Upland bird hunting season is over so that means it is time for the off season dog work. I love running my dogs on both pen raised and wild birds in the off season. The wild birds make for the most realistic training, but just make sure you do not do this during nesting season, or with young chicks on the ground. For us here in Northern Nevada that generally means that from the middle of May until the later half of July, I don’t train on wild birds.
Pen raised birds allow me to work on certain skills with my dogs in a very controlled environment, and that can be really nice with a young dog. For the most part though I just try to set up the most realistic hunting scenarios that I can. That in itself can be a lot of fun. I know that I enjoy doing it, and my dogs certainly love it as well. It makes those first couple of days of hunting season each year feel like you never missed a beat.
Below are a few of my favorite dog training pictures from the past.

Jay

My last day of upland bird season was just like many of my hunts this year. There where birds available, but it was physically a hard hunt. Between walking through snow on the north faces, and thick nasty mud on the south faces, I was certainly content to be done hunting by the time that I got back to the truck. I hunted with my buddy Justin and he took me to an new area that I really liked. It had a lot of great bird habitat and was really remote, so the birds obviously see little pressure. We both shot quail and chukar, and we ended up with around 12 birds between the two of us.

I made a dumb mistake which was kind of disappointing. I could not figure out why I had a dog on point in the middle of a flat covered in snow, with not a single exposed bush. For whatever reason I ignored the dog, walked right by, then watched a single bird flush out of a small depression in the snow behind me. I was so mad at myself, and my dog must have thought that I lost my mind, which apparently I had. He was obvioulsy on point for a reason. What was I thinking?! Anytime something like that happens you tell yourself that it will never happen again, but somehow it does.

In general this year for me was really inconsistent. From week to week I experienced totally different results. I feel really lucky though as again I had a great time hunting this year, and at the end of each day both of my dogs where happy, healthy, and injury free. I hunted upland birds 43 days this year, which is far from the most that I have hunted in a season, but still a solid number. Looking back on the season my best memories are from the unbelievable Blue Grouse hunting that I found this year. I can hardly wait until September 1st so that I can put the dogs down on the ground with some wild birds and get after the grouse again.

In the meantime there will be lots of dog training and a lot of simulated hunting on pen raised birds. Now that bird season is over I can start thinking about fishing, and I am starting to get excited to get out and catch some trout.

Below is a picture from the early September Grouse hunt mentioned above. This was my favorite hunt of the year. I had my wife with me, we camped for three days, we had beautiful weather, and the hunting was outstanding.

Jay

Our shipping and warehouse manager, Don Price, came hunting with me on Saturday. He brought his Brittany and I was really hoping that we would be able to get into a bunch of birds. I had one of my best hunts of the year at the exact same place that I took Don, but on this day things were very different.
After four wheeling through the snow and almost getting stuck a few times we finally made it to the base of the mountain. The problem on this day was a really thick layer of snowy fog just above the valley floor, and as it turned out, that was right where the birds wanted to be. So, to make a long story short, we followed the birds into the fog only to decide that the fog was too thick. We then dropped back down below that level only to hear covey after covey talking above us in the thick nasty weather. We only had one point all day and it was Cash on a tight holding single bird. For sure it was not the hunt that I was hoping for.
Sunday I hunted with my buddy Paul. We headed out east for a mixed bag of Huns and Chukar. The weather was perfect and we both managed to get into good numbers of both types of partridge. I had been shooting the best that I have all season long, but on Sunday I remembered what it was like to shoot poorly. No big deal though. I still got birds and the dogs still got in some great work.
This coming weekend is the last of the year for us here in Nevada, so for sure I will be hitting it hard.

Jay