|
OUTDOORS: A good hunting dog is hard to beat
Ghost and Shanny point way to grouse, woodcock
October 17, 2002
BY ERIC SHARP
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
In the past few days, I've had a chance to chase birds behind two great
dogs owned by friends. Not only did it prove that dogs are far better at
their jobs than we humans are at ours, it showed there is more than one
way to miss a grouse or woodcock.
Tony Petrella lives on the Manistee River west of Grayling. From spring to
fall he guides anglers for trout and salmon in Michigan, and in the winter
he guides for tarpon and other saltwater species on the west coast of
Florida.
He is also a manufacturers representative for several hunting and fishing
products, and between these jobs he gets to spend a lot of time outdoors.
Petrella's female English setter, Ghost, comes from the Ghost Train line
of these superb pointing dogs, and she combines a wonderful nose with
seemingly limitless energy.
Because she is so active, Petrella's hunting strategy is a bit different.
He lets Ghost roam far and wide while he listens for the tone change on
her beeper collar that signals she is on point. When he hears the
distinctive, high-low double tone, he hustles to the dog and flushes the
bird.
"I figured, who the heck am I to tell the dog where to hunt?" Petrella
said. "She's the one with the great nose, not me. She always stays close
enough where she can hear me talking or signal to her."
His signals are low whistles through his teeth, short when he is signaling
his position, long when he wants the dog to come. Ghost often checks in
visually for a moment to see if Petrella wants to hand-signal which way he
wants her to go.
The tell-tale, high-low sound from the collar alerted us that Ghost had a
point, and we hustled about 200 yards through the woods until we saw her
frozen and staring at a clump of ferns 20 feet ahead. We moved up to the
spot, but no bird flushed. Ghost ran 20 yards and pointed again. This time
a woodcock went up, and Petrella shot it as it climbed above the trees.
"I've learned not to question her judgment when she goes on point," he
said. "Even if the bird has moved on her, she'll start casting around, and
chances are 95 percent that she'll find it again.
"A few days ago, she pointed a grouse, and I shot it. I called for her to
retrieve it, but she wouldn't come. She wanted to go the other way.
"I wouldn't listen to her, and as I walked up to yell at her, a woodcock
flushed about 20 feet from where the grouse had been holding. It just
reinforced the old lesson that if the dog says there's a bird there, you
better be ready."
One reason this roaming strategy works for Petrella, but might not for
other people, is that he is physically fit enough to spend a morning
making repeated 200- to 400-yard trots over broken ground through dense
woods.
"You get a pretty good workout doing this," he said. "I have a bum knee,
but I'm still able to run to the dog, and I'll keep hunting this way as
long as I can do that."
Our morning ended with seven woodcock and two grouse flushed, but only one
woodcock in the game bag, mostly because the leaf cover on the trees was
so thick you couldn't see a bird flush 20 feet away.
Bill Edwards' black Labrador retriever, Shanny, has a style that's just
the opposite from Petrella's setter, never getting more than about 50
yards from her master and adjusting her pace so she is rarely out of sight
of humans.
Edwards is also physically trim and capable of running, but Petrella's
hunting style wouldn't work with a flushing dog like Shanny because she
doesn't point. When she gets close to a bird, her instincts tell her to
flush it, and there's no time for the hunters to run in.
Shanny also gave us a good lesson in why hunters need to pay attention to
the dogs, whose noses give them a far better picture of what's going on
than our eyes can alone.
On the way to the place I planned to hunt, we stopped to check out another
site that had produced well last year. Shanny flushed two woodcock in an
hour, but it was evident from the shell casings and boot prints that the
area had been hit hard.
We had just got back to the two-track, chatting as we headed for the car,
when we heard the unmistakable clatter of a flushing grouse. I looked up
to see the bird disappearing into the timber. It had flushed from under a
single small tree in a clearing at the edge of the two-track and would
have been an easy shot had I been paying attention. You could almost see
the dog shaking her head in disbelief at my ineptitude.
As we approached the place I had planned to hunt originally, we heard a
shotgun fire. A few minutes later there were a couple of more shots, and
we found that four other hunters had reached the site minutes ahead of us.
As we walked back to the car, the other guys' guns continued to bark,
rubbing in the fact that we were 10 minutes late and a dollar short in
reaching what was obviously a grouse and woodcock hot spot.
But things should be even better for upland bird hunters this weekend. The
pheasant season opens Sunday in the Lower Peninsula and runs through Nov.
14, and friends who are pheasant fanatics tell me that if you can find
places with good habitat, you'll find pheasants. In addition, quail will
be open Sunday through Nov. 11 in all or part of 27 counties in southern
Michigan (check the 2002 state hunting and trapping guide for the
boundaries).
At long last the leaves are changing and falling in the northern Lower
Peninsula and the Upper Peninsula, which should make it a lot easier to
see grouse and woodcock. At the same time, the first cold snap that swept
down through the state this week should bring flights of woodcock from
Canada, along with fresh ducks for the waterfowlers.
It's not hard to understand why I would love to see muddy March eliminated
from the calendar and replaced with another golden October.
Contact ERIC SHARP at 313-222-2511 or esharp@freepress.com.
|
Advertise with us