I know many of you have had this same thing happen. Early in the hunting season you drop a bird dead and your dog runs over the top of it and can't find it. He knows there is a dead bird but can't get it's scent. I've had it happen many times. I've even had a dog standing right above the dead bird like it doesn't exist.
Now let's go to my front yard with a gravel drive way about sixty yards long. I can pick up a piece of gravel that is about the same size as the other hundreds of thousand gravel pieces and mark it so I know it from any other and throw it into that sixty yards and Jake will find it almost every time. I know he's smelling my scent on the rock but I can't understand how he can smell that better than a dead bird unless I stink more than a dead bird. I can possibly believe that but I have had Barb do the same thing with the same results.
Why? And don't tell me Barb stinks also because she's a good shot and she'll find you.
6 comments:
Describes my early season chukar hunting. I'm the retriever. Picked up many chukar my dog is standing on in September. I think it happens to dogs due to dust in their nose and possibly lots of dry chukar scent confusing them in the field. Your driveway, he comes out of the house, hangs in the yard and then you show up to toss the rock. I'm guessing you and barb dont roll around in the gravel driveway much any more? I could be wrong? My thoughts are your scent is not covering the other gravel heavily like covies of chukar marking a rocky chest grass ridge as they feed.
My friend would walk along the lake shore where there were thousands of flat, silver dollar sized rocks and pick one up, scratch an X on it with his knife and throw it out into about 18" of water. His lab would go out, duck his head under the water and retrieve the rock. Can anyone explain that? The dog never missed.
Burk, I've heard of the same thing in pools that dog's can go under five feet of water and come up with the exact item. I'll bet that same dog at times couldn't find a dead chukar on a dusty pollen filed hill. Go figure?
My theory on dogs and bird scent early in the hot weather part of the season is that their noses are dried out, full of dust and pollen and many of the birds are young, smaller and don't have a lot of scent. All that combined makes it tough for scenting. If your dog can't find a downed bird, come back in about an hour or two when the scent has had time to spread out. That's worked for me many times.
are you and the grandson fishing?
James, we did some fishing earlier but he's been off on vacation and chasing a girl friend this summer so we haven't fished as much as we used to. I just found out today that he drew a cow tag up in this area so we'll be having some fun elk hunting in October along with some deer hunting.
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