Rudy's training secret (in videos)

For awhile I've been trying to get Rudy to go a little further in his training than just retrieving, but he's had a rough time. I originally thought he just wasn't smart enough, and at times I've mentally kicked myself for not buying a real hunting dog, (truth is I didn't know how much I'd come to love dog training and bird hunting back when the wife and I picked a pet-store pup). I've also thought it must be me. Having never trained any dog before I was convinced that my lack of skill was manifesting itself in my dog.

Luckily I've found the secret. Birds. That's right. The secret is birds. Rudy gets bored with bumpers and balls, but his desire for birds never ends.

At a park near our house the doves feed on the ground everyday so Rudy and I often do our training there. Here's a video of him chasing a bunch up and retrieving for me. Sorry you can't see the doves very well. There was about 15 of them.


I throw doves which I shot last month (now frozen) instead of bumpers or his tennis ball and it has made all the difference. He's been able to learn how to do blind retrieves, in which he takes direction from my pointing hand because he didn't see where the bird fell, as seen here:


Often when sent on a blind retrieve his direction needs to be corrected, so I've tried to teach him to take direction from me. Because I use birds he cares enough to learn that when I blow the whistle he must sit, look at me and go left, right, farther, or closer depending on my what he sees my arms do. He has picked it up very quickly:




I've also been able to teach him that he needs to finish one retrieve before he can go get the next. That way if I shoot a bird while he is on his way back he won't drop the one he has for the one just hit. You can see here that he looks back and marks the fall, but then continues his fetch.


And finally a combination of direction and distraction.


What a good little dog. He'll never win any awards for speed. In fact he still thinks this is all just for fun, (which I guess it is). But even if he never fully gets it, I'm impressed. He is, after all, an unregistered pet-store pup taken from his litter at three weeks of age and considered not worth the effort to doc his tail to meet breed standards. Not exactly from a royal lineage. There might even be a little mutt in him, but like I said...I'm impressed.

A rub, a squirrel, and a Bambi bath.

There's no real theme for this post, just a few random videos from the Nebraska woods where I hunt.



Yes those are green leaves and green grass in the middle of October; a strange sight for a Utah boy. October for me usually means the trees are bare and the color green has long since gone into hibernation. The canal is the same that Rudy almost drowned in, just a mile or two upstream. At the end of the video you see a small tree with the bark rubbed off. Male whitetail bucks do that for the same reason male dogs lift their legs; like a "No Trespassing" sign to let others know that this property has been claimed by a big buck. I appreciate him letting me know he's around. Makes it easier to decide where to place my treestand.




Right after I took this he came up the back side of my tree and didn't see me until he was almost within arm's reach. I'm sure his little adrenaline glands erupted upon seeing, of all things, a big ugly human perched in his tree, staring him in the face. The poor little guy basically flew through the branches trying to get far enough away to feel safe. He then angrily chewed me out for the next twenty minutes. We have squirrels like this all over our front yard as well. Rudy loves chasing them whenever he can.

And finally...a video that proves Bambi's mom was never actually shot. Here she is giving Bambi a spit bath near my treestand.


Oh how cute. Right after this I put the camera down and shot her.

Just kidding, of course! I let them feed on through. It's fun watching nature when it doesn't know you're watching. At the same time it feels weird like I'm some kind of peeping Tom. That squirrel sure treated me like one.

Global Positioning System

I turned twenty nine last Thursday and my wonderful wife bought me a GPS for my birthday.


I can't believe how I ever hunted or fished without one. For example, two days ago I found myself lost in a blanket of fog while driving to my hunting grounds. All of Nebraska looks the same, especially under heavy fog before sunrise, and I would have missed my turn off the highway onto the dirt road if not for the beep of the GPS warning me I was near. Again it saved me while walking into my treestand. If not for my GPS I would never have found my tree.

I took it with me to a corn maze and it saved us. Whenever we came to a fork in the maze I was able to say with certainty, "We've been right, let's go left," because the GPS showed it.

I have also spent some time using it for geocaching with a friend of mine here in Lincoln. The last thing I need is another hobby, but I could definitely see myself getting more into it. Rudy and I were out the other day looking for a geocache (and a place to hunt pheasants) when Rudy suddenly stopped, lifted his nose into the air and started acting very confused. He looked up at me from the tall grass with such fear in his eyes, so I said aloud, "What's wrong?" At the sound of my voice a coyote, only fifteen yards from where my pup stood, sprung from his hiding place in the grass and was gone.


I figure the coyote saw something coming through the grass (which is much taller than my little dog) and thought it might be his next meal. He couldn't see me because I was twenty yards behind a brush pile. I wish I had brought my gun.

Whether for hunting, corn mazes, or geocaching, I plan on never going without a GPS again.

Feels like I'm on the Outdoor Channel

A few days ago I was out again hunting birds with the dog when I found this.

I like knowing there are big bucks around. Rudy and I crept down the trail into the trees a bit, found a wonderful little grove, spooked two deer out of it, and decided it would be perfect for a treestand. The next week I put one up. In the picture it is folded up and pad-locked to the tree because unfortunately there are people out there who still believe in the phrase: "finders, keepers; losers, weepers."

I perched myself in it for a few hours this morning and thoroughly enjoyed my time there. Just after sunrise a buck, (possibly the one that made that track), snuck through the trees about 65 yards from me. In Utah-terrain that means a possible shot, if you've practiced up; but in Nebraska-terrain that means you can barely see him through all the grass and trees. Too thick for a photo but he was about this big:


I love hunting. Especially this time of year. A post or two ago I wrote about the hints of Fall in the air, football, and changing leaves. Well it's taken forever here in Nebraska but I finally saw some colored leaves today, and it was actually a little cold. I brought some of Courtney's favorite hot Halloween drink (see her blog) in a thermos, and as I was screwing the lid back on I saw this:


They were in a much less vegetated area 45 yards away, and I suppose I could have launched an arrow, but I hate wounding animals. Where I haven't practiced much at all this year I figure I better not take low-percentage shots. Especially at a doe on the first morning of a three month hunt. I may shoot a doe eventually, and hopefully a buck too, but not today. Ten minutes later I had two more does walk within five paces from the trunk of my tree. Way cool. It still blows my mind that I'm hunting whitetails in Nebraska...like all the shows I used to watch on the Outdoor Channel. It's much better in real life than on TV.

Here's a satellite photo of the place. My tracks and treestand are in red. Deer trails are in yellow. Click the pic for a zoomed in view. The deer feed in the corn and soy fields early in the morning and walk under my stand on their way to take a nap.













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