While on stand I've used a kids sleeping bag for my dog.
While on stand I've used a kids sleeping bag for my dog.
As for vests I use them all the time on all my dogs regardless of coat length. My dogs break ice and retrieve in cold water all day and never get cold they work well. Mine are all camo but I'm pretty sure they come in hi-viz as well. As for a "non hunting breed" personally I'd rather see a non hunting well behaved dog in camp than a hunter(unless of course you are using it for the hunt) Simple reasoning is a "gundog" breed especially one that has hunted upland are way more inclined to want to hunt than stalk quietly. JMHO
"BORN TO HUNT"
Foxton's Cuervo Gold "KEELA" Oct. 2004-June 2017. Always in my blind and my heart.
took my border collie grouse hunting. absolutely useless on pointing out the birds, but really nice to have the company on a hike through the woods. won't be taking him deer hunting though.
I haven't tried taking my griff on a hunt when I'm hiking in or spot/stalk with her when I've been on my own because I'm afraid she might pull on the lead when i'm about to squeeze the trigger,,,,even though she is a pointer. Since I got a buck opening morning i went with my son the following morning and took her and just followed about 20 steps behind.
The dog was all "nose" because there's deer scent as well as some bird scent in a lot of the area that we were in. My son eventually saw one and motioned for us to stop. Any time we were at any stand still the dog would be rock solid and just stare wondering what we may be looking at. When he shot she was still rock solid since she's steady to shot from all the bird hunting we've done the last couple of years.
When we were heading back down the hill with the deer in our packs I let her run without the leash and she's pretty good about staying in close.
I'd love to be able to get her to the point where she would just stay at heel and totally turn off the hunting switch. She's still only 2 1/2 years old so it could still happen. I would really love to have her along a a hunting companion.
So I took one of our dogs out for a 3 day deer hunt. I got her a orange vest (for warmth) from cabelas on my way east. And off we went!
when walking slow in the bush she adapted to staying at my heel the entire time, she clearly understood we were sneaking. I was amazed at her responsiveness to the tone of our walks. Whenever the Gun would get raised she would stop in her tracks.
we came across a bull moose at dusk one night and he walked up to about 25ft before I let him know we were there and that didn’t go down well with the dog, she put it into reverse. Don’t know if this is the response I want from a dog out hunting but Better than the alternative and have her barking and chasing the animal.
We saw one doe on the road on our drive out of the area and she had a different reaction, she got her back up and was very eager to get out and chase the deer. Not keen on this reaction.
Overall a brilliant experience with the dog, will bring her again on solo hunts.
Danny, it sounds like you have one solid partner in the making. A few more outings and more corrections to negative responses and you may have a winner there. Good for you for investing the time. pretty soon you'll be able to nod off at the hunting blind knowing that you have your partner on guard, working for you while you rest. Right on.
We walk in a park every evening that holds a lot of pheasants and tonight for the first time I watched her smell, creep in closer and kick up birds in front of us. Was great to see!
Find out if you can shoot around her . . . . does loud unexpected noise spook her? Find out using a .22 or something small. Good luck.
The Lab that I have now won't be going in the field while I Deer/ Moose/ Bear hunt, he'll be in camp or the truck but not in the field unless there's birds. He's just been too much of a watch dog around the yard and when we go for walks if he gets a wiff of a bear or a deer he gets really defensive and gets his hackles up and barks up a storm. He's tree bears, put the run on deer in the yard and terrorizes the neighbours cat when it goes through the yard. I guess he figures that if I'm with him he's protecting me or something, I don't know, I don't really mind him being a bit of a watch dog, the other two labs that I owned weren't. I had a photo with the female Bk Lab that I had was in the fore ground with a cow moose feeding at a lakes edge in the back ground, she never knew the moose was there. She was good company in the bush as long as you didn't leave any food lying around, one time I was deer hunting and had stop to make a sandwich on the tailgate of my truck and had noticed a WT doe walking along a fence line about 100 yards away after she was out of sight I went back to my sandwich, had a couple bites and looked up and there was a WT buck on her trail. I had my rifle leaning against a tree, so I grabbed it and put a couple rounds in it and told her to stay and tried to cut the buck off, well it didn't work out so I went back to my truck for lunch, well you can probably figure out what had happened to the sandwich. Luckily I had more sandwich stuff. God I miss that dog.