Hunting

To be a successful hunter you need to have a lot of things in your favour. Being in the right place at the right time, good eye sight, good hearing and a good sense of smell are just some of them.

I decided I needed to add a dog to my array of hunting gear, to help me with these last three things, as a dogs senses are far superior to humans.

I mainly hunt medium to large game, so I needed to find a universal hunting dog. One with a great nose, good eye sight, a lot of energy and that is highly intelligent. After doing much research, I decided that a Hungarian Vizsla was the breed for me. I was fortunate to purchase a pup (aka Jazz) courtesy of Anne and Judy of Debrecan Kennels.

Training
There are many good books available that one should read prior to getting any hunting dog. However, here are a few tips that have worked for me.

Spend as much time with your pup as possible to allow you and the dog to bond with each other. Vizslas are very loyal dogs and although they are happy to see anyone, there will always be one person they single out to bond with. If this person is you, as a hunter, this is very good indeed. Your Vizsla will do just about anything to make you happy.

Early on you need to establish who is the boss so that when you are in the field, the dog doesn’t take over the hunt when it comes to crunch time. This can be done through rough play, never letting your dog win or it will be harder to get your dog’s respect next time. Before starting a training session with your pup, let it have a run around to burn off some of it’s excess energy. This means that when you start your training the pup is less distracted and more focused on learning. By making your training sessions fun the dog won’t even realize that it is being trained.

I found that Jazz responded very well to the food reward method and it didn’t take long for her to work out what she had to do for a tasty treat. I still give my girl a tidbit off all the animals we get, along with a jolly good pat and plenty of praise.

Choose sharp single syllable commands. In this way, when you are out in the field they are less likely to get lost on the wind, as sometimes your dog could be over a ridge or down a gully and may not be able to hear you so well. When training your dog combine hand signals with voice commands so that if your dog can see you but not hear you, it will still respond to what you want. This is also useful when closing in on quarry, trying to be as quite as a mouse, and you can’t afford to use voice commands which will frighten your prey off. Teaching your dog to do this takes a lot of time and patience, but it is worth the effort if you get it right.

The more training you can give your dog, the better. Keep your training periods brief to start with, as a pups attention span can be short and you don’t want to overload them. Every time I walk Jazz, I still spend time reinforcing the basics.

Techniques
Vizslas have a very sensitive nature, and don’t respond well to being told off. If you do it too often, you can break their spirit, which can ruin the dog for life. They are slow maturing, and many don’t reach their prime until they are 5-7 years old. So, remember, be patient! When training Jazz, I rarely lost my cool if she mucked something up. I would just start the whole exercise again until she got it right. Then the praise. Works well I reckon, as when hunting I only have to wiggle a finger, or a quite Pssst, and she knows exactly what I want.

If Jazz does something I don’t like; I totally ignore her, otherwise she would think any attention is good attention, and would continue to misbehave. A sharp NO! and a bit of a growl is enough to distract a puppy so that you can encourage them to do something you do like. In my opinion, there is no such thing as a bad dog. But there are plenty of poorly trained ones. That, I’m afraid, is up to the owner.

The dogs’ senses
Play seeking games with your dog, using meat, bones, or fresh skins off the animals you want to hunt. This will encourage them to find on command. This is very useful if you wound an animal and need to track it. I always feed Jazz meat from the animals we have been successful on, so that she is familiar with the smell and associates it with the hunt. I often feed her this meat or bone the day before a hunt, so that she has the scent fresh on her nose.

If you fell an animal, but don’t know where it went. Take your dog to where you last saw it and set your dog to seek. Never call your dog away from an animals trail. Just follow the dog, encouraging them all the time. You will probably find a nice surprise. Many times we have had to search for game taken right on the edge of darkness. My friends have been amazed at how Jazz can find, sometimes multiple animals in the dark. I put it down to the good old Vizsla nose.

As all hunters know, hunting into the wind gives your best advantage of sneaking up on game undetected, likewise, use your dog the same way when tracking animals.

Learning to read your dog is another important thing. If for instance, your dog is winding, but not pointing, don’t dismiss them. More often than not there will be something around. By observing how your dog reacts to different situations, you should be able to understand how your dog thinks, therefore making it possible to anticipate your next move.

Jazz has sensed animals as far away as 300m. If that’s not a good nose, I don’t know what is. Even if you see nothing, still praise the dog, as more than likely there was something there, and you want to encourage them to use their sense’s.

A hunting buddy
Vizslas make a good mate in the bush, as they rarely hunt far from their owner and will always come back to find you. They also keep you warm in your tent, as being short coated, they feel the cold too.

I don’t profess to know all there is about training a hunting dog, but I know that Jazz and I have had many successful trips. I put this down to having a well trained dog, with a natural ability to hunt.

In my mind you can’t go past this breed, and I hope that anyone that takes their dog hunting, has as much fun and success as us.

Happy hunting!

– Article by Justin Long (Owner of: Forever True of Debrecan)