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Fleur's 1st true unassisted finds!

sampotter

By sampotter,
in Deer Hunting

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sampotter Newbie

sampotter

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Beautiful sunny, crisp day today in Dorchester, IA. Fleur and I went to some state land today. I found a decent 4pt side fairly quick halfway down the side of the bluff that the land encompasses. An hour or two later Fleur was searching ahead of me on a side-hill "goat" trail and disapeared from view for a moment. Suddenly here she came with a big 5pt side in her mouth- her 1st solo find ever! Man was I excited, but I'm not sure whish one of us was more proud. About 30 minutes later I noticed Fleur make an abrupt right turn from the deer trail and as my eyes followed her direction of travel, they locked on her #2 solo find! I ended up finding a chewed spike towards the end of the day as well. So, all in all a very good day. I managed to be pretty quick on the camera trigger, so all the pictures are as they happened. None are staged.

P.S. Before anyone complains about pictures from Iowa- I live in Union Springs, NY. I am just fortunate to have a girlfriend from Iowa and her dad farms 800 acres.

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sampotter Newbie

sampotter

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First thing- I am no expert, Fleur is my first, so that being said, do not let your dog have an antler as a toy, that way the antler is way more exciting during training time. I started with short retrieves where my pup could see the antler the whole time. Use some sort of command of your choosing, I use "search". At some point I tossed the antler into tall grass where she couldn't see the antler and had to find it with her nose, but when doing this be sure to have wind direction in your favor. When she brings them back, give her a treat or lots of praise. I use praise because I don't like carrying pockets full of treats.

After a while I would do this in a hayfield and as my pup got bigger and faster I realized I couldn't throw the antlers far enough, so I started placing them ahead of time.

I have done this almost daily since she was 7 weeks old. At some point you need to be concious of your scent being on the antlers and make an effort (rubber gloves) to keep your scent off the antlers. Also- ALWAYS keep training sessions short (15 minutes) so the pup does not lose interest.

Icheck out Roger Sigler's website www.antlerdogs.com. He does this professionally. I bought the DVD that they offer, which had a few helpful tips, although could do a little better job of walking you through all of the steps.

There is also another guy with a website and some training tools based out of Minnesota http://xtremeshedhunting.com.

I will say that the antler finding is the easy and fun part- remembering to put in as much time doing the obedience stuff is probably more important, but not as much fun.

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Doewhacker Newbie

Doewhacker

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Nice. Any tips on training? Im working with my lab now as well. Just have her playing fetch with some cutoffs I have laying around for now.

While I don't train my dog for shed hunting I do train him to search for wounded birds (duck search) so I can offer a little help here. Keep doing what your are doing, in the house at first and praise like crazy for her doing good. Then gradualy make it harder for her to find them, eventually move to the yard and keep it interesting for her. Hide them first and then bring her out and give what ever command you use for her to go find or fetch it up. I'm betting she will figure it out quick, especially with lots of praise.

I use Gus's toys while we are in the house, I give the sit or whoa command, then go hide the toy and then return to him and tell him to fetch, he has gotten good at it and is ready to move out side, and then it will be done out in the woods and eventually on to water with live game. Baby steps, praise and repetition are the key.

Its cool to see a shed hunting dog do its job through photo's, thanks Sam.

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Doewhacker Newbie

Doewhacker

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Sam brought a good point about the wind too, some dogs are natural searchers and will quarter the wind on their own, others need to be taught how to zig zag. This can be done by heading side to side into the wind with the dog while on a long lead, once the dog reaches one side pull it back so it goes for the other, it won't take long and the dog will recognize this as the way to cover the ground best using the wind to its advantage and it will also let you teach it how far you want it to range from you. I don't know much about Lab's and how they hunt so this may not even be an issue for any one.

Sounds like you are heading in the right direction WNY, and I can't wait to see more results from you Lab guys.

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wvhunter1968 Newbie

wvhunter1968

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Those are some great tips my friend!!  Fleur is doing great. My yellow lab had some nice unassisted finds as well this year for the first time.  I have 2 videos over at youtube maybe you'd enjoy.....one covers the training and the other is a training exercise in the middle of a 2 antler day in Ohio....Thanks for watching!!

My websight is www.boneheadpro.com to see all my shed hunting videos.....but here are the hyperlinks to 3 videos you may be interested in seeing:

You'll find my exercise with Zeke here at 2:11 in this video:

You'll see a small training video I did with Zeke on this video here:

http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aafQtxlnIQs

Starting at about the 1:50 mark in this video you'll see Zeke pick up a small 5" spike:

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