Steady To Shot

How many of you train your bird dogs to do this? I never have but was wondering what opinions were out there. I have always thought it was better to have them on the dead bird ASAP before he runs off or gets in a rathole. How many train your dogs to stand until released?

I'm assuming you mean an upland dog. With labs, waterfowl, we want them to sit until sent. Then we want them to get the bird we choose first. A cripple for example.

Edited my post. Talking about bird dogs, not retrievers.

I've read it's better to make them stand and watch as to mark birds better. Also for safety reasons. Mines not steady fyi.

My last three were all steady to shot just after the breaking process. They all came un-broke after shooting a few birds over them. I would rather have one that was steady but its not worth the trouble to me. You almost have to let someone else do the shooting to keep them steady.

for upland...my goal is to have both my dogs steady to fall (whoa until released) and to honor the retrieve which I would think requires steady to fall. I've got one dog steady to fall... the other I'm working on. Without honoring and steady to fall plus backing, I think it would be much less enjoyable to have more than one dog out at a time. I'm more concerned with dog safety. If the dog bolts after a low flyer, the odds are higher it will get shot by one of your friends. I've also read that bolting after the first flush can ruin a large covey opportunity that didn't all flush at first or bust up singles if you are hunting them, etc. My thoughts are if you are concerned about a cripple getting away, then you can always release the dog pretty quick.

Steady to shot means lost birds. Unless you hunt birds that are easy to kill

I've never seen one in my 50 years of bird dogging where the handler did his one shooting. They shoot birds in NSTRA. I've seen one there.

That good bird dog knows if there is a bird that didn't flush! He won't budge!

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

What did it say when you read about this to correct it?

I'm not sure what you are referring to...how to correct a dog not holding until released?

I train mostly by myself, and my method was just to wrap the check cord around my boot, giving a couple feet of slack. This gives the dog just enough slack to start getting a good bit of momentum and get a brick wall at the end of that slack but not enough to hurt it. It's the easiest self correction I could come up with while training with no partner...that way I could work the launcher and the gun during training sessions. If the dog broke at the flush it got a negative association with doing that by hitting the end of that lead sharply, I would then calmly go and pick the dog up, place it firmly but not being mean exactly where it was on point, tell it whoa again, and praise it for remaining on whoa for a while. Then I would release it with my release command and we would go to the next planted bird scenario.

With my whoa training I was releasing it initially by tapping the dog on the head and saying it's name at first...seemed to really make the dog steady until I absolutely wanted it to release, but I've since transitioned away from the head tap because I don't want to have to walk back to the dog all the time to release it and that would prevent me from releasing the dog early, etc.

BTW, I know tons of hunters only want their dogs steady to flush so the dog is hitting that shot bird as quick as possible after the flush. There is nothing wrong with that in my book, I was only answering the question of what we train to. I'm just training to be steady to shot/fall because I thought I might as well and if I'm hunting birds that have a better shot at getting away like pheasants in deep cover, I can always release the dog early by saying it's name at the flush, etc. I figure it's not much energy to say the dogs name and at worst I'm giving the bird an extra second or two head start. I expect the dog to have a good enough nose and marking ability to find that cripple. My pudelpointer will not give up on a dead bird search and has proven to me for the type of hunting I do currently to be extremely good at getting all shot birds. If my hunting preferences or needs change, I'm sure I can easily backtrack and make the dog steady only to flush by releasing it early every time and it would just anticipate the early release after awhile.