Selecting A Working Retriever Trainer-Part One

http://northtexasdogtrainers.com/
http://northtexasduckhunts.com/

Selecting A Working Retriever Trainer-Part One


When selecting a trainer for your pup you need to have some kind of goals in mind for your trainer and pup. The pup may not be up to these tasks but you do not know until the training begins. It’s all the rage to compete in hunt tests now. Most all owners think their dog can learn to handle. Most dogs just do not have what it takes to do this or compete. Owners see the Super Series on TV and think that would be fun to do. Most have no idea what it takes for a dog to do these things. For the owner that is not wanting the pup to compete they should look for a non competing trainer. This is hard to find as most all trainers try their hand at this. You will probably be talked into making your pup a competitor. After all this is how most make their money. If you do choose a trainer that competes check the ratio between the two groups. Most owners think that the pup will see a lot of hunting training -Wrong-. The kennel that makes a living from competition will not have the time to do anything but training for this. We are talking hunt test here not trial. Most trainers that make most of their living off ribbons will not have time for the non competitor. Be very careful and keep a very close eye on the progress of the pup. The not so talented pup in one of these kennels will suffer. The reputable trainer will know very fast if the pup does not have what it takes and tell the owner. When this talk never happens the owner and pup can be strung along, this pup will never see the real training. This kind of trainer just will not have time to mess with the slow pup. When a trainer has 20 or more competition dogs on his truck or in the kennel this eats up the whole day. Most of the slow pups just get the obedience and FF and that’s about it. They sit for weeks on end doing the basic obedience with a few marks with the assistant trainer. The sure fire way to tell if the pup really ever sees the head trainer is if the pup will not listen to the head honcho on a visit. The other dead give away is if the assistant does all the work on the visit as the head trainer explains what is going on. One other trick is to have the real person that trains the pup ,start the obedience on the visit. This will smooth out the pup and then the head trainer takes over. It is the owners responsibility to keep a eye on the pup. They should visit at least once a week to check progress. The kennel that looks down on visits I would not deal with. It is your dog and you need to keep them safe and keep a hand also on you money.

Beware- Accelerated Gun Dog Training…The Two Month Joke.

http://northtexasdogtrainers.com/

Beware- Accelerated Gun Dog Training…The Two Month Joke.


How long is my dog going to be gone. When I hear that question I know the person has never dealt with having a dog trained for gun dog before. The reputable retriever trainer in Texas has an average of 4-6 months with your pup. Anything under that and your pup will not see much while at that training facility. I know what I’m talking about. I worked many years at such a two month training kennel just south of Dallas. I must say I was always embarrassed at the lack of training that I was TOLD to put into the dogs. It was considered a waste of time for me to go into the small available area of cover to work the pups. More was put into the manicured looks of the grounds than training areas. A pup needs to have a minimum of just two months alone of obedience foundation and some kind of exposure to live birds, cover, boats decoys and simulated hunting. The two month trainer never has the time to show the pup much of any or none of this. Lets not even get into the harsh pressure that most have to endure just try to complete this program. Most of the clients know little or nothing of waterfowl hunting or what a true hunting retriever should look like in the field. The ones that do are too embarrassed to take the dog on real hunts. The pup suffers because if they had any talent to began with it is never brought out in this time frame.

North Texas Dog Trainers

http://northtexasdogtrainers.com/
Intro to birds- The young pup..


There is one Guaranteed fact about dog training . All dogs are different and need to be trained as such. Another one is that if you ask nine trainers a question you will get nine different answers. I will add my two dollars worth on the question of Intro To Birds. I show pups birds early. As soon as they can walk outside the whelping pen. Some say that can create problems later because they are molesting the bird. No I don’t let them eat the darn thing just carry play and chase and yes even pull feathers. I want that prey drive to click in as soon as it can. I want that pup absolutely crazy for the bird. I am very patient for this to kick in. I have seen dogs just watch the others play and tumble and fight over a bird. These little thinkers are just waiting to have it all to themselves later in the big picture. Never write off the pup that watches but does not act. These little guys usually end up to be power houses but also difficult to train. One on one the pup should be allowed to run free after the bird no sit just a free run for the thrown bird. Now for the older pup that comes in at six months that has not seen the bird. I throw in a very controlled area so I can catch them if need be. I let them have the bird without commands. This is the only way to see what the are made of around the bird. If you make them sit and say all kinds of commands you will not see the true pups out look on birds. The one true thing with dogs is that it is much easier to stop them ,than it is to get them to go. If the pup has no interest in the bird just keep at it. Try water try a trained dog to tease the pup. Act like a kid and get the pup all interested in what you have for them. Just do not be all stiff and embarrassed for acting like a kid around the pup. This is what makes the pup very happy to chase the bird. You showing that it is a good and fun thing.

North Texas Dog Trainers

http://northtexasdogtrainers.com/
Intro To Water..


What seems like common sense to some can be hard for others. Intro pup to water can go great or very bad. The new pup will either run like a dingo in and play or can be very timid. Never let the pup step off into deep water. Let them have a shallow to gradual slope into the deep water. I hope we all know not to push them into the water. If the pup will not go in after it’s favorite bumper or a bird try using another dog. This has worked for a lot of pups. The just start playing with the other dog and then there in. When all else fails prepare to get wet. Put waders on in the winter and shorts on in summer. Go in with the pup to have them follow you. If the pup swims to you and hangs on for dear life very slowly increase the depth. I have gone so far as to wear a life jacket and let them float on top of me. Then I hold them up under the belly as they swim. At some point I let them go and the naturally follow me back to shallow water. The will follow me back out the next time and try to get on board. I make a game out of this untill they never think about jumping in on there own. Some of you my wonder “What the heck” all dogs swim. No I have had to go in after quite a few of them as they just tried to go straight up in the air. They can drown after they get too tired to tread water. If you are patient with the odd pup that can’t swim you will figure it out . It will go very bad or just be a small bump in the road.

North Texas Duck Hunts

http://northtexasduckhunts.com/
http://northtexasdogtrainers.com/

http://northtexasduckhunts.com/



Duck Hunting Strategies- Keeping Records



Here Duck Hunting in North Texas you can count on one thing. The weather can change from ice one day and 70 degrees the next. You must know the areas to take advantage of when the weather turns good or bad. If you keep notes from one season to the next your ahead of the pack. Most hunters do not keep a hunting log. As I said in a previous tips page I keep a log of the events of the day week and month. The birds are creatures of habit. If you keep accurate records chances are you can be ready for most any weather condition in the area of record. When the wind is out of the north at 20 I know several pockets they will be on at 4 different lakes. I also where not to set up when certain weather hits. It is not hard to just jot down tidbits of information. It’s also fun to read in the off season. I’m not sure but I’ll bet there’s an App for just such a thing. Remember the tip of keeping water level records? Well the waters up again now on the lakes and I can go back in time to 3 years ago. The ducks will be in those same areas I kept records for. I have all my paths saved to these areas on my GPS. I can check them all out in one day instead of getting lost for hours. All these records can put you in place while the competition is still driving in circles saying “I think I remember that old tree”. Good luck and be safe.

North Texas Duck Hunts

Scouting shallow dead timber

http://northtexasduckhunts.com/



Some of the best duck foods to look for in North Texas are the smart weeds. There are thousands of these seeds in the seed bank in the lakes. The seed bank is the dormant seeds in the mud left there in previous years. These seeds can be dormant for years. Have you ever noticed what happens when a lake level goes down and exposes a mud flat You see weeds grow where water once was. These weeds are from the seed bank. The drought that North Texas experienced was a boom for ducks. Most people were worried that the ducks would just pass us by. Wrong, this drought exposes millions of acres of mud flats. The ducks ate on the edge of these exposed flats. What were they doing there. They were eating the seeds from the bank. When you would walk in the shallow water thousands of smart weed seeds would be stuck to your wader boots and shoes. The ducks had a ready made buffet waiting for them. Many hunters did not realize this and would just listen to the DU or wildlife people that do more computer analysis than actual field work. All you were reading from them was no water no ducks..As you can see from all my clips there were thousands of ducks in the shallows. You just needed to find them

North Texas Dog Trainers

http://northtexasdogtrainers.com/
At North Texas Dog Trainers I train dogs in real situations not on manicured small or technical ponds.
For The Discriminating Gun Dog Owner..
All Breed Training

North Texas Dog Trainers

http:northtexasdogtrainers.com/
Eye Contact..


Eye contact in training is one of the most important objectives with a pup. I just watched a clip that says you should say the dogs name preceding every command.. That will just cause a lot of confusion on down the road for you both. I can pretty much see the owner being so used to this that when the dog breaks (and all dogs worth a dang will break sometimes) yelling the pups name which in reality is releasing the dog and making it go faster.

Eye contact you need it but saying the dogs name on everything will wear it out to the point it means nothing or worse with the smart dog can cause avoidance to the handler. This will have the opposite effect of what you want. At this point you will need to come up with a new que anyway . A well timed noise like psss psss psss will have the pup locked on you most all the time. You will have this when you program the pup to have something very positive happen with that noise( throwing birds or bumpers). Pup’s that I have trained can come back to me years later and will look up to the sky and me for a bird or a bumper. A pup programmed on eye contact on this que will perk up when the pressures of training has them wanting to quit. They will not only look at you but will be very alert to the training. The word hup hup (Not used for sitting with me) will have the same effect if you use it associated with a non steadied hand thrown bird or bumper. This can and will bring the eye contact and a up lift for the pup at the same time.

North Texas Duck Hunts- Camouflage/ Match The Surroundings.

http://northtexasduckhunts.com/
https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/North-Texas-Duck-Hunts/158520117525627
North Texas Duck Hunts- Camouflage/ Match The Surroundings.


When you are duck hunting you must try to pick the colors that match you hunting areas. This my sound obvious but most new hunters never think about this. Most of the pre made camo wraps for boats do not match anything but a cattail marsh. It sticks out like a sore thumb in a dead timber area or mud flats or sand bar areas. If you look at the pictures or clips on my website or you tube you will see none of the patterns match. You need to paint the colors and patterns you see while you scout. There should be no greens if you hunt in the dead timber areas if you see no greens. No corn stalks grow where I hunt. Most of the name brand patterns do not match anything where I hunt. They all look like a solid color because the pattern tries to match everything in nature. In most dead timber the trees are sun bleached. So you need lots of light tan, black to white colors. The pattern needs to be somewhat vertical to branching out to the sides. Make the black look like shadows and the white on tan to make shadows. Stand back about 50’ and if the object panted looks solid you need more white to break it up. White/Gray is a natural color not used by any name brand patterns. Yet if we hunt in water that is the main color. If you look at a true layout boat it uses gray and black to hide this boat in open water. If you use a boat as your blind it can be seen for miles. This is true because it looks like a blob, from a distance. I don’t care what ready made camo boat blind you use it can be seen. When I fly over a hunting area I can see these boat blinds miles away. They all look much the same and all look like a dark blob. When you stand back to look at the painted object squint. This gives you a look at the whole object as it looks from a distance. If it looks like you have to add white to make it look three dimensional add it. You will be amazed what it looks like when on the water in the dead timber. I sometimes can not see my boat about 50’ away when I am out scouting on the way back to my boat. I have learned that I had best put a marker so I can find it. I will show a step by step panting clip soon.
Be sure to follow me on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/North-Texas-Duck-Hunts/158520117525627

North Texas Duck Hunts-Mud Motors SD-LT

http:/northtexasduckhunts.com/




If you ask 10 mud boat owners which is best a Surface Drive (SD) or a Long Tail (LT) you’ll get 20 different answers. There is no right answer to this question. They both serve the purpose they were built for very well. I purchased my first LT in 82-83 season from Go-Devil. It was a 12 hp push button start and the fuel tank was on engine. It was one of the first in the North Texas area. I was going where absolutely no one else was able to go. I have owned a LT ever since. I also have owned a 35 hp SD. It was a great motor and did things the LT could never do. It’s ease of driver operation beats the LT hands down. The open water qualities were better than an outboard. It was great to sit down while traveling. This motor was a power horse. It just did not work for my style and area of hunting. I still wish from time to time that I had it. This last season made me wish that wish. The drought had made all the runs to the hunting area in open deep water. The minimum travel to the areas were 8-9 miles one was 12 miles. I run a 16×48 23 hp LT and it was not built for this. The wind was a huge factor in the areas I could hunt. It was too dangerous to go to many areas at times. The trip was a body pounding tight rope walk. Standing up in a boat while steering in any waves for 8 miles was not fun. I longed for my old SD. Now the bad parts. In North Texas the SD does not perform as they do in the coastal area or swamps of Louisiana. The prop guard is it’s Achilles heel. Now lets not get into a back and forth match with everyone. It is pure physics. If the prop is not in the water what happens. Yes you can get a SD in 6” and down to 3” of water but what happens when you stop. Your stuck, all your momentum and water flow over the prop is lost and the prop is out of the water. The mud is just too darn hard to trim the engine any further into the water or I should say mud. The other factor I could not tolerate was the slow handling qualities of the larger heavier motor and boat. When you have to slow to a crawl over stumps and logs you can get high centered in both SD and LT. When the back-end was high everyone had to pile out and push the boat over the obstacle. This happened way too much with the clients. Ok I can hear it now “You have to power fast through it” . You can’t do this with clients, if you’re at all concerned with their safety and comfort. You come to a sudden stop doing any speed over 5 mph everyone flies out or to the front of the boat. With the LT you have about 6 feet of reach 180 degrs from the boat to power off the high center. You can crawl like you are in a low gear 4×4. The other advantage is you can dig a hole in the mud to get water over the prop. I can squeeze by in 3” of water and start from a dead stop with a full load. I have had to wait many times for SD friends when the water was only one foot while they struggled to get their momentum up. Then of course the were at the ramp miles ahead of me. Nothing is perfect in the real world when you off the internet and in the marsh. In the perfect world you would have both characteristics of the SD and LT in one motor.


http:/northtexasduckhunts.com/

16x48 LT in 5 inches of water

North Texas Duck Hunts-Duck Hunting Strategies- Keeping Records

North Texas Retriever Trainers
North Texas Dog Trainers
http://northtexasdogtrainers.com/
http://northtexasduckhunts.com/


Four man limit on Lake Cooper. This was easy with the hunting records for the conditions at hand

Duck Hunting Strategies- Keeping Records

Here Duck Hunting in North Texas you can count on one thing. The weather can change from ice one day and 70 degrees the next. You must know the areas to take advantage of when the weather turns good or bad. If you keep notes from one season to the next your ahead of the pack. Most hunters do not keep a hunting log. As I said in a previous tips page I keep a log of the events of the day week and month. The birds are creatures of habit. If you keep accurate records chances are you can be ready for most any weather condition in the area of record. When the wind is out of the north at 20 I know several pockets they will be on at 4 different lakes. I also where not to set up when certain weather hits. It is not hard to just jot down tidbits of information. It’s also fun to read in the off season. I’m not sure but I’ll bet there’s an App for just such a thing. Remember the tip of keeping water level records? Well the waters up again now on the lakes and I can go back in time to 3 years ago. The ducks will be in those same areas I kept records for. I have all my paths saved to these areas on my GPS. I can check them all out in one day instead of getting lost for hours. All these records can put you in place while the competition is still driving in circles saying “I think I remember that old tree”. Good luck and be safe. Four

North Texas Dog Trainers-Puppy Head Start

Intro To Puppy Head Start
http://northtexasdogtrainers.com/


When a pup comes to the puppy head start it is always an adventure for us both. I never know what the pup has really been up to at it’s owners house. Everyone says that there either a little dingo or the best pup ever. I got news there all little hellions. Just looking to get in all sorts of mischief. You have the warm up period in the first two days or so when most are quiet little angels . What they are really doing sizing up the fool who decides to do this. Then boom the real dingo comes out to play. A four footed fur ball with horns looking for anything and everything all at once.

After all is said, I love the new pup. Never boring and always a totally new adventure. All pups are different and it’s a great feeling to have a little dingo turn into a well mannered devil. One that loves to look up at me as if to say “Come on old man lets go have a new adventure”. No it’s not all fun and games for the mutt. I make the pup behave. I push them to learn as much as their are little peanut brain can handle at this age. They learn that birds are where it’s at. The pup learns water is used for more than just a mess maker in the kitchen. When a shot is heard, to look up and wonder where that thing with feathers is falling. They learn when I say Sit and No it means exactly that. The day these little pups return for the formal training it’s like they never left. They know what’s expected. They know that they will have some fun and be expected to work.

North Texas Duck Hunts.. Identifying Duck Foods

Some of the best duck foods to look for in North Texas are there smart weeds. There are thousands of these seeds in the seed bank in the lakes. The seed bank is the dormant seeds in the mud left there in previous years. These seeds can be dormant for years. Have you ever noticed what happens when a lake level goes down and exposes a mud flat You see weeds grow where water once was. These weeds are from the seed bank. The drought that North Texas experienced was a boom for ducks. Most people were worried that the ducks would just pass us by. Wrong, this drought exposes millions of acres of mud flats. The ducks ate on the edge of these exposed flats. What were they doing there. They were eating the seeds from the bank. When you would walk in the shallow water thousands of smart weed seeds would be stuck to your wader boots and shoes. The ducks had a ready made buffet waiting for them. Many hunters did not realize this and would go to the more deeper water for the ducks. They would only go to the smart weed beds themselves. The edge was were most of the action was. The edge is the area were the weeds end and the water begins. This forms an area that has easy access for the ducks to eat. The next area that was hot were the formed holes of deeper water and weed beds. You can not see these areas unless you got out of your boat and walk the area. All this takes is a less lazy attitude of just not driving the boat everywhere. These honey holes are where we killed most of the ducks in dead timber. The holes were anywhere from football sized to one acre. The pics and the clip show what are hunting area looked like on Lake Cooper. This can be any lake with weed beds

North Texas Duck Hunts

I scout from the air then from boat. This assures a hot spot for my clients..I hunt North Texas lakes..Lake Cooper,Fork,Pat Mayse,Tawakona and Red River..
North Texas Duck Hunts specializes in the One on One Guided Hunt and small groups. No more than two hunters (Larger groups upon request) This is the place for a true father son/daughter hunt. Some outfitters say this but none come through. There is never any mixing of parties. You will not hunt with strangers on your guided hunt with me ever. My guided hunts are for the discriminating gunner. Old fashioned guided hunt with a no rushed atmosphere. Bring you dog there always welcome.