Hand signals

I love YouTube. You can find anything and everything you seem to need. Like anything on the internet, you have to do some homework to find out if something is legit. This trainer makes the hand signals seem so easy, I was sure his dog had done this hundreds of times. Surprisingly it went about as easy as his video shows.

Benelli caught on fast and is getting pretty dang good with her hand signals. At a park or ball field she'll go out to about 40 yards, I don't think I'll focus on much further than that. I was surprised how quick she learned, within a week she was running. As the video shows, the next step is to start adding distractions and make sure she realizes she goes where I tell her to, not where she wants to. The fact that she'll do this consistently without her e-collar is encouraging.

To get her to go 100% of the time where she is sent to I'll use this drill below. It's time to start clamping down again and really enforcing the obedience as it is almost time! I'm headed out of the state labor-day weekend for some birthday early season goose slaying.

Tis The Season

It's been fantastic waking up to go to work in the morning and have that cool crisp feel in the air. I drive through Sardine Canyon everyday on the way to work and love seeing the colors already starting to change. Rolling past the Logan River Golf Course in the morning usually produces a small family group of geese heading to feed, goose fever is getting here! I was out in the garden tonight and the ducks and geese starting piling into a pond behind the house, Benelli was going nuts! She is about as excited as I am.

I saw a hilarious quote this week that reminded me of Benelli when we first got her. We were still living in our apartment and couldn't have pets. We were moving into our house about a week away so we didn't want to wait getting her any longer so we drove up to Pocatello and picked her up. She was like any 12 week old pup, it was fun having her. We quickly learned if we left her in her pet porter at night she would bark and whine uncontrollably. We were worried sick about getting caught with her so we'd take turns staying up at night with her throwing some obnoxious squeaky toy across the floor. After a few days this got really old. We couldn't take her out during the day time, we couldn't lock her up, it was a bit of a disaster. One day we were cooking dinner and we both looked at each other and said "It's too quiet." We made a mad dash to the bedroom and found Benelli taking a dump on the floor. Phenomenal. Which leads well into the quote I saw this week: "They say a dog is a man's best friend, but I don't even have enemies that will look me dead in the eye while taking a shit on my carpet."

I bought Benelli a new ground blind this last week with my safety bonus from work. I bought the Greenhead Gear Ground Force blind (on the right). She currently is running out of a Rig 'em Right Field Bully. I've really liked the one she has now except it is a weird triangle shape and has a really hard time breaking up with not much cover. It is just too high and too sharp of edges to break up. This newer one is a lower profile and more square. Benelli doesn't seem to mind!

The ground force blind does look quite a bit smaller and I think it'll disappear out in the field quite a bit better than the Rig 'Em Right. For $150 it better!

The big downside to the blind is collapsing it. The Rig 'Em Right collapses awesome, it basically folds up in a triangle and that is it. You clip the front to the back and you can pack it all over and it doesn't take up much space. The only word I can think of to describe it would be like an accordion. The Ground Force Blind has a pole that runs down the middle, that collapses how tall it is, but that is it! It'd be a pain in the but to pack a long ways. It is a pain putting together as well, I have a bad feeling the middle pole is going to freeze up when it gets cold. That was a big disappointment, it isn't very mobile.

I've started Benelli on hand signals this last week and she is doing quite well. I've got some video I'll upload and hopefully post up this week.

This week was a great week for Benelli. A trainer I started working with when Benelli was a few months old told me something I've never forgot, "Benelli will only be as good as her trainer." Having said that, there were a couple things last year I didn't spend enough time and training on to expect great results. First and probably foremost is Benelli would not stay steady. As soon as the sound of a muzzle blast went off she was off to the races to retrieve. I plan to fix that next week. She will stay steady out of her ground blind throwing just a bumper, but you add live birds, calls, and her retrieving instinct takes over. It is hard to find the balance of discipline and not taking away her instinct to retrieve. Next week should show some good results for that....
My quality of pictures are pretty poor, I need to stop using the phone on my camera. This week we focused on retrieving a goose. She retrieved a few last year, but she struggled for the most part. I blame that on not training her with any geese, and partly her size. Last hunting season she was still less than a year old; a big goose can be 10-15 pounds. That is a lot of goose for the 8 month old pup she was. I'll start adding her ground blind to her drills this week, and hopefully add the gun in by Saturday.
 A few (literally, probably 3 retrieves?) times out to the park and she was golden. She'll now run 200 yards, pick up this heavy 10 pound bumper, retrieve to hand, heel, sit, and wait for her command to drop.



And last but not least, what an awesome picture! Makes me really excited for when Jack will be old enough to have and train his own dog. If only training a kid was as easy as training a dog!

A manly blog?

I've always kept a book containing all my pictures of my hunting and fishing trips and referred to it as my "book of death". Thanks to someone that created a blog in 2003 and hasn't updated it since, I am stuck with a little longer title. Same idea.
My goal is to have this be a running "journal" of specifically my hunting trips this year. I've learned over the years it isn't the dead ducks and geese that make a succesful hunt. As lame as that sounds it is true, and a true sportsman that is in it for the right reason will concur. Henry David Thoreau sums it up quite nicely: ""Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after."

Last season was simply put, stellar. Despite a plethora of banded birds, being able to hunt the full 107 day season without dealing with solid ice up, one of my favorite memories came on October 6th, the second hunt of the year. Hunting with my Grandpa is always a thrill. He is 77 years old and still running strong. Over the years he has got by without hunting over a dog and it took a lot of convincing to finally get Benelli out for her first hunt. At less than 1 year old and never having hunted waterfowl before I was a bit apprehensive. I'd invested a lot of time in those 10 months training and prepping her. The sunrise arrived as quick as the first flight of mallards did. We hit the mojo, they spun once, and locked up solid. I remember Benelli perking her ears up and seeing the cupped greenheads about 60 yards out. I muttered under my breath at her "If you break early you aren't coming home". I don't know who was more focused on what, I didn't dare take my eyes off Benelli and she sure as heck wasn't taking her eyes off the ducks. It was at that moment when Jack's Super Black Eagle sent out the first roar. I didn't even shoot at that group, grandpa winged one that sailed a good 200 yards into a cattail lined ditch. Not the ideal retrieve for her first live bird. I sent her on her line, and to my utter shock and amazement she ran straight there, picked up a nice greenhead, came back to my left side, sat, held the bird in her mouth and stared at me like "What?". Good dog, good dog.