Training to find & pick woodcock

[allan450]

il send you a few over if you want ha ha.i shoot a lot of woodcock iv seen it more times dogs running over a dead bird.try and mark right where is bird dropped can be very hard when everything happens so fast.on monday we seen a woodcock drop out in front of us and couldnt find it with 4 dogs 2 dogs where seasoned pros.sometimes they dont seem to have scent at all.iv 3 gsps and only 1 will retrieve snipe the other 2 hate it.they will pick woodcock alright but hate snipe.on really frosty weather where the ground is solid and they are cold and hungry they are are lot slower to lift iv seen dogs nearly catch them.Thats the best time for training a young dog on them i find plus better scent in the cold as you know im sure.All the best Allan

[4Pawsmagraw]

Lol, thanks.. Wonder if DHL deliver? I'll keep at it, keep finding them & maybe just maybe she'll understand the scent in the future.
Cheers chaps!

[Springfield Pointers]

I'm guessing, a chainesaw?

Umm messy!
My point being that he has already touched the bird, it has his scent on it. Is a dog to look around smelling for his scent only?

A pro friend has a friend who has cocked his dog right up because of this. The dog will only retrieve what has his scent on it. It will blink all other game shot, thrown or otherwise as the dog is so conditioned to his smell as being the one to pick as "dad" has touched it.

There are other issues at play here. Most people throw items for their dogs while training with no issues. Should not be a problem handling wings.

[Judy]

I can't believe the problem would be insurmountable either with a bit of time and patience. I've met the odd person who says their dog will only retrieve its own dummy or it won't retrieve anything except something or other but they always do eventually. Anyway, this is probably a good topic for another thread!

[trekmoor]

I will do as She Who Must be Obeyed says and start another thread on the subject of retrieving varying articles.

Wullie

[Cass]

You'd be surprised, Cass, they may have amazing noses but they can still fail to find the obvious (to us) birds, they only have to pass slightly upwind or the bird is tucked in downwind of a tree trunk or any other solid obstruction, or in a furrow on a freshly ploughed field and they struggle. I've seen multiple dogs search a bit of grass for a Partridge that we know is there and fail to find, it happens. In the above case its just as likely to have been the woodcock as any of the other reasons!

I don't doubt there are times when a dog may not be able to scent it due to a myriad of factors but as a whole to say a dog is incapable of scenting woodcock ever is a bold statement

[Judy]

As far as I remember nobody said that! There are times when a bird appears to be without scent to a dog and there are times when some dogs will refuse to pick woodcock. In the OP's case we will ever know which it was will we?
No doubt you will experience these things at some stage as will everyone else who shoots or picks up, it happens.

[crackerd]

You'd be surprised, Cass, they may have amazing noses but they can still fail to find the obvious (to us) birds, they only have to pass slightly upwind or the bird is tucked in downwind of a tree trunk or any other solid obstruction, or in a furrow on a freshly ploughed field and they struggle. I've seen multiple dogs search a bit of grass for a Partridge that we know is there and fail to find, it happens. In the above case its just as likely to have been the woodcock as any of the other reasons!

I don't doubt there are times when a dog may not be able to scent it due to a myriad of factors but as a whole to say a dog is incapable of scenting woodcock ever is a bold statement

Cass, cutting to the chase, the litmus test for picking fur or feather, alive or dead, would have to be this creature -



'cause the dogs don't know if it's "playing dead" or "taking a temporary break from life until imminent threat passes." (In this case, I had a pretty good idea, thus deployed the Possum Hearse for funeral procession.) Hey, this could also go in the Varying Retrieve Object (With Occasional Marsupial) thread, eh?

MG

[Rascal]

Wouldn’t the smell of gunshot, blood and adrenalin and all that be a clue?

Rascal

[crackerd]

If that's directed to the quarry depicted above, Rascal - please note that we don't shoot or bludgeon possums (as they are valuable scavengers), there's only the unfortunate consequences of automobile wheels or the occasional catching up to them by gundogs that raises the mortality rate. When they are quarry, they are nabbed by felling a small tree where they're inevitably perched at the top, put in a gunny sack, then grain-fed and fattened for a couple of weeks before they become the main ingredient in a delectable dish called possum stew.

MG