Nearly all of my hunting partners have at some point during a tailgate lunch looked out over the countryside longingly and said something like, “Man, wouldn’t it be great, just once, to experience what the dog experiences out there, to smell the birds and understand what’s really going on?” Yes, it would be great. It would also be great to have an aerial view of the playing field and watch the moves and countermoves as dog and bird try to outsmart each other. But until that happens, we’re stuck as largely ignorant observers, guessing and theorizing, and doing our best to understand what our dogs are doing their best to tell us. What happens in those mysterious moments between point and flush? The real answer of course is, we don’t know, but that’s not much fun to think about. So, speaking of guesses and theories, here come some of mine.
Sitting Tight After a good dog points, the birds sometimes hold a few yards ahead of the dog and fly after you get there to induce a polite, courteous flush. I’m told that this is actually a fairly common occurrence with some species of birds and some dogs (mostly other people’s dogs); but in my experience with Huns, sharptails, and pheasants in the West, it’s more the exception than the rule. It does seem to happen most frequently for me when the dog is going fast across the wind and hits scent hard, arriving on the scene like Kramer at Jerry’s door in Seinfeld—quick, sudden, unexpected—and the birds’ reaction is to freeze and stay. When it plays out like this, I look around to see if there’s a magazine or calendar photographer handy.
Flushing Early Sometimes the birds flush before the dog even gets a chance to participate. This occurs often on windy days when game birds are especially skittish. The prevalent theory is that the birds can’t hear approaching trouble over the sound of the breeze and are, therefore, a little more nervous. About all you can do after a wild flush is to watch where the birds land and try them again, hoping their wings get a bit tired from their first flight so they’ll sit longer the second—or third—time around. Good luck with that.
I’ve been fascinated over the years to note how often birds allow my dog to approach close enough to point but fly before I get anywhere near them. This is a favorite ploy of Huns in light cover—grain stubble for instance—and with any birds that have been hunted some. Sharptails are notorious for this when they’re in groups of more than four or five birds, which is generally the case in late season. They seem to take a page from the Waterfowl General Operating Manual, which says that when the flock is large there are too many suspicious eyes looking for trouble to give the takeoff signal.
The only thing I’ve found that helps with some regularity here is staying out of the birds’ sight while approaching the point. If there’s a tree, bush, or something else between you and the presumed location of the birds, stay behind it as long as you can. I’ve successfully used an abandoned piece of farm equipment and a water tank. Doing this might cause you to you take a less-than-direct route to the birds, which will require more time, but do it anyway, and don’t talk to the dog. The sound of a human voice is sometimes enough to blow the birds out.
Western bird-dog guru, Ben O.Williams, has a typically practical and useful thought about this. Though most training books tell us to approach the standing dog from the side so the dog can see us coming, Ben believes it’s often better to come up from directly behind the dog. It seems that this limits the birds’ “region of concern” to one area rather than two, which can keep them on the ground a bit longer. It’s like hiding behind the dog as you approach.
Approaching your pointing dog from behind can sometimes cause birds to sit tighter before flushing. (Photo courtesy of Emily Tucker) This works particularly well when the dog points just beyond the top of a hill or a little rise. Of course, you’ll first have to know the dog is on point, which you would determine by a beeper, GPS, or seeing it from a distance. Stay below the crest as long as you can when you approach the point and come up directly behind the dog. This might seem counterintuitive because you want to watch the dog, but you won’t be able to see the dog, and you’ll be afraid you won’t see the flush. Don’t worry about it; the longer the birds are unaware of your presence the longer they’ll sit—usually.
Running Pheasants This is the big one. Almost all game birds run rather than fly at times, but running is the pheasant’s default first move—and the reason some pointing-dog purists hate them. Ever hear something like this: “I just won’t put my pointer in a field with those bastards.” I would never say I hate pheasants, but I will readily admit that I don’t mind getting a bit of revenge once in a while.
Pointing dogs that excel on covey birds like prairie grouse or partridge sometimes have trouble with pheasants. The Hun specialist, for instance, has learned that he can’t crowd the birds and must point from well off—10 to 30 yards or more. A dog that does this with pheasants has trouble pinning them. An experienced pheasant dog points a rooster from up close, but breaks point and moves cautiously when he detects that the bird is moving. Then he stops and holds point when the bird stops running—displaying the magical move that is “following but not pushing.” Empathy here for field-trial handlers whose dogs must hold all points until released, even if the birds move. Maybe that’s why some of them hate pheasants?
Pheasants can commence their running routine: a) before the dog knows of the birds’ presence; b) as the dog approaches but before it points; c) after the dog points; or d) the moment you step out of the truck and slam the door.
I sometimes break with convention and intentionally hunt pheasants by working downwind. The hope is that the dog will run downwind and then hunt back toward me, perhaps trapping a bird between us. If I thought hard, I’m pretty sure I’d remember a time or two when it worked.
Sometimes, hunting pheasants with the wind at your back helps to pin running birds. (Photo courtesy of Steve Oehlenschlager) The Benefit of Fresh Snow There’s one set of conditions when pheasants don’t run, and it has given me the best pheasant hunting I’ve had in forty or so years. It’s after an overnight fall of three-to-six inches of soft, light snow. I head out early the following morning before the birds start moving around to feed. They’ll likely be under the snow, but a dog can still find and point them, and to answer our primary question of what birds do between the dog’s point and our arrival, in this instance the answer is: nothing. They hold tight and you’ll probably have to kick the snow in front of your dog to get them out. This is exciting and entertaining hunting, the birds erupting in dramatic fashion, throwing a white vapor-trail of snow. Did I mention revenge?
Birds Running Downwind My daughter and I were hunting Huns in the farm country of southern Alberta, following our then-veteran setter, Nash, who pretty much had these demanding little birds figured out. This day, he pointed well out in front of us in a small draw in a field of second growth alfalfa. It looked like a slam-dunk setup and Deanna walked in on the solid point while I stood back with the camera. She covered the logical area in front of the dog, but nothing happened. She worked back towards the dog, anticipating a single sitting tight under Nash’s nose. When she got about 10 feet from him the covey flushed—but from about 20 yards behind the dog. This was a clear example of something I’d suspected for years—that gamebirds don’t just run, they run in any direction, including downwind. When a dog points, then softens and moves to try and stay with or relocate running birds, most of us assume the birds are going generally into the wind. Sometimes they do that, but sometimes they don’t. If you think about it, I bet you’ll remember some puzzling episodes when the birds flushed from somewhere other than directly upwind of the pointing dog—maybe off to the side or even downwind of the dog. You probably wondered how the dog could point them if they were back there. Well, he can’t. I believe that in these cases the birds were upwind of the dog when he pointed but circled around on foot after that. My theory, completely unsupported by science, is that birds do this to get to a place where they can’t be scented, something I assume they learn from encounters with other pawed predators like coyotes and foxes. Air movement is the currency the dogs deal in, and the birds know it. If your reliable dog points but you can’t put birds up in front of him, send him back around so he can check farther downwind of his initial point, or mentally mark the place and revisit the area later.
Running birds can result in flushes from where you wouldn't expect, so be thorough. (Photo courtesy of Emily Tucker) Knowing When Birds are Running Though nothing is guaranteed, gamebirds’ behavior in front of a dog and person is influenced by a number of factors. The amount of hunting pressure the area has seen is one. The more experience the birds have with dogs and guns, the more devious they become and the more likely they are to do anything other than sit nicely for the calendar photograph. The density of the cover is important too. Generally, the thinner the cover the more likely birds are to run or flush early. Of course, there are exceptions. I’ve had a number of very close flushes of Huns from six-inch tall grain stubble. The flush generally occurs immediately after I’ve opened my gun and concluded that the dog is wrong and there are no birds there.
If there’s a key ingredient in figuring out what’s really going on out there, we must look to our dogs. The more time we spend in the field together the more we come to interpret their movements as communication. Maybe Barney turns his head slowly and softens point when birds move on the ground in front of him. Maybe Rosie stands tall with head high when the birds are well off, but she crouches low when they’re very close. Maybe Gus holds his tail differently depending on the proximity of the birds.
Bird dogs are good communicators once we learn their language, and mentioning this reminds me of reports I’ve received over the years from enthusiastic hunters who believed their dogs could both determine and communicate whether they’re pointing a hen or rooster pheasant. But I’m not sure I’d buy that one.
