YanceyGreenhorn
Still Not a Moderator
We took our 3 yr old dachshund beagle mix to the woods with us. He’s a shelter dog that had been abused and adopted n returned by 10 different owners. Yup...TEN. No real expectations just wanted to see what he’d do. Only concern was deer as I’ve seen that little dog run 2 full grown does all over the mountains before lol. Working scent trails he was slow and methodical. Almost like how a cat stalks prey. Lots of deer sign so I kept calling him back and breaking him off the scent. Each time I called him off , he would be at the base of a stump working his nose. Kept thinking “is he smelling a grouse.” Kept convincing myself otherwise. Finally accepted that I won’t know what he wants to do if I don’t let him just go. Sure enough he slowly worked his way into some pretty “birdy “ looking timber. Right in front was a pretty fresh deer scrape. Said screw it and let him work. He went past the deer scrape and stopped and did somewhat of a point. Lol. For him it was a point, but I wouldn’t go showing it off to some guys with pointer dogs or anything haha. Anyways I didn’t see anything and he worked his way another 5 yards...to another stump. Sniffed all the way around it and up on top. He got 10-15 yds in front of me and jogged into some thick stuff. BOOM! Winged dynamite explodes from the ground and disappears before I could get a shot off. It was absolutely a grouse and I praised him. It flew into some trees on the private side of a fence. I let him look around on public side and when he was satisfied the bird was gone we kept going. I instantly second guessed myself for breaking him off more than once earlier in the day. He was wore out so my wife and I swung by our woodcock spot with 5 min LST left. Told her she had first dibs. She shot and missed 2 and I killed one that she spooked on her way out. Dog is definitely a bit gun shy as I expected. Can’t blame him as much as he was beat on when he was a pup. He didn’t run tho. Just stayed close to us with his tail tucked. He did lead me right to the dead bird tho. Tried to reward him and let him grab it but he just kept looking back n forth between my gun and the bird. I had zero expectations (or at least zero optimistic expectations) and I was pleased with him. He’s a lot like me. Been thru a buncha bad stuff and it was never imagined that he’d want to be in the woods and hunt. Least we can do is keep trying like folks did with me. We will get him out Saturday for the woodcock closer and as much as we can in February for the remainder of grouse. Wife and I were joking that covid be damned...taking our little misfit dog in the woods and trying to blast some birds is our idea of a perfect date. Thanks for reading. Here’s the one really bad pic I got of him in the woods and one right before we started