Upland Hunting, Bird Dog and Shotgun BS Thread

I agree. The straight stock just points better for me. This is a Citori and is very close to the upland special but has 26in barrels.

 

26" barrels for the win!

 

Quick question about e-collars...

I have a 5 month old English setter that I've been running in the woods off leash for a couple of months. Up until this point he's been great at checking in and recall, but in the last couple of weeks he's been feeling his oats, not listening to the whistle and being a little headstrong.

With my last three dogs I conditioned them to the e-collar and it's time for Scout to follow in their footsteps. The only difference is Scout is a pretty soft dog compared to my other ones and the e-collar I have is an old Tritronics Field 70 with only 5 levels of stim. I think that my collar will be too strong/harsh for him and don't want to run the risk of him folding up on me, so I'm looking at getting a newer collar with vibration and tone as well as stim.

What's everyone using? I've researched Garmin pretty extensively but know nothing of Dogtra and Sportdog. I'm also thinking gps might not be a bad idea. The Garmin Pro 550 Plus looks like the ticket but that price tag is hard to swallow when bundled with a TT15 collar!!! So looking at any options including Dogtra and Sportdog.

Let me know what you're using and how you like it. Any input is appreciated.

 

Love my Garmin Alpha, and I hunt flushers. In wolf country seconds matter and knowing your dogs location is critical to your mental well being. Also pair it to the Garmin Fenix



I use vibration on my collars more than stim. Never been a fan of tone when hunting birds I want to be as quiet as I can. And wild roosters can hear a truck door slam more than a mile away let alone a tone in the same section as them. As a bonus to training with the vibration feature down the road when your dog is older most likely their hearing will not be so good. You can still use vibrate to have them check in and recall even if they can't hear you anymore. My Tollers have been sensitive enough that vibrate is all I have ever needed after the second year. For the most part, once in a great while stim as a reminder but rare. Had both a sensitive and a hard headed setter too though. Sensitive long before e collars, Mr. Rock Head was a brick and it took some Edison to get his attention he didn't pay attention to the vibrate and could care less about it. He was a rescue and if raised and conditioned correctly from the beginning can't help but think things would have been different with him.

 

Thanks for your input. I looked hard at the Garmin products and decided that in the short term I would try a collar without GPS. This will be my fourth bird dog and I haven't lost any of them...yet. And I don't hunt in areas where predators are any great threat. In the event that Scout continues to range out I can always add a GPS collar or sell what I have and buy an Alpha or Pro 550+.

I ended up going with a SportDog SD-1825 that I picked up used. It has various stim settings for soft, medium and hard dogs as well as tone and vibrate. So far it's working well and I'm happy with it and it seems to tick most of the boxes. Like you, I have no use for the tone setting and vibrate has been enough to get Scout to comply. In the event he decides to be a knucklehead there's plenty of stimulation levels to reach for. I'm not convinced the SportDog is of the same quality as the Garmin products, but the build quality seems good enough for the time being. At the very least it'll help me prepare the little heathen for the upcoming season!

 

Got a question for the other dog owners on here. What do you do leading up to season to make sure your dog is properly conditioned before heading into the field?

 

From a fitness stand point, I've always used a roading harness to get some resistance training in and build fitness, as well as simply running them in the woods on a daily basis.

To tune them up, I've simply ramped up obedience training to get them to start listening better and a month or so prior to the season opening I head out to the training field and set up some bird launchers with training birds (I prefer pigeons as they're much better fliers than pen raised birds).

I've always had pointing dogs so I have no idea on conditioning flushers and retrievers...

 

Thanks for the insight. I am running a GSP so it fits for me and looking to get out a good bit this season so gonna put in more effort getting both of us ready for it.

 

Depending on your dog and it's drive/stamina will depend on how you'll utilize the roading harness. Of the four dogs I've had, for three of them it was enough to attach the harness to a check cord and let them drag me for a couple of miles. The other dog was from all age/horseback field trial stock and was a haaaaard running bastard! I would have to attach a couple of lengths of logging chain to the harness and he'd drag that around with him . He was a hell of a physical specimen and a great quail covey dog....he was a pain in my arse and not so great in the grouse woods

 

Been a while. Here's some off season training days.

 

For the first time in my life I'm seriously putting in the work to train dogs and not just run "meat dogs". My female setter is whoa broke, steady to flush, and almost steady to shot.

The male is quite a ways behind her but he's standing birds better each time and I hope I'll be shooting birds over staunch points from him this fall. If he's not staunch he won't be getting birds shot for him.

 

Here's my buddy and I's whole crew at birddog camp.

 

Roy has come a long way since I picked him up in November. I imagine I'll be shooting a few birds over some very classy points this season.

 

Did anyone hunt the dove opener last week? How did everyone do?

 

First year in the last 15 that I didn't make it out. Kinda sucks, although on the other hand, the opener has rarely been a good shoot. It's mostly been about catching up with friends, eating good BBQ and getting excited for the next few months and the upcoming hunting

 

Our upland season (Ruffed Grouse and Woodcock) kicks off in 3 weeks. Mixed emotions as I had to put Willy down last November at the young age of 8. He was an amazing grouse dog and also retrieved many ducks for me. This will be my first season in 20 with no dog. Another is certainly in the future, just not at the moment due to work, life, etc. I'll be beating the bush on foot this season. May bring along a 22 rifle to try for head shots on the road birds (forest & logging roads).

 

Sorry for your loss!!!!!!!!!!!!! its so hard when we lose a hunting buddy. Ill be taking my 5 year old yellow lab out in 3 weeks over here in Vermont.
He really came into it last year. The begging of the season is hard because of so many leaves still on the tree's. I heard Maine is great bird hunting.

 

Fun trip hunting sage grouse. We moved sage grouse, valley quail, chukar, pheasants, and blue grouse on this trip.

 

Great pic! Didn't I see it in the latest RGS/AWS mag?

 

I don't think so, it was just taken on Tuesday.