We’ve had a really cool spring this year. However, I don’t hear the dogs complaining. Yesterday, it snowed just a couple hundred feet above us on the mountain. The dogs didn’t mind a bit. I think they would rather have the cool temps than the summer heat. This weekend for a day or two for the first time the temperature got up around 85 degrees (F) here, and we all thought we were going to cook.

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My sister, brother-in-law, my wife and I went turkey hunting in Southern Utah this weekend. As we always do when we get together, we had a ball. There were turkeys around, but they were pretty quiet and they didn’t much to do with our calling; that is, they didn’t want much to do with the guy’s calling. One of the evenings the two ladies went out together to see if they could find a turkey. About an hour before sunset they came driving back into camp. When they drove up we were just about to head out to try to put some turkeys to bed for the night so we would be ready for the morning hunt.

We asked them what was up and they said that they had already put them to bed. “Huh?” Yeah, put one to bed in the back of the truck! Turns out that they just went about a half mile up the road and saw a couple of toms displaying for some hens off in a meadow. When they drove by the hens moved off, but the toms stayed around. The girls drove on up the road and snuck back to the edge of the meadow and started yelping on a slate call. (We showed them how to use it about 10 minute before leaving camp.)

The toms fired right up and came in. At one point the birds got a little nervous, slicked down and started to move off, but a purr and a yelp turned them right around and brought them back in to within gun range. Unfortunately the ladies were sitting about 20 yards apart and there was only one tom within shotgun range, but that tom was a dandy. He had a 10″ beard and spurs over an inch long.

They great thing was that where the guys couldn’t call a tom in to save our souls, the ladies pulled one within range with all the finesse of a coy hen. Congratulations, ladies!
 

I had a funny thing happen the other day. I was talking to a local guy about our mutual love of hunting, especially pheasant hunting. He began railing against the State Division of Wildlife about the fact that they aren’t more active about promoting pheasant populations in the state. “They should do more,” he said.

The funny thing about it was that two days later I saw him and his dad out burning off their fencerows and ditch banks on their property. He saw no connection between his land management and pheasant populations. It was simply something the Division of Wildlife should fix.

Almost without exception, every landowner in our county and the surrounding four counties burns off their fields, ditch banks and fencerows every spring. This has gone on for generations; my dad and grandpa always did it. In fact, burning off the ditch banks was an event that would warrant a visit home from college. I believe that it’s primarily recreational. Let’s face it, it’s fun to play with fire. We can say that we are doing it to maximize water flow, keeping the weeds down, or cleaning the place up, but the fact of the matter is, around us most of the ditches are concrete lined or in pipes now, so surrounding vegetation doesn’t take up water.

The problem is that this type of clean farming, where all the ditch banks and fencerows are slicked off, strips the land of cover for wildlife, namely pheasants. I found it ironic that the farmer that was complaining about the low pheasant numbers was the very person that could make a difference in the county. The Division of Wildlife can shorten seasons and constrain possession limits, but where pheasants are concerned, they require habitat, and that habitat is on private land. Here in the arid west (Utah), the limiting factor for pheasant populations is over winter and early spring cover. Without that, you can’t grow pheasant populations. If you were to calculate the acres of all the ditch banks and fence rows cumulatively that are burned clean just in this county it would add up to a significant amount of pheasant cover. So, this fall, or next spring, when you get ready to burn your ditch banks and fencerows, think about the little piece of pheasant cover you could leave for a few more pheasants.

     If you are looking for a yellow lab puppy, I just heard about a breeding that should be dynamite. Wasatch Labradors in American Fork, UT just announced a litter that should be born in July. I have a dog that is out Yellowstone Kennel’s Nitro, a maternal grandfather to the litter and have been really pleased with the dogs drive, desire for birds, and natural marking ability. Also, I have heard really good things about the sire, FC-AFC Pin Oak’s Texas Rex. There seems to be a basket full of field champions as you look at the pedigrees for these puppies.
     I’ve never met Gordon or Nancy Miner, but the breeding looks really good on these puppies. Also, I really like what they have to say about socializing puppies. It’s important to start with good breeding that brings together the best traits in a breed, but even more critically, puppies need to be socialized properly over the first critical two months of life.   So, if you are looking for a lab pup this summer, you may want to check out Wasatch Labradors at http://www.wasatchlabradors.com

     This weekend Julie and I attended Evan Graham’s Transition seminar hosted by the Northern Utah Retriever Club at the Lee Kay Center, just west of SLC, UT. Evan is the author of the Smartwork series of retriever training materials (Rush Creek Press). The training was excellent. I am a die-hard upland game hunter, not a field-trialer, which this seminar was geared toward, nevertheless, it was excellent, because I learned about how retrievers tick, what kinds of drills you can use to help them learn to mark falls and handle into blind retrieves, and just what you can expect at the highest levels from a dog. I have a lot of respect for field trialers. In order to win, they have to demand the utmost from their dogs. Therefore, they train and drill accordingly.
     A couple of the key principles I took away from the seminar were the following: You cannot expect a dog to be more exact than you are (Rex Carr), therefore you should set high exacting demands on yourself for training and expect them from your dog; accept nothing less.
     A solid basic foundation is critical for higher success.
     Your dog must find lots of yes’s (positives/successes) in the field and few no’s (corrections/failures). Set the dog up for regular success and build his confidence. Make him believe that he will succeed every time he charges off the line and he will; you build his expectations for success.

     I really enjoyed Evan. He was very personable and a great teacher. I liked his methods, because they were well reasoned and stepwise, moving from one phase to the next to build a winning dog step by step.

     I felt like I got a whole year’s worth of training experience in one weekend. I was really impressed with the level of dogs of all of the participants there. We have some great trainers here in Utah. It got me jazzed up to take my training to a higher level.

A little neighbor girl got a new puppy the other day. She is so cute with the pup. Kids and puppies just go together. She came over to find out all about puppies and how to take care of him. I hope the excitement lasts. She sure does love this little puppy.

You’ve got to wonder sometimes what a dog is thinking. I believe Allie was day dreaming about sunny winter days flushing chukars. Man, I want to go hunting!

April 10th and we got more snow. I’m not complaining. It will make for a beautiful green spring, and the dogs certainly weren’t complaining. It will be too hot for them soon enough. They loved romping in it. Although later, Allie did decide to come in and warm up.

You couldn’t have asked for a better day Saturday at the shooting preserve. The weather was mild with a slight breeze, just right for working flushing dogs. We were working working three different retrievers, Blade, Allie and Sophie. The heavy cover along the Sevier River at Rooster Valley Pheasants made for excellent training on pheasants in natural situations. The birds held pretty well and flushed strong for the retrievers. Since it is the end of the season on the shooting preserve, each dog got lots of work on birds. Lots of birds make for a good bird dog.

I have consistently been impressed with Dogtra electronic training collars. I just had an opportunity to test Dogtra’s newest upland collar, the 2500 T&B and really liked it. It is a training collar and beeper/locator collar all in one. The awesome thing about this collar is that the training collar and the beeper are built into one single small unit, rather than two separate units like most upland training collars.

Dogtra e-collars have consistently been of excellent quality, have great features, and best of all, come in small packages (both the transmitter and the receiver), so it is comfortable on the dog’s neck and in your hand. It has three beeper modes: running/pointing, where the collar emits a sound at regular intervals then emits a faster signal when the dog is on point; point only, where it only sounds when the dog is on point, and the Locate button, which emits a sound when the button on the transmitter is activated. I also liked the rheostat dial with the digital readout.

What I was most impressed with the collar was the small size of the unit. It will make a comfortable, durable training tool. It will be really nice to run the dog with this locator collar in the thick CRP grass looking for ringnecks this next fall. Check it out at the Dogtra website.

(Photo from Dogtra.com)