# First Duck Hunt



## Gettinbirdy (Jun 15, 2006)

My 8 1/2 month old black lab Gunner had his first duck hunt this last Saturday. To tell you the truth our expectations were pretty low. The reason for this was not his lack of ability but rather his trainer's (me) lack of ability/persistence in regards to training. Long story short, my wife and I both work 50 hrs per week and the last thing on our minds after a long day is traing our pup. Although we do give him plenty of attention and work on fetching constantly, it still doesn't exuse our lack of persistence in training.

To tell you the truth, the only exposure he had to birds was back at the breeder's when he was only a small pup. His only exposure to shotgunning was several months ago from a distance of 30 or 40 yards.

Anyway, we were hoping he'd retrieve a few ducks and not run around the whole morning. By the way if he was spooked by the shotgun we'd have put him in the vehicle immediately. What we did, however, was bring a bumper with us to the blind. Before the hunt started we ran one drill a total of three times. The drill was as simple as associating the gun with something he loves dearly, the bumper. I'd throw the bumper shoot while it was airborn and send him for the retrieve after it hit the water. By the way I do know the danger of associating the gun with his retrieving 'toy.' Our expectations were far from what transpired...

The first retrieve was excellent. The bird hit the water and he was on it immediately. He continued this for the entire morning. The second morning he was already sitting calmly watching the sky and following our gun barrels to get a bead on the birds. About half of his birds were cripples and divers, he handled himself better than I could have imagined.

After the weekend was finished he retrieved about 90% of the downed birds. The other 10% were those which landed on the other side of the slough or far off in the cattails. I haven't worked enoughwith lining or handling so he doesn't trust me when I line him up and send him off (any tips on this?).

To me his performance is miraculous considering the poor effort put forth by myself in his training. This leads me to believe genetics has a huge effect on performance. The only thing I can take credit for is buying a pup from a quality breeder and giving him lots of attention. Gunner deserves the majority of the credit.


----------



## USAlx50 (Nov 30, 2004)

congrats! sounds a lot like my first week out with my dog that is older yet then yours.


----------

