Training to find & pick woodcock

[4Pawsmagraw]

Hey Crackered, thanks! once Darcy is old enough to retrieve I'll know, she's only 5 mths currently and is coming on but retrieving isn't some,thing I've got to yet, recall & stop 1st unless as your more experienced on Sussex's you say different, open to help & advice.. Springers are so much easier!

The woodcock wing seems to have worked but as it's been suggested earlier it may be my scent she's picking not the wing, will find out this weekend if I can shoot the buggers for her to retrieve!

Thanks to you by the way, help & advice all the way!

[Naj]

It may be a spaniel thing, rather than a Labrador one, but there has been enough evidence, over decades, from various learned writers & experienced trainers, that some springers & cockers may be averse to handling snipe & woodcock. I'd lump widgeon in with them. So I would suggest that there is some truth in it. The problem is often overcome but some dogs never get over it. I've never had much of a problem with woodcock but I once had a cocker that would happily retrieve everything else, including geese, but would gleefully munch her way through a shot snipe. She was about 6 years old when I persuaded her that it might be better to deliver them to hand intact. My current GSP is a consummate snipe finder/pointer but shows obvious distaste at having a dead one in her mouth. She's even been known to roll on them before retrieving one. Whether you shoot a dummy, handle a bird or not or anything else has little to do with it, for this happens with dogs that are excellent retrievers in all other respects.

As for dogs missing birds that are in full view &/or almost tripping up before finding them, I would suggest that you haven't done a great deal of practical dogwork if you haven't experienced this phenomena. Again, it has been well documented & there are various theories on why it may crop up. You occasionally get a similar thing on unshot game, where you have an experienced rabbit dog skirting backwards & forwards around a rabbit that is sitting at your feet & only finding it by eventually stumbling into it.

Naj

[Judy]

How many years have you been picking up?

I can't see the relevance.
Some one could have been doing something for 20 years but that doesn't mean they have been doing it right.Not suggesting that you or any one else is in that category.
Why would you ask ?

I ask for the reasons stated in Naj's post above. If whoever mentors you has told you every bird is pickable by a dog I would change your mentor! Its not just training, you can train all you like but, as I have said previously, the doog on the day can easily miss something however good they are. In fact it is possible to over train a dog and take its initiative away.

If we knew as much as they do about scent then we would understand why this happens but it will always be conjecture - some days there appears to be little or no scent, some days the dogs are scenting stuff from huge distances and even on those days there will be birds missed. The best we can do is hunt the ground thoroughly with different breeds of dog in the picking up team. There have been days when Labs have failed to find and my Flatcoats found the bird easily and the opposite too. Days when the Flatcoat failed to find a runner and the Cocker trailed it easily, it is not and never will be an exact science. Nothing whatsoever to do with training / picking up skills! Honest!

Interestingly, Naj, I have found the opposite to be true - the Spaniels pick the woodcock and some of the Labs and Flatcoats can be iffy, I guess its just some dogs can overcome their distaste for the bird and some can't. Woodcock are so rarely shot down here its not something you can train for until one is either shot or appears on the game cart so's we can throw it a couple of times for a youngster. The bird, not the game cart although there have been times when I could have thrown it, fully loaded, at a dog!

[Cynic]

Thanks for the advice. I'll try it the next time the dog marks a shot woodcock and see if the dog retrieves it.

[crackerd]

Good argument for the defence, Naj. As for eating them, why, wouldn't you? Especially washed down with a jug of Calvados - mmm-mmm good. All that earthworm-infused musty dark meat. Even the "trail" (on toast) is mighty succulent, eh?

...once Darcy is old enough to retrieve I'll know, she's only 5 mths currently and is coming on but retrieving isn't some,thing I've got to yet, recall & stop 1st unless as your more experienced on Sussex's you say different, open to help & advice.. Springers are so much easier!

4Paws, never too early to start retrieving, with whatever objects you might choose to introduce, including cold game (woodcock right there in the mix). The Sussex can't get started on it soon enough - you've got to bring out the retrieving instincts and cultivate, cultivate, cultivate. The geniuses in the US when writing the breed standard for the "American" Sussex spaniel tried to have language included that "the breed may retrieve" (or may not). Balderdash. A gundog by mere dint of its name must retrieve. And Sussex will do, and with the best of them,



when given the opportunity at an early age and moving forward.

Of course springers are so much easier. Labs too. Cockers probably same. But now you've taken on a challenge with a Sussex. Don't know where you're located, but if you want a referral to see a man about a dog, about an off-breed or minor spaniel, there's a chap up in the braes who would fix you and Darcy right up. Name of Polmaise Gundogs, venerable reclaimer of spaniels' birthright for retrieving. Strongest recommendation.

MG

[trekmoor]

As for dogs missing birds that are in full view &/or almost tripping up before finding them, I would suggest that you haven't done a great deal of practical dogwork if you haven't experienced this phenomena. Again, it has been well documented & there are various theories on why it may crop up. You occasionally get a similar thing on unshot game, where you have an experienced rabbit dog skirting backwards & forwards around a rabbit that is sitting at your feet & only finding it by eventually stumbling into it.

Naj

I agree. I watched as 5 labs in a retriever trial were tried on the same partridge lying out on stubbles about 40 to 50 yards from the handlers. Everybody could see the bird but not one of the dogs could find it .... I think two of those dogs were field trial champions. It was picked by the judges before every dog in the trial was eliminated on it !

Yonks ago I put forward the theory in a shooting magazine about what I called "dead scent ground" meaning that a bird falling into a certain place , maybe under certain conditions gave out so little scent that dogs could not find it. I was a bit hesitant about writing that theory for a magazine page but to my surprise Keith Erlandson wrote in to say he agreed with it.

It is , I think, accepted as a scientific fact that some ground nesting birds have the ability to "hold in" their scent as they sit on eggs to some extent....maybe this can also happen to a ground nesting bird that gets shot ?

Where snipe are concerned my Brittany is pretty good at pointing them , she sometimes points a single snipe at 20 yards or so away from it. She has only had a couple of chances of retrieving snipe however and I had to handle her on to the first one which she retrieved only with lots of encouragement. She picked it up by the beak or maybe the head with her whole face wrinkled up in distaste. Why should a bird she hunts for and points so keenly be so distasteful to actually pick up ? And why should she seem to find it difficult to locate a shot bird at 3 -4 feet distance when she can scent the same bird and point on it from several times that distance ?

Things aren't quite as cut and dried as " me send you ....you pick it up and fetch it." There can be other factors in the equation. For me it is partly the uncertainties of working gundogs on game that have managed to hold my interest for nearly 50 years.


Wullie

[Judy]

I agree with Cracker'd, encourage the retrieve as early as possibly, Midge was 10.5 weeks old in the photos! All in fun, no pressure, running in too. She was retrieving at 8 weeks when I went to pick her up. . Formalising it and steadying up comes later when the dog is mature enough.

Let us know how you get on Cynic! If the dog sees the bird shot send her straight away, encourage the pick up and she should be fine. (As long as the bird isn't in a scent pocket. )

[Cynic]

Let us know how you get on Cynic! If the dog sees the bird shot send her straight away, encourage the pick up and she should be fine. (As long as the bird isn't in a scent pocket. )

No worries , she knows where that is ! In my jacket

[Penwithian]

I would've kept the whole bird for awhile and used it for cold retrieves. You can freeze and thaw them a few times before they're no good anymore. I think its very unlikely a dog could be incapable of scenting a woodcock once they know what they are looking for. Dogs are trained to scent minute chemicals, a living animal gives off much more scent than that.

I agree about freezing them Cass I have a spare freezer in my shed, which has quite a few dead things in it! My current collection includes: a teal, a woodcock, a couple of pheasants, a small rabbit, and a snipe. I use them for a couple of retrieves for the young dogs, after leaving them thaw a little, then put them back in the freezer straight after, replacing them with fresh specimens when I can. They work a treat and keep the dogs interested and used to different game. (My friends think it's a bit strange though!)

[4Pawsmagraw]

Cheers Crackered

4Paws, never too early to start retrieving, with whatever objects you might choose to introduce, including cold game (woodcock right there in the mix). The Sussex can't get started on it soon enough - you've got to bring out the retrieving instincts and cultivate, cultivate, cultivate. The geniuses in the US when writing the breed standard for the "American" Sussex spaniel tried to have language included that "the breed may retrieve" (or may not). Balderdash. A gundog by mere dint of its name must retrieve. And Sussex will do, and with the best of them,



when given the opportunity at an early age and moving forward.

Of course springers are so much easier. Labs too. Cockers probably same. But now you've taken on a challenge with a Sussex. Don't know where you're located, but if you want a referral to see a man about a dog, about an off-breed or minor spaniel, there's a chap up in the braes who would fix you and Darcy right up. Name of Polmaise Gundogs, venerable reclaimer of spaniels' birthright for retrieving. Strongest recommendation.

MG

I'm Lincs based, Darcy will retrieve but I've concentrated on recall & stop thinking rightly or wrongly that the retrieve will come naturally, I'll incorporate it abit more in to her training from now on.

As for my original post, out this morning in the local spinney and put a woodcock up, Sent Hazel straight to where it had come from & she then scented another a few meters away and she put that up, so whether the wing & dummy has helped or not I'll never know but if I get the opportunity this weekend to take a woodcock down I'll hopefully be able to find it & can reinforce the pick up.