Army of dogs an effective method to hunt pheasant

On Tessa, on Marshall, on Abby and Annie. On Amber, on Cali, on Sadie and Maddy.

No, the monikers of Santa’s reindeer haven’t changed. These are the names of just some of the dogs my friends and I will be hunting with as the upland game bird seasons head into the final few weeks of the year. There are also Sierra and Molly and Titus, and possibly Lucy and Coco and Bo.

Let me tell you, when you hit a field with a dozen dogs, it’s quite a sight!

You’ve never seen a happier bunch of dogs in your life, though, as when we unload rigs and plan our attack on some weed field or another. When they’re all balled up, there is approximately 26 feet of wagging tails and another 4 or 5 feet of slobbering tongues.

Normally on these late hunts, when we can get a group together, we will have more dogs than hunters. This, as you can imagine, can be quite a sight when taken in from afar. Orange dots litter the field as hunters work their way to blockers, and the field just kind of moves as the happy dogs work to and fro, searching the brush for the telltale scent of a pheasant.

We’ve actually had vehicles stop and watch as one of our dog-rich assaults on a field unfolds. Some people, including a few hunters I know, think we may be overdoing it a tad. But with late-season pheasants, you have to employ every trick in the book to try to get them surrounded.

You see, pheasants in December are much different than pheasants in October. The veteran birds, the birds that have been hunted over and over again, don’t play fair. They run and/or fly at the slightest hint of a hunter coming into the field. So we don’t play fair either. We try to get them surrounded, and then we turn our pack of pheasant finders loose on them.

We’ve learned over the years the more noses the better, so we put a bunch of dogs on the ground when we go after birds late in the season.

And without offending my friends who hunt with pointers and setters and other sporting breeds, this year every one of the dogs named above are Labrador retrievers. We have black ones and chocolate ones and yellow ones and one that is almost white. They run from fairly petite to downright stocky. We have tall Labs and short Labs, very pretty Labs and others that, well, might be best described as ruggedly handsome.

Several are related to each other. Brothers and sisters, mothers and daughters.

All, not surprisingly, can’t get enough of this crazy bird hunting.

It’s been easier this year to get more dogs to hunt because during the past year we have added several new pups to our pack. Not all of the young dogs are hunting effectively yet. Most are just out having a good time, and if they happen to flush a bird, well, all the better.

The pups run with the older dogs, who are pretty patient with them. It’s not easy trying to do the job of tracking a cagy rooster pheasant through an asparagus field with an 8-month old pup running along side, nipping at a flopping ear. But the older dogs put up with it. They were there once, and not all that long ago. Maybe they remember when.

As any hunter who hunts with dogs will tell you, the best part of a day in the field is watching the dogs work. Watching them do what they are born and bred to do is a joy. And come the last part of the pheasant season, my hunting buddies and I get more than our fair share of joy.

Oh sure, there is a tiny bit of confusion as we try to discern which chocolate dog is which and make sure we are calling the right dogs the right name. Funny thing is, if we happen to call one of the dogs by the wrong name, they don’t seem to mind. They’re just happy to be out.

And frankly, so are we.

It’s late in the fourth quarter, time to pull out the tricks in the play book. We’ll put our full team out there and see what we can do. We may not win, but it will sure be fun trying. And one thing is for sure, our doggy dozen will be loving every minute of it.
• Rob Phillips is a freelance outdoor writer and partner in the advertising firm of Smith, Phillips & DiPietro. He can be reached at rwphillips@spdadvertising.com.

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