Training duck dog (spaniel) to upland hunt

Hey guys, excuse my ignorance please... But I am from South Louisiana and grew up duck hunting and duck hunting only as far as birds go. I have a 2.5yr old Boykin Spaniel that is trained for waterfowl but I am moving to West Texas this fall for work and wanted to give upland hunting a shot. But considering I don't know anything about quail or pheasant hunting, I had a couple questions....

What should I work on with the dog before going on a hunt? - She is a seasoned level retriever

From what I've seen online, they have some public hunting access near Midland (where I'm moving) for blue quail. Would this be okay to start or would pheasant be better to start with?

Any other tips would be greatly appreciated!

Just take it hunting. A lot depends on its range.

Your Boykin will probably make a great flushing dog so keep him/her close. Close being shotgun range.

If your blue quail hunting in Southeastern New Mexico public your dog is only going to be hunting dead and retrieving anyway if the cover is as sparse as it has been the last few years. The bird are wild and the shots are long. I only had a few pointed birds last year when we could find areas with enough cover to slow them down a little bit. Don’t be afraid to shoot them on the ground when you first spot a covey running through the sand.They hold better after you bust them a few times.They’re the wildest blues I’ve ever hunted, and I only go on opening weekend. All you need is a dead bird dog, a 12ga with a full choke and a heavy load of #6’s. Also, wear your track shoes.

teach him "whoa" ---------------- more important than anything else.

Thank y'all. I did look into teaching Whoa and read up on the Hunt Smith method.... However, she was forced to water on continuous pressure and I feel like that would be a nightmare of confusion for her if I now want her to stop on continuous pressure. I may be wrong in thinking this, but as of now she knows continuous means she better get going.

Blake. High level retrieving skills require a great deal of training and control. Upland hunting is mostly instinctive, but the dogs conditioning is of much more importance. Take the Boykin hunting and use your whistle and the hand signals it already knows from retriever work to keep it within shotgun range. Be consistent and shoot some birds for it. It will quickly pick up on what you want. Until it does, go by yourself. With either pheasant or blues, your success will be much better when you and your flushing dog are in sync enough to hunt in silence. Both birds are runners. The cover you hunt blues in make them much more difficult to approach. A keen nosed, bird savvy, pointing dog that can stand his birds from long distance, and relocate with them as they run, is better suited to deal with blues. Pheasant on the other hand are tailor made for a flushing dog. The more freelance your Boykin has, the more it will love upland hunting. As a retriever guy, you may need to take a step back to free it up and let it hunt.

Forgive me, but I am confused that there is talk in this thread about whoa training a flushing dog. Why do guys do that?

Thank you Smokey. I was thinking about going to a preserve or something with pen raised bob whites just to introduce her to everything. I realize they are not the same as a wild bird, but I figured its at least the same concept of hunting for her.

I was thinking if she got to the far end of her working area then got on a running bird, I would have no chance in hell to catch up to them without sprinting with a loaded gun... So I figured I could whoa her if she started getting birdy a little far out and close the gap between us. I did talk to a few guys yesterday that guide for a living and was told that a sit whistle is what they use for flushers and a whoa for their pointers. My main concern with a sit whistle was that she would turn around and lose sight of the bird, but was told that she should figure out the difference between a whistle on a mark and a whistle on a running bird, in no time.

Instead of whoa training, I think I would go with a remote sit.

We've got a couple of Boykin's that we use for dove hunting and also take them on a long weekend quail hunt each year. We mainly use them for retrieving down birds behind other quail dogs. However we do get a point out of them every once in awhile. Bottom line is put them around birds and see how they react.

She has a solid whistle sit, so that's probably what I'm gonna do instead of teaching a new command to stop.

That's the plan this season! We will both be learning something new, so it'll probably just be the two of us for a while.

Your flushing dog will catch pen raised quail. They are often a bit sticky to flush. Pigeons will likely work better to train with.