Braxton Taylor
If you want to see a pheasant hunter lose his shit (yes, it’ll be a dude), watch how someone deals with a dog that suddenly decides to go into bootlicker mode. This is one of the most embarrassing and frustrating things a pheasant dog can do.
With some dogs, that’s their natural mode of travel. Low-drive dogs aren’t going to suddenly find a work ethic that genetics and training didn’t already install in them. It doesn’t happen that way. You can only work with the drive that the dog has, and while you can promote it or suppress it, you can’t add in a whole bunch of extra drive.
If you have a dog with enough drive to make it through the sloughs all day, and you know this to be true, then there is another reason why it would suddenly fall into line and risk getting whacked in the jowls by your boot heels with every step you take. The first reason is the most obvious, but it’s important to acknowledge.
Conditioning Issues
Sporting dogs are athletic in ways that we can scarcely fathom. They are also living beings that get tired. If your dog isn’t insanely well conditioned and it’s hour-seven during a day of pushing through cattails, it might simply be that your dog has nothing left in the tank.
While older, more seasoned dogs have efficiency down to a science with their hunting style, younger dogs often burn themselves out fast. They don’t have the experience to understand not wasting a bunch of energy just because they are excited.
If your dog is exhausted, it’s hard to expect them to stay out front and work like you want them to. Sometimes, they just naturally fall in line because they are beat. And sometimes, they fall in line because we mentally beat them to death.
Recall, Recall, Recall
A few years ago, I hunted with a guy who was running a female yellow Lab. It was her first season, and while she definitely wanted to get out in front of us and get a snootful of the good stuff, he kept calling her back. Every time she’d get out a little ways, he’d recall her.
By the end of the second slough, she was at his side, and he was trying to get her to range out again. The dog didn’t know what to do, and he didn’t know how to communicate with her. A dog getting too far out over and over is one thing, but a dog that knows it’s always going to be called back to you is going to eventually take a shortcut and stay close.
There is a dance that occurs between a hunter and his flusher, and that is one of pacing. If the only thing you want to do is have a dog that paces you, then expect some level of bootlicking. If your dog is getting out a bit because it’s truly looking for birds, then it’s time for you to hit the gas and not rein in your dog.
Wind & Cover
If you work with the wind at your face, your dog will almost always get out ahead and hunt the way you want. With the wind at your back, the dog will constantly cut towards you because it’s at a huge disadvantage.
You can’t always have a perfect wind, but the more you hunt a dead wrong wind direction, the more likely it is for the dog to be a bootlicker. The same goes for some types of cover. Hunting light CRP grass is a far cry from a willow-choked cattail slough. If you don’t give the dog time to work the cover the way it needs to, it’ll give it up and let you break trail.
The thing about this is we rarely put ourselves in their position. If you were two feet tall and had to rely almost entirely on scent to navigate and do your job, it wouldn’t be much fun to be rushed headlong at a speed that didn’t allow you to do that. Or to be pushed in a direction where the scent is constantly being carried away from you, as opposed to constantly being delivered right to your face.
When you set your pacing, consider wind direction and thickness of cover, and try to imagine yourself in the dog’s position.
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