Wingshooting without dogs

One South African gundog association states the following on their Facebook page:

"Wingshooting should never be carried out without a trained gundog. It is highly unethical and cruel to shoot and wound a bird, then leave it suffering because you cannot find it. A good dog will find a wounded or dead bird in the veld and bring it to the handler to have for dinner later."

What do you make of the above statement?

I think it is a bit elitist.

Thousands of people in the U S. kill millions of doves without a dog.

Maybe 5% aren't recovered, is my guess.

Agree with you Fireman.

It's very much elitist.

That's what we have kids for.

maybe with doves, certainly not with pheasant, and even quail, always hunted with dogs, many times would never would have found with out

having been an avid dove hunter, outfitter, guide, i agree about the dogs, but believe the loss rate is much higher. lots of wounded birds die 100 plus yards out, dog or no dog.

and then you go to Argentina where you shoot thousands of migrating dove daily, and most of those birds are picked up by young locals and fed to the pigs there. Hunters come back to camp to have a steak & drink whiskey. This bleading heart "ethical" nonsense is exhausting.

Hunting over a good dog is a pleasure but good pheasant dogs are few and far between due to the pheasant running so much. I’d rather hunt pheasant without a dog if it’s not specifically trained for pheasant.

Maybe I lose 5%, since I didn't hit that many doves in the first place.

Wounded and not found dead birds feed the local wildlife,, raccoons, coyotes, birds( yes birds, I have seen grackles , crows, hawks, etc. eating dead birds), pigs, snakes , every thing you can think of eats them. That being said, hunting is more fun with a dog that retrieves.

I posted this on their Facebook page:

I agree that it is unethical to hunt out of season and to exceed the bag limit. Not mentioned in your post is that it would be unethical to use inappropriate shot size or to take long shots outside of your shotgun's effective range as that will result in wounded birds. There is no doubt that, for many people, seeing the dog work and doing what it was bred to do is half (or more) of the enjoyment. I'm sure we have all heard of old timers who have hung up their shotguns when their faithful gundog has passed on as they cannot fathom going wingshooting without him/her. And, of course, a dog increases your chances of finding birds in the first place. However, I do not agree with your statement that wingshooting without a trained dog is unethical. By this yardstick, you label all wingshooters who shoot without dogs, or those whose dogs don't conform to your definition of "trained" as unethical wingshooters. You have labelled a lot of wingshooters as unethical. By extension, do you also label rifle hunters who hunt furred game without a dog as unethical? Is it also "highly unethical and cruel" to shoot and wound a buck, "then leave it suffering because you cannot find it"? There is no doubt that a trained tracking dog increases your chances of finding a wounded buck but not all farms and very few hunters have tracking dogs. Does that make those farms and those hunters unethical? I think not. Of course we should do what we need to do to avoid wounding as far as possible. And in the unfortunate situation where we have wounded a buck/bird, of course we should make every effort to find the animal and put it out of it's misery - whether we have a dog or not. I have owned English and German Shorthaired Pointers and, although they were good bird dogs they could not always find downed birds. I have hunted behind well trained top bloodline English and German Shorthaired Pointers and they did not always find downed birds. The presence of a good bird dog increases your likelihood of finding downed birds but does not guarantee it. We should all be concerned about ethics and the image we portray as hunters. But we should not label our fellow wingshooters as "unethical" based on the fact that they don't have trained dogs to shoot over - either by choice or circumstance.

^^Well done!

I will hunt my way.

Sounds like they are pushing an agenda to justify the existence of bird dogs.

I enjoy hunting over good dogs but even the best ones don’t find all the birds. I’ve found plenty of birds the dogs missed.

Dogs will miss just as many doves as most people....if they didn’t see if fall often times they can’t find it.

A good dog is a pleasure to hunt with but by no means a fail safe against losing birds

If I can’t wingshoot with a dog, then I won’t hunt. It’s just not the same.

Good post here and on the facebook page Dimitri

You need to hunt with a real retriever if you are finding just as many dove as they do. Why would you even make that statement? It’s ridiculous.

Ive dove hunted without a dog but it’s not nearly as enjoyable.

My GSP has not lost a dove in 2 or 3 yrs -------------- I must assume he is a lot better than the dogs THF members are using.

Had one that never in 6 yrs. hunting lost a bird. Then he learned to shoot a shotgun and would not get the birds. Had to get me a new pup and train it!!!!

Just do like me and miss most of the birds. That way, even if you lose 20% of the ones you hit it doesn't amount to very many.

I love pass shooting without dogs

I grew up shooting pheasant, quail, dove, ducks snd geese snd never had a dog
I lost very few birds. The secret is to not try for doubles and stick to one bird, msrk where it fell and go find it.

For what it is worth I have also hunted guinea fowl, sand grouse and francolin in Africa without a dog as well

I hunt upland birds and love it. I'd never hunt an upland bird without my brittanys. That's just me, don't care how anyone else does it.

Just my experience. I shoot a chit load of birds, upland I prefer dogs but doves, IME they miss birds. Enough to notice. Maybe all the dogs I’ve hunted over sucked bit having a dog is not a fail safe against losing birds

Not necessarily on topic, but dove is one of the hardest retrieves for a dog. First, it's 100 degrees out or close usually during early season, and dogs are panting not smelling. Second, doves carry the least amount of scent and don't bleed much. Third, depending on flight patterns, it may be a slow day and your dog gets frustrated just like you do which results in less attention span.

I can't find every bird every dove season but I give it the effort. I'd say the same for most dogs -- they usually miss one here or there but they try and usually have better luck than us humans.

makes sense...i knew there had to be a reason.

I'm not saying I'm some incredible bird finder but in most instances I saw where the dove fell....dog didn't, he got close, but didn't find it. Nothing magic or special about the scenario. In the grand scheme of things it does not amount to a ton of birds lost with or without the dog....we are talking maybe 1 out of 15 or 20 in most instances at most...keep in mind this is dove hunting not upland like quail or pheasant.

A good dog will not lose birds and is not required to mark them down. To each his own but the fellow that bird hunts without a dog misses out on the best part of bird hunting. He is also badly fooling himself if he thinks he will find as many as a trained retriever.

I have never hunted doves over dogs. Never had a hard time finding them. At my buddies place where i mostly dove hunt, it is all row crop with farm houses with trees scattered in. On opening day and weekends during the season you can go to the field and shoot a limit and come home and walk under the trees outside the house and pick up another off the yard that have flown miles hit land in the trees and die. I would never have believed it till i saw it.

Down at the ranch the only way I will shoot quail is skillet shots. We hunted them by walking and flushing without a dog a few times and the loss rate is astronomical!

Great post!

I to love to hunt doves with a dog. Nothing like watching a dog work and go into a thick area where a bird dropped and come right out with it.

A good hunter will watch where his birds fall and doesn't try to see how many he can shoot.
To each his own - I'll take that money you spent on dog, training, kennel/boarding, special dog boxes to haul, etc. and buy a SxS and save my knees.

I'm not fooling myself, I'm doing what works for me.
I'm also OK with you doing what works for you.

No disrespect intended vern1 but I fall into the category of a good hunter. Very experienced wing shooter. Hunt doves, upland, and waterfowl in lots of places and lots of states. This discussion seems to have morphed into just picking up doves, so I will start with that. You and I have never hunted together and I am not looking down on folks that don’t hunt with dogs. It is great that you get out and bird hunt, with or without a dog. I do disagree that recovery rate of a good hunter equals that of a good dog. Dove hunting very heavy cover like this,

a good dog will put it on you, regardless of you marking ability and diligence. If you gimp a bird that sails a couple hundred yards in this type cover without a dog, the bird is likely lost. A good dog will quickly pick it up and put it in your hand without much fanfare and will find them all.
Throw in waterfowl and upland birds and the gap widens.
As to your comments about expense, the cost of a puppy is what most of us are out. We train and board our own dogs. In my case I already have plenty of bird guns and a good dog gets more out of them. For the casual wing shooter a dog may not get hunted or trained enough to develop. For a serious wing shooter that frequently hunts a variety of species and cover, a good dog will put far more birds in the bag than a new shotgun and open opportunities to the wing shooter that can not otherwise be taken full advantage of.
Happy hunting to you Vern and all the other bird hunters, with or without a dog, looking forward to season’s opening back up again.

A lot of it depends on where you hunt.

Dove hunting my buddies place im hunting cut milo or corn fields with nothing in them. Pretty much the only place i dove hunt.

Hunting quail at our ranch and the grass make your thick cover photo above look sparse. Without a dog its a 100% waste of time and game.

Depends on kind of hunting and terrain, as many here have said.

I enjoy hunting with a good dog, but I don't have the time right now to keep and train one.

I've also dove hunted countless times without dogs and rarely lose a bird. I've also lost some birds with even with a retriever around.

I got this response from them (the organisation that made the statements mentioned in my opening post):

Snobs.

"It is probably almost impossible to find a downed or wounded bird as a human, without a properly trained dog".

40 yrs of dove hunting and I've never used a dog, even in cover. Never take your eyes off of that bird or where it lands, not even for a second. Lock your eyes on that exact spot, like picking a hair on a deer you're about to shoot. Some of us learned this at an early age lol. It does get more difficult quail hunting without a dog though, that's why I prefer to feed the roads with milo and skillet shoot them.

I've never used a dog duck hunting or pheasant hunting either, never had a problem finding dead birds. Wounded ducks are a different story. They dive and swim away sending you on a journey for hundreds of yards in the mud, popping up only for a few seconds (that's when you shoot). Even a good dog isn't going to catch them most of the time. Good bird dogs are great, not badmouthing at all but.....my BIL spent thousands of dollars having each one of his labs "properly trained", and they both struggle to find birds. He'll spend most of a dove hunt with his head down working with his dogs trying to find a downed bird/trying to make them obey commands, instead of shooting birds. I'll have my limit and he'll end up with maybe half a limit or less. I don't have the patience for that, when the birds are flying I want to be shooting. I'm an avid dove hunter, not so much an avid quail or duck hunter. If I was I would probably appreciate a good bird dog. Trampling through the mud flats fetching ducks gets old.

I'm still trying to figure out how to get them to stop long enough to get a good sight picture through my scope.

No harm, no foul and nothing but respect back at you Sir!
We share the same love, just go about it differently and just hunt under different circumstances.
99 percent of my wing shooting takes place over freshly cut hay fields so other than saving my antique knees, I don't really need dogs.
I also don't hunt enough to justify wasting a good highly trained bird dog - noting is sadder than seeing a high strung well trained dog doing nothing in a pen.

I was born and raised on a 6K acre ranch and during the early 60's, my Dad guided lots of hunting magazine writers and their esteemed guests on dove hunting excursions.
I've seen and loved watching good dogs do their magic - and what beautiful magic it is.
I've also seen some well known celebrity hunters and heads of corporations so drunk they almost shot their own dogs but that's another story.

I knew we had a lot of extraordinary hunters on this forum but I never knew we had so many that could actually find dead birds better than a dog. I’m guessing most of you folks with dogs just feed and take care of them year round for show.

ouch LOL

I used to lose a dove or 2 every year hunting in sunflowers but since I got Buster, anyone in my party or I haven't lost a downed bird in 5 years now. He's a vacuum cleaner. He is a buddy too. Lives to fetch anything. Minds well too.

"It is probably almost impossible to find a downed or wounded bird as a human, without a properly trained dog."

That is a preposterous statement.

Hunting with dogs is great. But I've found thousands of dove in my life without a dog, and I have not lost many. If I do not have a dog with me, I don't hunt in heavy brush or high grass where I know birds will be extremely difficult to find.

I almost always find every bird I shoot. Part of that is that when I down a bird, I go straight to it and pick it up. I don't keep shooting if I don't have a dog.

Yes they must have all sucked for you to not understand a GOOD dog IS a fail safe against losing birds.

In reading Dimitri’s post, I had to google “veld” because I did not know the meaning. “The veld” is what this post was referencing bird hunting without a dog. Veld is uncultivated grassland and brushland in South Africa. Basically the type cover most of the dogless dove hunters mention avoiding because of the difficulty in finding birds.

Dimitri, heck I’ve never been to Africa. I’m an American bird hunter. Using my experiences in the states, I will try give you a more thoughtful answer. In harvested crop land, plowed ground, or low diffuse cover, you can recover a high percentage of downed birds by shooting singles, watching them fall and proceeding directly to the fall. Fetching your own birds may diminish the quality of your beer drinking if you are dove hunting from the shade here in Texas. Hunting heavy cover like our tall grass prairie in the states, (which is the impression I get of the “veld” from a quick google search) an experienced dog that marks off the gun and is blessed with determination and a superb nose will be of great benefit in recovering your birds. If you are targeting birds that like to run, the benefit is greater still. What many of the posters in this thread apparently fail to comprehend is in cover a well hidden bird may defeat your eyes. It will not defeat a dog that is blessed with a superb nose and has the ability to reliably point single unharmed birds as small as a quail, by scent from well over 50 yards. Skinner and a few of the others here touched on dogs missing birds regularly. Not all dogs are blessed with superb noses and instincts, which is why bird dogs from proven lines are so sought after.
All the best to you in your adventures bird hunting the veld. I for one would enjoy seeing pictures.

If you use the correct shot size for the birds you are hunting; and if you avoid taking shots outside of your and your gun's effective range; and if you carefully mark your birds and diligently search for them when they fall then that is all one can reasonably expect from a responsible hunter. Which birds you prefer to hunt, how exactly you like to hunt them, what terrain you like best, what gun you use, what brand of ammo you use, what chokes you prefer, whether or not you like using and a dog and,if you do, what breed you prefer is entirely up to you. The Afrikaans people say that everyone kisses their wife their own way.

I'm OK with a gundog club promoting their breed and encouraging members to use dogs for the enjoyment and for the fact that more birds will be found and the chances of finding wounded birds increases with the use of a dog. No problems so far. But to say that it is unethical to hunt without a trained dog is a going too far, in my opinion.

I’m a gambling man with a freezer full of dead birds. I don’t know if I have any, “Veld” on my place but I do have a thick pasture area I leave to train my mutts on. I’ll bet any of the THF birdfinders that any dog in my kennel can find 3/4 of the dead bird tossed out by a third party blind before they find 1/4 of a dozen. I even have a pointing lab I trained that I don’t think is worth a chit as a bird dog but I’ll put my money on her in the bet if she’s selected. I’m going to sell her as a well trained pet.

Spot on with my experience as well.

I’ll somewhat agree with this statement. I don’t like listening to people handle their dogs while dove hunting. When I was guiding in San Angelo I had a Brittany and lab that would bring the first bird to hand every day. After that they would pile them wherever the first one was thrown and I’d never get up off my cooler or talk to them while we were hunting. They were automatic and sat in their cooler full of water until the dove hit the ground. After each retrieve they would jump in the cooler and watch the sky.They could handle 10 hunters at a time. When another dog was put in the mix it screwed them up until they learned what he was doing . Those mutts retrieved thousands of dove every year.

There are other forms of bird hunting (wingshooting) other than dove........

Exactly right but in Texas you aren't going to find thousands upon thousands of hunters in the woodcock woods on opening day.

That would require walking..

And woodcock cover.

I've heard tall tales of woodcock hunting in the piney woods.

I have as well and would like to give it a try. Eastern Oklahoma looks promising...

I just shoot them in the wing ,that way they can walk over to me so i can pull their little heads off!

I do shoot the .20 guage so that they're much more likely to still be flopping...

I have Dove and quail hunted with Winchester 101 .410,3 in. since 1982.

I could hunt birds without my dogs...... but why would I want to?

Exactly!