Sophie doing her work at the rehab center 5-17-13

Saturday afternoon I took the guys out for some training. Mia does well enough, aside from honoring, that I can focus on taping her training. Doc now needs to take the next step in his steadiness, and Elvis needs some work on steadiness as well, but both are coming along nicely. Once I clip my Pheasant’s wings and eventually get more birds, I can start using them and give the partridge a break.

Dakota retrieves, 5-3-13

Sophie retrieves, 5-3-13

Yesterday was such a nice and sunny day that I took the guys for their first swim of the year and introduce Doc to water for the first time. I made two trips, the first with the Labs and the second trip with the Spins; Dakota was so excited that she cried all the way out for her first retrieve. Doc’s a little a fish when it comes to water and just about dragged me into the water in his attempt to investigate the big orange buoys that marked the swimming area.

Mia heading out to retrieve a piece of driftwood, 5-3-13

Mia, Elvis and Doc, 5-3-13

Doc took to the water like a fish, 5-3-13

Mia made a couple of retrieves with a piece of driftwood, but I didn’t give Elvis a chance to retrieve. Doc had enough of watching retrieves, and when I tossed the driftwood for Elvis, Doc lunged, ripped the leash out of my hand, hit the water and went under, then paddled back to shore. I didn’t want that to frighten him of water so we returned to the truck where I crated Mia and Elvis, then let Doc retrieve a bumper several times. I actually thought he was going to swim in his first introduction to the water, but no, chest-deep is as far as he’d go.

Checking things out.

Doc makes his first water retrieve with a bumper, 5-3-13

Doc’s proud of his second retrieve, 5-3-13

Imperial Dreams, Tracking the Imperial Woodpecker through the wild Sierra Madre is a book of hope and tragedy, history and adventure, mystery and naturalism, all of which are brought together in an exceptionally well-written story. Throughout, the reader finds themself as passionately determined to find this bird as Tim: sharing his hope, struggling with him in discouragement, and feeling his fears as the expedition plays cat-and-mouse with deadly drug cartels. Imperial Dreams brings the stories and biographies of a remote people to life and opens a window into the Sierra Madre’s harsh beauty, and continual struggle to survive against first the Apache People and now drug cartels.

As for the Imperial Woodpecker itself, little is known other than eyewitness accounts, stories, and the observations of earlier explorers. By the time the science community recognized their fragility, the pitoreal was well on its way to extinction. Indiscriminate logging and a program of extermination quickly decimated this extraordinary bird. Still, there continues to be rare and unconfirmed sightings of this woodpecker; and since Tim and a partner ornithologist rediscovered the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, thought to be extinct, there is still hope for the Imperial Woodpecker.

The book itself is a high-tech forerunner of what printed material is likely to become: included on the jacket and title page is a barcode image of an Imperial Woodpecker, which when scanned, downloads the only known images of a living Imperial Woodpecker. Imperial Dreams also provides web site addresses for additional information, including a link to the only known video of an Imperial Woodpecker. Finally, scattered throughout the book are black-and-white photographs and a section of colored photos and illustrations that greatly enhance the reader’s experience.

Imperial Dreams is one book that I highly recommend. Not only does it read like a top-notch adventure novel, but contains fascinating history found nowhere else.

Elvis ready to start his visits.

Since Elvis needed a shower before making his visits, I thought it would be a good time to give Doc his first shower. Once I got his front feet into the tub he climbed right in, I let him check out the shower head to his satisfaction, and he cooperated throughout.

Doc giving me the eye after his first bath.

Working with Doc on tracking. That boy’s a real scent hound.

With temperatures dipping into the teens at night and water temperatures still in the 40’s, it’s still too early to begin Doc on water training. We’ve also burnt the pasture so I’m keeping the guys out of it, not wanting them to track ashes throughout the house. That leaves back yard training on obedience, steadiness and tracking.

Working with the guys on the “stay” command.

I let the guys have one last run in the pasture before we burnt it, and Mia decided to not only go deaf but also led Doc on a merry run through the neighbor’s fields. After chasing them down and returning to the pasture, we spent some time on obedience – particularly Mia – which restored her hearing and sharpened her attention. Since Doc was only following Mia’s lead, he was off the hook.

Released from “stay”!

I worked with the guys on tracking in the back yard, using pieces of hot dogs. One of the suggested methods of introducing them to tracking is to break a hot dog into pieces, grind the first piece into the ground with your foot, which gets scent on your shoe, then walk a few feet dropping bits of hot dog along the way leaving a large piece of hot dog as the last piece. After working with them on tracking, I broke up the remaining hot dogs and scattered them around, then let the guys out for a free-for-all. Doing this adds an element of competition to searching and use of nose, which hones their skills and drive.

The “ditcher” cleaning out the ditch.

After burning the ditch bank, the ditcher comes through to clean it out. Without the ditcher, dirt would eventually fill in the ditch.

Once the ditch banks were burnt, the pasture was next.

I don’t write many training articles for our magazines because our authors – all of them – are better trainers than I am. On the other hand, I can spell better than most of them. So this is something of a novelty for me, to give you a tip/technique you may not have thought of or tried.

In upland hunting, silence is golden, especially, but of course not limited to, pheasants. These birds hear farm equipment, passing vehicles, all sorts of things. What they don’t hear often is the human voice, and all of us – I’m one of the worst – can’t keep our mouths shut when we hunt.

A few years back for a period of time, and in spite of having a face for radio, I made one of those TV hunting shows you see on Saturdays. It was called Bird Hunter’s Journal, and we did a lot of segments on pheasant hunting. Pheasants make great TV because they are an extremely popular bird, they live in the open and don’t fly like rockets compared with most others, and the camera guys can focus in. The other fellow, my longtime friend Chris Dorsey, and I were to let the bird get well up to make sure the cameras were on it before we shot, and some of the resulting shots were long, which gave us a chance to show off the sponsor’s guns, Beretta over-unders, in action.

The other thing we had to do was yak at each other. Television with two guys silently walking through a field for 22 minutes plus commercials is like watching dough rise, so we had to carry on some semi-witty banter. Naturally, this put the birds on alert and made filming harder. More often than not, the action that ended up being presented as happening in one day was actually the result of two or three days’ filming (which, by the way, was fine with Chris and me).

Television aside, most of us probably talk too much, but here’s an odd little idiosyncrasy: Some people who clam up when they’re hunting and won’t speak to a partner think nothing of hacking on the dog. It’s like the birds will hear him if he talks to you, but not if he talks to the dog. I have had guys – even guides – get out of the truck and put their finger to their lips to indicate silence, then let the dog out that goes in the wrong direction, and they holler at him. That’s all it takes.

Silently communicating with another human is a lot easier than silently communicating with a dog, so we whistle or call out commands, and the birds hear it.

Of course, it can be done; retriever people with fully trained dogs use arm signals because at the distances the dogs often work for long retrieves, a whistle or voice can’t be heard.

What can work, at least it has for me, is a system I use with my pointer Riley: silent communication via the electronic collar. In the field, we need the dog to check in, come in, be out in front of us, and stop. The collar I use has the tone option, though vibrate would work just as well. A tone means check back into view so I can see you; a tone followed by a very light nick-nick, means come in all the way.

Right now, I’m working out some of the same things with Murphy my Lab, but not for entirely the same reason. Riley’s duties are confined to late season pheasant hunting (usually the Dakotas) and duck hunting. Not that she gets cheated; she gets a lot of time in the field.

On the pheasant hunts, I just need her to stay in gun range; she works to the front pretty well, and a tone warns her that she’s stretching it out too much. But it’s the duck hunting where she needs help. On a retrieve in water, sound isn’t a problem in the sense that it can spook game; it’s a problem in that wind and waves and distance can conspire to render even my Acme Thunderer whistle useless. That is what those hand signals are for, as I mentioned earlier. But they are useless if the dog doesn’t see you. You don’t want a dog to turn and look at you for direction constantly (that’s called “popping”), but you need for him to do it when you can see they are obviously off-line and before he becomes completely confused and starts swimming in circles.

If I have to handle, first I have to get her attention. So, a nick-nick means to turn and face me and wait for direction given by hand signals – over, back, come in.

I’d like to be able to have an e-collar signal for each of those commands, so I don’t risk falling overboard waving my arms around, but like I said, I’m not that good a trainer… and Murph isn’t that smart.

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