Who is taking a dog for its first hunt this year?

[jcarlin]

I was just playing chase the squirrel tail with the terrier/feist thing I adopted last year. He's a 4 year old, 20lbs, short haired, white and lemon terrier mix that's about 2 inches too tall to not get stuck in a groundhog hole. So I sometimes must dig. But from his horribly untrained roots, his basic obedience has come along even on my working family man schedule. Like all of his Ilk he is a born rodent killer and I've been using the squirrel tail just to get him to look up. A polished bird dog I will likely never have, and I used to run a beagle but that's not the same thing. The play and training is a blast, I don't know who has more fun. And I'm hoping for a good year in the squirrel woods... Which is partly dependent on putting an early deer or two in the freezer, so we shall see.

Hope everyone has a great fall. Forget winter.. Autumn Is Coming.

[huntfishtrap]

Hope you have a great fall too. As for dogs, you can have 'em. They're just not for me.

[JM1993]

@HFT,
I'm definitely a fan of owning dogs, but not hunting with them. I'll leave that task to Charlie and the like.

[jcarlin]

Hunting with dogs has it's ups and downs. I've only ever hunted over my beagle. A dog bugling on a chase stirs the blood. A dog gone across the county after something that was clearly not a rabbit raises the blood pressure.

I'm hoping that a closer working squirrel dog is the ticket as I really could never get comfortable when my hound was out of sight. But I still enjoyed it.

[Outlaw]

I gonna try to. I got a Boykin Spaniel pup in June and we're working on training. For the most part he will do sit/stay, come, heel, and give by voice or whistle. He does pretty good with the dummies, unless he's in a "mood" where he won't run after his dummies or pick them up. Every time I try using actual birds (mostly frozen pigeons) he just wants to tear it up though. He's only 3.5 months old though so I'm very happy with the progress. I mainly plan on using him for ducks and doves, though I'd like to teach him to quarter and flush quail if possible.

[Buckshott00]

Not this year, but hopefully soon. By next year I really hope to have a new pup.