Training with birds

What's your preferred species to train with?
Any tips, anicdotes, funny stories to share?

Pigeons. Cheap and easy to obtain

[QUOTEPigeons. Cheap and easy to obtain][/QUOTE]

X2

Also chuckers, cause they hold well and fly hard, also good eating.

Depends. For a young dog, woodcock. Not much better for getting a dog hunting and pointing birds. For planted variety pigeons are great, if yo have homers you only need a few and you can use them over and over again for a lifetime, they are also great because once they are up they won't land on the ground again.

That said if I am going to be hunting grouse, I want lots of grouse contact, if I was going to hunt pheasant, I want lots of pheasant contact and so on...

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Originally Posted by fishhawk

[QUOTEPigeons. Cheap and easy to obtain]

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X2

Also chuckers, cause they hold well and fly hard, also good eating.[/QUOTE]
Never ate em - but I agree that they are fun to train with

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Originally Posted by Cass

X2

Also chuckers, cause they hold well and fly hard, also good eating.

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Never ate em - but I agree that they are fun to train with[/QUOTE]

If we are going to score for both training and eating then let it be chuckar.

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Originally Posted by thunderbelly

What's your preferred species to train with?
Any tips, anicdotes, funny stories to share?

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HARD FLYING Pigeons initially - bought at the local small game auction. Keep them in a crate in the garage. Have to use them up within 5 days or they don't fly hard.
Pup gets to chase and I let the birds teach pup the lessons - he can't catch them etc.

When pup was older and pretty steady, I switched to quail ( coturnix ). Tried homers, but the neighbors were not happy with the birds sitting on their roofs.
.....................

Many funny stories :

1/ Was leaving the training field , had stuffed a quail into my coat pocket and forgotten about it. Went to get gas and when in the office paying for the gas , the bird escaped.
Shocked clerk , screaming lady. :scream:

2/ Before I knew better , I had the pigeon on a tether - bit of garden hose. The tether wasn't strong
enough and the bird took off and landed, hanging upside down, in a tree on an island , in the middle of the pond. ,
As I was trying to figure out how to free the bird, hikers came by on the other side of the pond. They looked at the bird , looked at me .............:ashamed:

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Originally Posted by Winchey

Depends. For a young dog, woodcock. Not much better for getting a dog hunting and pointing birds. For planted variety pigeons are great, if yo have homers you only need a few and you can use them over and over again for a lifetime, they are also great because once they are up they won't land on the ground again.

That said if I am going to be hunting grouse, I want lots of grouse contact, if I was going to hunt pheasant, I want lots of pheasant contact and so on...

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x2

I like to use pigeons in remote launchers so I can control when the bird launches which makes training very efficient. I only use pen raised game birds on broke dogs, with young dogs the risk of them catching a bird is far to high.

For everything else, it takes wild birds to make a wild bird dog.

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Originally Posted by Jakezilla

x2

I like to use pigeons in remote launchers so I can control when the bird launches which makes training very efficient. I only use pen raised game birds on broke dogs, with young dogs the risk of them catching a bird is far to high.

For everything else, it takes wild birds to make a wild bird dog.

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AMEN!!

Also a lot of people use too many birds when training. Your dog does not need birds every outing. I know some very successful trainers that will only use birds 1 or 2 days out of 6. They rest of the days are spent teaching the dog how to go with you, come to you and stand still. It is surprising how few workouts it takes to get a dog right on birds if it can behave on a chain gang and handle properly in the field.