the snow covered hillsides
with field glasses and shooting the bird with a small calibre (22LR for ex.)
rifle at a distance that is beyond their escape distance.
Hence the willow grouse (lagopus lagopus) is the
main target in the mountains for our birddogs and hence their habitat is where
we hunt them. They can when the weather is very warm be found high up in the
ptarmigan habitat but rarely in completely sterile areas, there has to be
patches of low ground vegetation to feed from and hide in.
The smart dogs, provided that they are given
enough of experience, will learn to avoid the sterile areas but adjust their
search pattern so they cover the promising patches of vegetation. If you as a
handler use the wind wisely and walk slowly enough the dog should never came up
from your back. If it does you have walked too fast. Some dogs, like the
late Foxy and today Briz will, if pushed too hard forward by you, still
cast to your backside and search the ground you have left behind by walking too
fast.
In other words they have control over the terrain
and they want to be careful not to leave any "white" areas on the map. Here the
indipendence of bold dogs is an advantage. They are bold enough to "correct" you
when you have failed  )
If you do your part well they will almost always
work in front of you and they have a search pattern that is predictable. They
will disappear now beyond ridges and into depressions and other formations in
the terrain but since they have a sense of direction and position they have a
plan about where and when to turn back. If you know your dogs you will know
where and when they will come within sight again. A field trial judge will
be pleased and smile if you can say where your dog disappeared and where you
think it will be seen again. If the dog comes into sight where you predicted
there will be an extra point in the bag - it means that the dog and you know
each other. If it does not return within reasonable time it probably has found
something and since you know the dog you will also know, at least approximately,
where to search for it. The terrain is what it is and sometimes you have to move
in a way that is not favourable considering the wind direction. Then of course
the dog try to do the best out of the situation and show up from both here and
there.
Most of us use these orange coloured coats on our
dogs in order to find them easier. Also beeper collars and tracking collars
are widely used. The beeper collar is questioned by many for different
reasons. In trials no collars are allowed, I believe, except a colour
coded collar should two dogs in a pair be so very similar so they are difficult
to separate for the judge.
On the field I have seen extreme remote handling of
birddogs when the handlers are trying to direct the dog to search in a
mathematically correct pattern, on the limit to ridiculous handling.
Good or bad, I don't know and I don't care, they can do what they want but they
must know that scent conditions vary from day to day and only the dog can sense
the condition for the day or hour. In the mountains the young dog is best
left to learn its own way unless it runs totally wild. If you have a good
contact with the dog you only have to turn your back to it to direct it into a
new direction.
Then I have to ad something to my last post. When
I went/go out with the late Foxy and Springer or today with Briz on the
daily fitness training only, they knew that nothing of importance would happen
and that it was not a hunting trip. They behaved/behave completely differently
and ran/run for their own pleasure only, stopping and sniffing here and there,
followed a track or scent out of sight and could stay away for a rather long
time (a long time is 5 - 10 minutes for me). Not Springer of course, she stayed
close but still could go farther than when hunting normally. When on her own
particularly the somewhat broadminded Foxy lost me now and then, and then came
running from an unexpected direction, out of breath but happy to find me again.
This rarely happened when training or hunting so my conclusion is that if you
are with them - then they are with you.........whatever it means
))
Then when they knew that it was about field
training or hunting for real they transformed into more or less
obedient gundogs. They knew that the demands were tied to the situation. Given a
chance mature, experienced gundogs can be very flexible and pleasant and
easy.
>>>At
this juncture, I am more interested in how the dog keeps contact with the
moving
hunter even when the dog goes out of sight. This is a somewhat
different subject
than the one on out of sight commands. This
behaviour, I would suspect, might
require some higher level "thinking" than
dogs may generally be thought capable of.>>>
Now and then
dogs and cats have been moved hundreds of kilometres from home and they have
come back sooner or later by their own navigational skills. They probably
have something that we do not understand yet.
Harehounds and elkhounds often move really far from the handler. Some
of them learn to return by back-tracking their own tracks. Some of them will
find a road and follow it in the right direction. In Sweden it is not very
uncommon to see those dogs trotting on the roadside respecting the traffic like
law-obedient joggers. Well, that's another story, actually.
Anyway, if a dog really wants to come back to its owner it has a lot of
power and skill to do it. Now and then even they fail like a setter that
was lost recently for almost a week. I can not check the details now since the
website telling the story seems to be down for the moment,
Torsti
Borta Med Vindens Kennel "Ask not what your dog can do for you. Ask
what you can do for your dog." www.rospigan.net |