I went out this morning for the opening of pheasant season in Utah with a good friend this morning.

 

It was a frosty morning, but a beautiful morning.

 

Right at first light we were able to harvest four birds between the two of us, but they dropped in the phragmites in deep water off to our right.
 
Normally, this field is dry this time of year, but it was deep, cold water, and ice.
Jazzy jumped in and was somehow able to bring two of the birds back out totally drenched. They were basically blind retrieves, he knew they were in there in that thick tangle of a mess of reeds and ice and mud and water, but he had only his nose to guide him. He couldn’t find the other two despite working hard at it. The cover was just too thick to get through and search effectively. 
 
We had two other groups of people stop with their labs and try to help find them also to no avail but their labs did continue putting more birds in the sky and everybody was having a great time shooting up the sky.
 
I went home and got a pair of waiters and a fresh dog that loves to swim and headed back out.
TinkerBell and I were able to recover both of the birds from this morning that I dropped in the water in about 15 minutes. I was so very proud of her, and so grateful to be able to recover the birds that we had harvested.
 
Whether big game hunting or bird hunting I hate when hunters are able to harvest an animal, but not recover it.
I believe it’s our responsibility as sportsman to make every effort possible to recover any harvested game.
So proud of you and your swimming Tink!
 
This is what led me to hunting with dogs to begin with. In the days when I started hunting you didn’t need a dog to find birds, they were everywhere. You could jump out of the truck and walk any ditch, river or tree line and birds would wild flush. You just had to make sure they were roosters but it was never hard to get them flying. The hard part is when you wing a pheasant and they hit the ground running. A wild rooster can run so much farther than you would ever believe and you are just never going to find him without the help of a dog. Keep in mind, coyotes and birds of prey will, but that animal has zero chance of survival after being hit and without a dog you have zero chance of recovery.
 
Dropping birds in the cattails back then was another reason. A good sportsman without a dog wouldn’t take a shot that would drop the bird where it would be hard to recover, or where he couldn’t ensure an ethical kill. But how many hunters really have that kind of self control now when it is so hard to even find a bird?
 
So do the ethical thing and enlist a hunting partner that is always on time, always eager to go, and better at the job of finding birds dead or alive than you ever will be. They never have other plans or get busy on a Saturday, they always want to go out with you and improve your hunting success rate as well as enhancing the experience. Get a French Brittany from Homeandfielddogs.com to be your hunting companion.