Yeah. I'm not a hunter, Holly, but I am a Brit, and I kept thinking, "No retriever?" Dogs have so many additional virtues! Endless love and cuteness! But OK, go ahead, be your own spaniel. 😂
OK no dog, however you are not getting any younger (non of us are) and our German Drahthaar has found birds the next day that we weren't able to get the day we shot them. Emmitt is worth every penny and pain in the a_ _. He is now 5 years old and is keeping us younger, besides never missing a bird. Look the breed up, they are upland game, waterfowl and blood trackers. https://linksharing.samsungcloud.com/f9FW21aac1DJ
Come on, you know I had to say it. It's in jest.. mostly.
There are a lot of very good reasons for not having a dog of any type, and it's true that a retriever comes with its own set of challenges. For someone who is on the go a lot, it's sort of like having a kid... except this kid isn't allowed in restaurants, motels, or even gas stations. Unlike camo and decoys, you can't just stow it in the garage until hunting season. It's always there. It needs food. It needs water. It needs attention (the older I get, the more attention my dogs seem to get from me and I have found, by and large, that they are better hunters for it).
And a dog is not the end-all-be-all. Even with a dog, wingshooting requires an extra level of situational awareness. Where's that bird likely to go down when you shoot? I've been in that thick stuff like you're describing, and dog or no dog, finding a downed bird requires as much luck as skill. There are also places a bird might go that I wouldn't want to send my dog... like the poison ivy thicket at my place that happens to lie right under the mourning dove superhighway. I won't shoot the birds here because no bird is worth 10 days of misery.
So refreshing to hear that you don't hunt with a dog. I don't have one either, and also feel pressure to have one, but it doesn't make sense with our available time and where we live right now. It's nice to hear that one can hunt as much as y'all do and make do without one.
Thanks for writing about this -- it's such a raw lesson to have to learn. We lost a goose in the tules at Sacramento NWR last year and both of us felt like such jerks. There's a real double misery in slogging through the reeds realizing your delicious dinner has disappeared AND feeling the wretched pang of having done wrong by the living creature whose life we took. When a duck disappeared on us later in the season on a stretch of river up here in Siskiyou, we were DETERMINED to find it, in no small part because we were still kicking ourselves about the goose, and damned if it didn't take us a solid hour in ice-rimmed water to find it wedged under a rock in the middle of the stream...but we did find it, and the rush of relief was intoxicating.
I also really appreciate the comments here about dogs -- it's something we might like one day, but yes, the pressure and the cost and the responsibility is huge, and it's nice to take in thoughtful perspectives on NOT having one.
I know the feeling all too well. I haven't hunted waterfowl in a many years, but do hunt upland birds (red legged devil birds and sometimes grouse). I prefer to hunt with my golden retriever(s) but have occasionally hunted without benefit of a better nose. I've spent many hours searching for downed chukar when my dog could have found them in seconds, I've lost quite a few as well - including one that hit the ground and bounced, then as I was approaching it to pick it up, the damned thing picked it's head up, got up and flew away. I've also ignored my dog on occasion, thinking all hope was lost, only to return to the spot an hour later and my dog went right back to work and found the bird. One time decades ago, I shot a grouse which got up and flew away. While I was trying to figure out how I missed, I let my dog out of the truck - he took off in the direction the grouse flew off, and came back with it. One of several birds my dogs have retrieved that I never even knew I hit.
Probably the sickest I've ever felt though was when I started archery hunting in the 1980's. I had what should have been a perfect shot at a nice bull elk, arrow hit something and didn't fully penetrate the chest cavity. I searched for that elk for 2 days and never recovered it. I completely gave up archery hunting a couple years later and mostly didn't hunt big game for the better part of 20 years after that. Dedicated myself to marksmanship whenever I'm lucky enough to draw a tag.
Yeah. I'm not a hunter, Holly, but I am a Brit, and I kept thinking, "No retriever?" Dogs have so many additional virtues! Endless love and cuteness! But OK, go ahead, be your own spaniel. 😂
OK no dog, however you are not getting any younger (non of us are) and our German Drahthaar has found birds the next day that we weren't able to get the day we shot them. Emmitt is worth every penny and pain in the a_ _. He is now 5 years old and is keeping us younger, besides never missing a bird. Look the breed up, they are upland game, waterfowl and blood trackers. https://linksharing.samsungcloud.com/f9FW21aac1DJ
Holly, why don't you get a dog?
Come on, you know I had to say it. It's in jest.. mostly.
There are a lot of very good reasons for not having a dog of any type, and it's true that a retriever comes with its own set of challenges. For someone who is on the go a lot, it's sort of like having a kid... except this kid isn't allowed in restaurants, motels, or even gas stations. Unlike camo and decoys, you can't just stow it in the garage until hunting season. It's always there. It needs food. It needs water. It needs attention (the older I get, the more attention my dogs seem to get from me and I have found, by and large, that they are better hunters for it).
And a dog is not the end-all-be-all. Even with a dog, wingshooting requires an extra level of situational awareness. Where's that bird likely to go down when you shoot? I've been in that thick stuff like you're describing, and dog or no dog, finding a downed bird requires as much luck as skill. There are also places a bird might go that I wouldn't want to send my dog... like the poison ivy thicket at my place that happens to lie right under the mourning dove superhighway. I won't shoot the birds here because no bird is worth 10 days of misery.
So refreshing to hear that you don't hunt with a dog. I don't have one either, and also feel pressure to have one, but it doesn't make sense with our available time and where we live right now. It's nice to hear that one can hunt as much as y'all do and make do without one.
Thanks for writing about this -- it's such a raw lesson to have to learn. We lost a goose in the tules at Sacramento NWR last year and both of us felt like such jerks. There's a real double misery in slogging through the reeds realizing your delicious dinner has disappeared AND feeling the wretched pang of having done wrong by the living creature whose life we took. When a duck disappeared on us later in the season on a stretch of river up here in Siskiyou, we were DETERMINED to find it, in no small part because we were still kicking ourselves about the goose, and damned if it didn't take us a solid hour in ice-rimmed water to find it wedged under a rock in the middle of the stream...but we did find it, and the rush of relief was intoxicating.
I also really appreciate the comments here about dogs -- it's something we might like one day, but yes, the pressure and the cost and the responsibility is huge, and it's nice to take in thoughtful perspectives on NOT having one.
I'm 78, my legs aren't what they used to be. My Labrador has extended my hunting days by years!
I know the feeling all too well. I haven't hunted waterfowl in a many years, but do hunt upland birds (red legged devil birds and sometimes grouse). I prefer to hunt with my golden retriever(s) but have occasionally hunted without benefit of a better nose. I've spent many hours searching for downed chukar when my dog could have found them in seconds, I've lost quite a few as well - including one that hit the ground and bounced, then as I was approaching it to pick it up, the damned thing picked it's head up, got up and flew away. I've also ignored my dog on occasion, thinking all hope was lost, only to return to the spot an hour later and my dog went right back to work and found the bird. One time decades ago, I shot a grouse which got up and flew away. While I was trying to figure out how I missed, I let my dog out of the truck - he took off in the direction the grouse flew off, and came back with it. One of several birds my dogs have retrieved that I never even knew I hit.
Probably the sickest I've ever felt though was when I started archery hunting in the 1980's. I had what should have been a perfect shot at a nice bull elk, arrow hit something and didn't fully penetrate the chest cavity. I searched for that elk for 2 days and never recovered it. I completely gave up archery hunting a couple years later and mostly didn't hunt big game for the better part of 20 years after that. Dedicated myself to marksmanship whenever I'm lucky enough to draw a tag.