10 Best E Collar For Hunting Dogs

Best E Collar For Hunting Dogs in 2023

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My Hunting Dog

A humorous account about hunting dogs.

A couple of them ran and hid every time a gun fired. One of them stayed hid for three days. I finally found her hidden under the granary and had to crawl under there to coax her out. They obviously weren't hunting dogs.

Another one thought hunting meant catching one of our sheep and chewing its legs off. She certainly wasn't a hunting dog. She did a good job of playing tackle football though. Of course her idea of tackling me was to grab my coat sleeve and pull me around until I fell down. I came home from school one day and dad told me he gave her to a traveling salesman who didn't own any sheep. That was probably a good thing because most of the stuffing was all yanked out of my coat sleeve by then anyway.

The only thing another one of my dogs hunted was cars driving by our place. He never lived long enough to try duck or pheasant hunting. I had another dog who was a real hunter only he preferred hunting by himself at night. I'm not sure what he hunted but one morning he came home with a snoot full of gopher poison which ended his career. I actually got this one to go pheasant hunting a couple times with me before the poison incident. The first time he insisted on running a half mile ahead of me and chasing everything out of the country. I tried a second time by taking him tied to my belt with a twenty foot rope. This worked out great because he flushed the birds like he was supposed to. The problem was he kept jerking on the rope so I could never get a decent shot off. Hunting dogs ought to be team players, he wasn't.

I resigned myself to dogless hunting. That of course meant that I was the one who got to tramp through the Canadian thistle patches and struggle through wild rose bushes and slop across muddy ditches while attempting to flush the birds. I also got to strip down to my birthday suit on brisk November days to swim out in the ponds to retrieve downed ducks. Boy I had fun then. My next dog was more than happy to stay snuggled up on the pickup seat and wait while I went hunting. She was not a dumb dog.

Later on I got a cat who liked to go bird hunting with me. He wasn't much of a bird flusher though since he mostly followed in my tracks. He wasn't much of a retriever either but that cat would follow me for miles and never complain. I recken that was because he got to sift through the warm guts of everything I shot. He was a bossy cat and he had a way of getting just what he wanted. He slept all curled up around the top of my head and if I moved he swatted me. He also drew blood on everybody who tried to pet him when he didn't want to be petted.

You might say I wasn't having much luck with dogs. So far every dog that lived with me was destined for a short life span. I almost decided to spare a dog by never getting one again. Of course that idea vanished when my cousin showed me a litter of brand new puppies that a stray dog had under her chicken coop. I brought a little honey colored fur ball home with me. Who can resist a cute little puppy? This one was a survivor. She lived for about 15 years but she was too independent to hunt with me. Every time I took her out in the fields she went her own way and I wouldn't see her for hours. I guess she kept track of me though because she always showed up at the pickup when I was ready to leave. Her idea of playing fetch was to go get whatever I threw and never letting me have it back.

One day I brought this little cocker spaniel home. It turned out she was a cute little thing and she wasn't afraid of anything. She could flush birds with the best of them. There was a problem though. She had this long silky hair that picked up every thorn and sticker and grass seed so that she was nothing but a matted stickery hairball with legs. It took four hours of grooming to get her coat back in presentable shape for every fifteen minutes she spent hunting. That little dog was real smart but she never caught on to the idea of swimming out to retrieve ducks in the water. The day I brought her home covered in cockleburs was her last bird hunting trip.

Then disaster struck. Yep, I moved out of Montana. It so happens that this move took me to the desert country of Arizona. I quit hunting. I figured that anything that could survive out in the desert ought to get a break and not have to put up with nitwit hunters too.

I went a few years without a dog until my daughter convinced me that a natural born dog lover like myself really needed another dog. She probably figured if I got a dog I might perk up and quit being a grouchy old bastard. It might have worked. Then again maybe not.

I ended up adopting a golden retriever from the dog rescue people. Wow! Now I owned a real honest to goodness hunting dog. Gee, too bad I didn't go hunting anymore. I decided to tap into the dogs other talents. This golden retriever had a world class sniffing nose. She could find anything just by sniffing it out. I figured I could train her to be a drug and bomb sniffing dog. The only problem was I was fresh out of bombs and drugs. I settled by filling an old sock with bullets. My dog could sniff that sock out from any hiding place. I'm not sure if it was the stench of foot sweat in that sock (It was an old dirty sock) or if she smelled gunpowder but she always found it by scent alone. A few times I caught her peeking when I was hiding the sock so I had to lock her in the garage. No cheating allowed. That didn't matter. All I had to do was tell her to go get it and she would when I let her out of the garage. I really could have used this dog when me and my brother used to play catch when we were kids. We spent hours searching for lost balls. She would have found them in a jiffy.

I figured this was pretty darn impressive. If anybody ever loses an old sweaty sock full of bullets then you should give me a call. My dog will find it for you. Guess what? I've had that dog for six or seven years and nobody has ever asked us to find a single sock.

This dog also really likes retrieving. She will bring back whatever you throw no matter where you throw it. I don't hunt anymore but I still do some target shooting. I took my golden retriever out to the desert to shoot a couple times. She didn't mind me shooting my 22 rifle. She wasn't bothered much when I shot my 20 gauge shotgun. I was thinking that hey maybe I ought to reconsider the whole not hunting thing. Then I pulled out my 45 and squeezed a couple dozen rounds off. I looked around and that dog had plumb vanished. I searched 40 acres of brushy cactus covered ground. I looked behind every boulder and in a bunch of sandy gullies. No dog. About then an old fella drove up and asked me if I was looking for a dog. Yep, there she was all huddled up in his backseat. He was out picking up shiny rocks or something about a mile from where I was shooting and all of a sudden this golden retriever ran up and jumped into the open back door of his car. I figured that dog just plumb disliked my 45 so I quit shooting it around her unless she was locked in my car. She still tolerated me firing my shotgun though so I seriously considered taking her hunting. Of course I still lived in Arizona where those unfortunate game birds didn't deserve getting hunted after surviving out in the desert heat.

I decided to take this promising hunting dog back to god's country (Montana, for those of you who have never been there) for some real bird hunting. She panted down my neck and drooled on my back for 1500 miles but we got to Montana okay. There was snow piled up in the shelterbelts, cold icy water in the ditches and scratchy thistles along the fence lines. My "hunting dog" put up with this nonsense for about an hour. Then she looked at me like "are you crazy?" After that all she did was follow me through the tall grass letting me break trail. I managed to shoot a pheasant. I told her to go get it. She said "You shot , you get it". She wasn't going near anything bloody. Things sure weren't panning out like I had hoped. When we came close to an old shack all she wanted was to find a door to go inside. You might say I was a bit disappointed by this time. We had a long talk about what hunting dogs are supposed to do.

I took her out hunting the next morning but she ran back into the house and hid on the bed. Last night's talk apparently didn't impress her. No way was I putting up with a panting drooling dog for 1500 miles and not going hunting. I pulled her sorry ass outside and we took to the fields. She was not a happy camper. Every time I took my eyes off her she either laid down or tried to sneak off back to the house. She eventually agreed to follow me as long as I promised not to go through any deep snow banks or through a sticker patch. Some hunting dog!

She's lucky to be such a likable loving dog. Who could not like a golden retriever? She still plays fetch, goes on walks and swims with me but I don't plan on taking her hunting ever again. I put her to work licking pots instead. She is also ready to find any smelly missing socks so keep us in mind.