doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Shooting pen raised birds

Phillip, that is one happy dog! A good thing to see.

I'm not going to beat up preserve hunting or dogs that only had pen raised experience. You gotta do what you gotta do and it beats the hell out of golf. I've just had the good fortune of a life time of hunting wild birds with some really smart dogs and I miss it terribly.

pooch et al: agreed.

I field trial and hunt wild birds with my Brittanys. The NSTRA field trials I participate in use pen raised bobwhite. Nothing tests my dog's manners like a pen raised bob white in a field trial. No ecollars. The dogs have learned they can frequently catch the pen-raised bobs on their own. They must hold even when the bob is strutting back and forth in front of them. All that keeps my dogs on point is their training and sometimes intimidation if I am close enough.

As someone said not all pen raised bobs are equal either. Some fly very well and some are very underpowered.

Some people here sell "johnny house hunts". They have a half-dozen johnny houses with pen-raised bobs in them. They open a trap door at the top and flush the birds out. Birds usually fly 100 to 200 yards. Then their customers hunt them. The ones I went on had good flying birds. But some birds were hard to flush and sometimes required a nudge with a toe. That is the best liberated bobwhite hunt I think.

The liberated chukars are a lot of fun to hunt. And they quickly covey up. I have never had a dog, in a breech of manners, catch a healthy liberated chukar either.

In regard to the original question I have a 28 bore Birmy boxlock, a Salter and Varge, that weighs 5lbs even and has 26" barrels. Both barrels are choked skeet or so. It is proofed for 5/8oz so 9/16 of #8s would be about right.

I guess the lord truly blessed me. I got to hunt southern quail when the birds were plentiful and land open. We have family land in the quail capital county of the world, Bullock County, AL. I've had a little English Setter that was truly a great bird dog with more heart than a hunter could ever want. She was 6 weeks old when she came to me and 16 years old when she left. I wait for the day we will hunt together again and miss her everyday till then. I also have a wife who puts up with my need to hear the bird rise one more time. Today my wild bird hunts are only pheasants in ND, but its on private lands owned by friends who come south to fish the gulf with me and allow me to walk behind their dogs up there. They are much younger than I, but I see the same love of the sport that I grew up with. When the lord calls me to different covers I hope the birds hold well for the dogs. God Bless the birds, dogs, those who love them both, and the women who put up with us and our "too many" guns.

Agreed, hunting to me means wild birds. How did your bird dogs get to be so good. Were they only trained on wild birds during hunting season, or maybe you got them started or trained. What do you do with a promising dog if bird counts scrape the bottom it's first two seasons, and now it's near three and never had a bird on point.

Does he procure the birds from Vick's in Susan Moore, Alabama? I've seen him cycle 10s of thousands of Quail. I believe his bank of incubators has a capacity of say 20k eggs.

I was fortunate to get in on the tail end of the Bob White decline. I tagged along with many others who had seen the pinnacle hearing talk of dozens of coveys per day and just cutting out the Bob's on the covey rise. Every since I could eat dog food, we've always had a bird-dog and intend the same for the Boys Ellenburg. In this area in the 1980s many saw the writing on the wall and sold dogs, guns, all before the population dip.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Raimey, When I lived in Huntsville I was able to hunt Redstone. I pretty much had the bird hunting to myself (1975-80's)and could expect to find 6 to 10 coveys a day. I suspect there still isn't much bird hunting that goes on there. I had access because of a business contract and my volunteer work with the post game wardens, which allowed me to then have military hunting access. If you can find a military hunting partner and have the dogs You might find the "old" hunting.

That is really funny, because the rule at my house is once it has a name you can't eat it.
CHAZ

I don't claim to be a dog trainer. I believe the key to a good dog is to do no harm. The dogs have it in their blood we just need to give it a little direction and to keep it fun. Yard work, basics with the pen raised then let the wild birds train them. The rub is you need the wild bids. It's also helpful to hunt with experienced hunters that don't get angry when a pup screws up. Anybody that's worked with dogs know they can screw up. After all we do our share of screwing up.

Pooch, like Larry said, hunt the pen raised pheasant and chukar they fly hard and fast. Granted, there is nothing like wild birds but those days are gone for most of us, and like they said about all the great jobs around here in the steel mills, "They're gone boys and they ain't coming back"