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>>I'm
fairly lucky in one respect, my dogs don't seem to go after the turkeys
and
stick with the grouse. I think that's a learned behavior since I cannot
shoot turkeys in the regular hunting season and I just ignore them when a
young dog starts tracking them. That's a very interesting subject...
how
rapidly a young bird dog learns to ignore song birds and non-game birds
when
you ignore them.
Cj >>
Yes, they learn
to ignore non-game birds by themselves but to keep them from fur can
take some extensive and tiresome training. I can only speculate, use my
imagination, when I try to find a reason for this:
In the
beginning there was wild wolf. Even though they probably ate anything nutritious
they could find or catch, birds was most likely not too often on their menu. If
they made an collected effort as an pack to kill something it had to be big
enough to give a reward for the entire pack and hence a small bird were out of
question. In other words a bird gives less stimuli to start a pack-chase than a
deer for ex.
The still
unorganised prey drive of puppies and young wolfs/dogs make them chase anything
that moves, but by and by the influence from both own experiences (for ex.
blackbirds cant be caught by a wolf/dog) and the hunting habit of the rest of
the pack, will help them to sort out what is worth to spend energy on and what
is best left without consideration.
We humans
will mess things up for our "wolf". To start with we do remove one
important motivation for our wolf to hunt, namely hunger. We feed our wolf
and it is never really hungry. We also mess up the second important
motivation for our wolf to hunt, namely the game it is genetically programmed to
chase and kill, fur! I base my conclusion about this issue on the
fact that it is very much easier to stop a hare- or moose hound to chase birds
than it is to stop a birddogs from chasing fur! Fur gives much more stimuli to hunt than feather.
Actually I have never heard of an owner of hare- or Nordic breeds of moose
hounds complain about their dogs chasing birds. The Russian breeds are a bit
different since they are bred very versatile and can be used for anything
from hazel grouse to bear. Still I believe the Russian breeds are easy
to direct towards fur only if the owner is inclined to shoot fur
only.
There is a
reason why our birddogs need such an extensive training, above all in obedience,
and why our "fur"-dogs hardly need any training at all to be to some or a lot of
use. The last group hunts naturally, the first group behaves more or less like
very well-trained circus artists!
I do not know
if I am right or wrong. Of course I like to believe that I am right
 ))
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 |