Freighter’s job at our pheasant hunt last Saturday was to hunt a dense stand of thickets.  As the youngest, he was the last dog out so he got a challenging hunt.

Hunting The Thickets

At first hubby and Freighter hunted some heavy cover in the middle of the field but they had little luck.

What you cannot see in the picture is that much of the ground under the cover was under water.  It was not likely that the birds would be there and they were not.

Hubby suspected that the birds were in the area of thickets that were to the edge of the field.  These thickets were very dense.  A dog could get in there, but there was no way for a hunter to follow.

Freighter hunted all one side and then went around the back and hunted the other side of the thickets.

The hope was that if Freighter found any birds, he could flush them out of the thickets so the hunter could get a clear shot.

When we arrived at the pheasant preserve, the guy who runs it said that we should do better with our flushing dogs than if we had pointers.  What?  I guess he meant that it was a good thing we had a dog to get the birds out of the bushes.

On the back side of the stand of thickets Freighter flushed a hen.  He was deep in the bushes so he did not see the bird flush and once hubby shot it, he did not see where it landed.

Hubby told Freighter it “hunt it up” and he did.

He found the pheasant and made a nice retrieve.

Freighter is a young dog and still in training so he is required to come to heel and deliver this bird to hand.  The older dogs deliver to hand but they do not necessarily have to come all the way to heel.  With a younger dog, it is a good idea to keep your standards as high as possible.

This was not an easy retrieve for Freighter because the bird was not dead.  In fact it was flapping quite a bit but Freighter still made a very nice retrieve and held the bird.  One of the reasons we try to get out to pheasant preserves is because it is a great opportunity to get in some training while the dogs have a bit of fun.

Freighter hunted a bit more and found more birds, but unfortunately there were some misses.

The sun had come out and it was warming up, so we took a break for lunch.  After lunch Thunder and Storm came out to hunt the thickets on the other side of the field.  Not to worry about the missed birds.  It seems most went over there and they eventually found them.

A Word About The Hop

I apologize for the lack of a hop last week.  Mr. Linky’s hosting company was having server issues.  The linky was messing up my blog so that it would not load so I eventually removed it.  Things should be back to normal this week.  Thanks to everyone who tried to link up last week.

I will also be a bit late stopping around this week.  This is the last hunting weekend this season (I promise).  Hubby will be hunting and the brown dawgs will be hanging with me, but they won’t be sitting around because I hope to get in a couple of photo shoots.

This is the Thursday Barks and Bytes Blog Hop hosted by Heart Like A Dog and 2 Brown Dawgs.  Grab the badge and the linky code and join us!  Its fun!