Using a hot dog to teach "hunt dead" basics is only a first step to be followed by other more sophisticated methods to get any gun dog more proficient at finding shot game that falls in heavy cover. "The hot dog search is just designed to get a dog to associate the 'dead bird' or 'hunt dead' command with putting its head down and its nose to the ground to look for something," Erickson emphasizes.

Customized Dummies
"Though most any breed of hunting dog usually will search for and retrieve a commercially-made plastic or canvas dummy, gun dogs will more likely find and fetch a dummy with real game bird feathers or commercially made scent on it," says Randy Bartz, a professional gun dog trainer from Oronoco, Minnesota. "By tying, taping, or gluing on upland game bird or waterfowl feathers and adding a specific scent to a dummy made from synthetic material, the new dimensions of sight, feel, and odor are added. For a dog, all this makes the dummy more interesting, easier to find, and closer in appearance, texture, and smell to a real bird."

Bartz advises using dried primary wing feathers for attaching to a dummy because these feathers are tougher and will resist the damage caused by being tossed on the ground or into water and by being picked up over and over by a dog. "Cut the wings on any game bird at the elbow so that only a minimum of muscle remains. You can treat the wing with borax, a laundry product, that will draw the moisture from the meat and at the same time make the feathers hold on better," Bartz suggests.

The tools for teaching gun dogs to "hunt dead" are simple, inexpensive, and readily available. Hot dogs cut into slices and scattered on the ground can be used to encourage any hunting dog to get its nose down at the "dead bird" command. Likewise, commercially-manufactured retrieving dummies can be made into facsimiles of game birds by tying, taping, or gluing feathers to them. And real pigeons, upland birds, or waterfowl can be set out in heavy cover on land or water to give all breeds of gun dogs practice in finding dead birds. A check cord works to keep a dog in the search zone and fluorescent tape or blaze orange flags help the handler to keep track of where "dead birds" are located in a training session.

A sticky duct tape, a plastic cinch tie or a hot glue gun can be used to secure the feathers to a plastic, canvas, or foam type dummy. "Though these feathers can be pretty tough, they will deteriorate. So, when used in wet grass or in water for hunt dead training, be sure to dry them off before storing. And watch every dog, especially puppies, to keep the feather dummy from becoming a chew toy," Bartz warns.

Commercially made liquid scent, in the aroma of pheasant, duck, and some other game birds, can be rubbed on a plastic dummy or injected with a syringe into a dummy made from canvas or a foam-like material. Does this scent have the exact aroma of the game bird pictured on the bottle? "Only the dog knows the answer to that question," Bartz says. "The important feature of added scent is that the odor seems to make the dummy more attractive and easier to locate, in the process keeping the dog more involved in the 'hunt dead' training session."

As with any other type of dummies, those with feathers attached and scent added are handy to take along on a local close-to-home training session or on a cross-country road trip where dead bird fetching lessons can be taught whenever the opportunity arises.

Using Freshly Shot Game Birds
When Jim Rieser, owner-operator of Shooting Starr Kennel in Franksville, Wisconsin, teaches 'hunt dead,' he uses the real thing to get the lessons across. "Whether we're out for ducks or geese on water or land or after pheasants, quail, ruffed grouse or woodcock, during the hunt or at the end of the day we gather up all the birds we've killed and use them for 'hunt dead' training," Rieser says.

"Having dogs search for and find real game birds in the same habitat we hunt them in is one of the most realistic and most successful methods for teaching and practicing the 'hunt dead' experience.

"We scatter just-killed ducks in wet cattails or in flooded slough grass. And we hide dead geese in corn stubble or under small grain windrows. Then we take the dogs to these places and tell them 'dead bird' or 'hunt dead'," Rieser says. With upland game birds, Rieser and his hunting partners follow the same procedure by putting birds in the same sort of places the dogs hunt them, such as high prairie grass for pheasants or bramble patches for ruffed grouse.

For long-term hunt dead training, Rieser suggests filleting the breast and leg meat from a game bird, wrapping the remaining carcass in duct tape, then freezing the body with all its feathers intact. "The tape wrapped bird can be partially thawed and hidden in heavy cover to provide a pretty realistic 'hunt dead' opportunity," Rieser says.