Hunting multiple dogs, and Scott's big surprise

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Byb Scott Rall, Worthington Daily Globe outdoors writer
Posted on Oct 16, 2014 at 2:51 p.m.

I tell dog training clients all the time that a dog is not a radio. They do not turn off and on at the flip of a switch. No matter how well the dog is trained or who trained it, there is always going to be a chance that the dog will act in a manner that could embarrass the heck out of you or even get itself killed.

Dogs are animals that I cannot live without, but they are not without their challenges. I often hunt more than one dog at a time, and this adds an element of additional satisfaction but also requires a much greater element of dog handler concentration that not all hunters have or want to exercise.

Hunting more than one dog at a time requires all of the dogs to be well trained. If one dog acts badly there is greater likelihood that the second dog will follow the lead of the first. I hunt with two or three dogs at a time because I need all of my dogs to get a lot of exercise, and if you only take one hunting at a time you will then need to come home and run the other two after the hunt to get this job done.

There is not enough time in the day for a three-trip outing.

If you can hunt them all at one time, you will get all of the required exercise done in one outing. Hunting with a dog or dogs is sheer pleasure if they all do that is expected of them. I know many hunters who can hardly handle one dog at a time, much less two.

A dog handler can almost read a dog like a book if they get used to a specific dog and their mannerisms. It is very easy to tell when there is a bird in the area and to then get ready to shoot it when it flushes.

Hunting with more than one dog, in my opinion, will net you more birds that hunting with one. There is two noses on the ground versus one, and if you make a bad shot and cripple a bird two dogs will certainly make it easier to bring that cripple to hand. Multiple dogs cover more ground than one and the ground that they do cover is hunted more completely.

Many dogs hunted at the same time will leave very few birds unflushed. I can come in behind a group of hunters who walked an area much too fast and flush and shoot roosters only minutes behind them after they have left. The faster the hunter walks, the faster the dog must work and the less thoroughly the area will get covered. Walking slow and steady is the key.

So to review, in my opinion, hunting more than one dog at a time will result in more flushes, more shots and more birds in the bag. Hunting more than one dog at a time does have its challenges and for some hunters these challenges can even be called disadvantages.

If your dogs tend to range out too far, it is far harder to monitor two dogs than one. If you are watching one dog and the other gets out too far and flushes the bird out of range, you miss the shooting opportunity. Another challenge is that when one dog acts birdy and you are concentrating on the first dog, the other dog will flush an up-close rooster in a completely different direction and the hunter response time is so long that the second dogs bird will be out of range before you can shoot.

Keeping tabs on multiple dogs takes concentration. I use training collars that have a beeper on them. It is turned off except for when I want only a location beep of the collar. If I want to locate the dog in tall grass I hit the beeper and the horn sounds and alerts me to the dog’s location. If he is too far out, a comeback whistle is in order and the right distance is regained. A beeper collar can help the handler keep track of more than one dog at a time.

The only real problem I have with multiple dogs is the desire of one dog to take the bird from a different dog that has already started back with the retrieve. This is usually a puppy/young dog problem and can be corrected with time, but it happens occasionally when dogs are hunting in their first or second seasons.

When I shoot a bird I let all dogs go to the site where the bird landed. I do this so that if the bird is a cripple we get all hands on deck to keep it from running off. As soon as I see one dog with the bird in its mouth I use the “here” whistle to bring them all back to me. If a dog fails to come to the “here” whistle and instead starts to steal the bird from another dog I blow the “here” whistle again and apply a little correction with the collar.

The young dogs gets a little correction, not for trying to steal the bird but for failure to comply with the “here” command. After about 5-10 of these training exercises the bird thief comes to the conclusion that finding and retrieving their own bird is better than trying to steal one from a different dog.

There was one dog I had a few years back that was a notorious bird thief. His name was Gunner. He was in his first season and no matter who had the bird he wanted it. I was hunting one late afternoon about 4:30 p.m. and had lost a bird. We looked and looked and never did find it. I was really disappointed. After about 30 minutes of searching we went on with the hunt. We had no other luck in finding a rooster that day and it was getting close to the end of shooting hours, so I decided to hunt my way back to the spot here we had lost the bird earlier and try again.

As we got close to the spot another rooster jumped up and I shot it. It landed in really tall grass very near the first and I could not see either dog as they searched for it.

It was quite a while before I saw any action. As long as the dog or dogs are in the area where the bird landed and they keep looking for it, you never wade into the spot. You wait patiently for the dog to find it and bring it to you.

All of a sudden I saw two dogs with two birds. I was elated. I figured one had found the first bird I had shot earlier and the other had found the second. Two for two and just before the end of the shooting day.

I was feeling pretty proud of myself. As the dogs came closer something looked odd. They were running side by side and at exactly the same pace and distance.

When they got closer to me it became clear that my premature celebration was unfounded. What came back to me was one dog with the top half of the bird and the other dog with the other half of the same bird. They had actually broken it in half like a burger. The two halves were still attached by the birds insides and the gizzard was swinging freely between the two dogs.

They came back and sat so nicely and both were so proud. It had never happened before and it hasn’t happened since.

This was many years ago and the bird stealing issues get handled today much earlier in the dog’s life. If the dog is really young you do need to exercise caution as to not kill the dog’s retrieving instinct. Monday night of this week I had just finished up a two-rooster hunt and was on the way back to the truck. It was a beautiful evening so I decided to sit in the grass next to the tall corn and just take a few minutes to love up my dogs and show them my appreciation for a great hunt.

As I was sitting there petting the two of them, five pheasants came gliding in over my head only five feet over my cap. I was hidden by the corn and they lit about 25 yards away to roost in the grass for the evening. Three hens and two roosters.

It was a great end to a great day. My new puppy is only 5 months old so he is not hunting this season. So for now I hunt two dogs at a time till 2015. Then I will be back to my three musketeers and the trio of Tracer, Axle and Sarge will be my force to be reckoned with. If one dog is great, then three dogs is super great.

Guns up, pheasant season is here.