How long do you actually hunt from putting the dog out to stopping for a long break or for the day?

I ask the question as a friend and I were having a discussion on how long a dog should actually hunt well on early season prairie chicken. I saw two to three hours as a reasonable standard, he believed a good dog should do more.

Maybe I am soft on my dog, but I rarely hunt her more than half a day.

Depends on the temperature.

My younger dogs can hunt all day if it doesn't get above 30F, assuming they are not plowing through the snow.

At 70F thirty minutes can be taxing. Hunting along a stream where they can get their belly wet extends a hunt on a hot day.

I hunt with French Brittanys. English Pointers have more heat resistance than my Brittanys.

My partner and I rotate three dogs through the day, a different dog each hunt. We can go two weeks with out burning out dogs. I can do about 5 hunts and the last two a day I drop my partner off and wait for him at the other end of the hunt. I'm getting old, old enough to be his father and remember seeing the first Howdy Doody show.

A lot depends on the condition your dog is in, right now I'm walking about mile and a half with my dog off lead working the field and doing retrieves and them down to the lake for a few water retrieves. He's about ready we start in a week. I still feel like crap when we get home.

We rotate the dogs. Usually 3-4 hours of hunting, before rest. We often have 3 on the ground at the same time.

JERRY

I try to give breaks often. An hour hunt works for me. Two hrs if the dogs are legged up and the weather is cool. Maybe a total of 4-5 hours on the ground Max.

This and age are really the determining factors. I training my labs throughout the off season but starting about three months out, they are drilled daily on multiple blinds until their morning routines are seven blinds, one after the other.

They have been trained to run blinds, no dog trotting, pigging it or walking, thus by this time of the year they are doing what equates out to wind sprints for about 1.6 miles for the younger dogs and about 3/4 of a mile for those over eight.

Afternoons are dedicated to water marks and handling drills. The younger ones swim about a half mile each day, the older ones about a third of a mile.

I have conditioned them this way for years. I hunt each dog as much of a day as we hunt ourselves and then rest her for two.

This year will be managed differently than the past years. I am now seventy and all day hunts don't hold the attraction for me any longer. I am also down to six dogs, three of which are now old enough for one to be hunted a half day and the other two for no more than an hour, maybe two.


For those of you who do not know, I own Yellowstone Kennels in MT and have enjoyed the advantages of very good training grounds and the time to put into the dogs' conditioning. My guidelines are not practical for most and I outlined here, my answer to the question asked.

I hunt about a minimum of 50 days a year in MN and SD with labs and springers. Temperature is usually below 60 and about half the time below freezing, when we can hunt all day (which is probably 25 days) we do, as do most locals. The city hunters are more apt to limit or rotate their dogs. We water frequently and take a lunch in the field.

Early in the season......when the dog and I are both lacking conditioning a couple hours is good before a major break. Then the rest of the day it is for shorter 1 hour cover hunts with breaks in between.

Later in the season when it is cooler we can go for some hikes up to 4 hours.....a lot of times stopping for a lunch break and a nap out in the field.

All day every day. If it is hot, we rest and water frequently. If it is cool, we take fewer breaks. When we break on a hot day, we take a good long break in the shade with water for the dog. When it is hot, I take my boots and socks off at the breaks. When the socks are dry, the dog is generally ready to go also. I stop hunting if it gets close to 90 degrees because we spend most of the time in the shade trying to cool down. Below 80 it is manageable, but unpleasant. Less than 70 and we are hell on wheels. If the snow gets deep we cover fewer miles, but still stay out all day. If I were to pick perfect weather, it would have rained lightly the night before, stopping about 3:00 AM with a gentle and steady 5-10 mph wind, clear skies and temps around 45 degrees.

Half the time I'm hunting the canyons of the Salmon, Snake, and Columbia for Chukar. The other half I hunt broken scablands for quail and pheasant. I'm running two dogs, an English Pointer and a Chesapeake.

If we hunt all-out, the dogs are only good for about 4 days before we need a rest day. If we take 1-2 days off, we are good to go for another 4 days.

The terrible duo:

I think it is dependent upon the temperature, humidity and the shape the dog is in. I rarely hunt any dog more than half-day. But I have several to choose from. I hunt in MI for grouse and hot and dry west TX for quail. My dogs can handle MI better than TX and can hunt almost daily in the Northwoods. In TX though, we usually run a brace of dogs for about 3 hours and then they get the next day off to recover. TX is hot, dry, rocky and everything has a sticker, plus I'm using big running dogs (English Pointers). There aren't very many dogs that can go "all out" with high stamina for 3 hours day after day. For example, the all-age stake at the National Quail Championship is a 3 hour race and those dogs are pretty well spent at the end of their brace and you can be guaranteed none of them were hunted 3 hours the day before the championship!

Interesting variety of practices, all valid for the hunters and dogs they are hunting. The variety proved my point to my buddy. It also showed me my hard running setter burning out in 3-4 hours is not out of the norm.

Hard-running dog vs. one of moderate pace makes a difference. I often run my springers with a buddy who hunts with a lab. The springers cover a lot more ground than the lab, who trots at a leisurely pace. In cool weather I'll switch dogs at about 3 hours, and they easily keep this up over several consecutive days.

My friend's lab has it figured out ... takes it easy on the edges of draws, watches my dogs work the deep cattail patches, then beats them to retrieve pheasants they dig out of the cover.

Jay

In the warmer weather we keep a very close eye on the GSP's, because they do not know how to slow down!
Lots of water and short jaunts.....
DT

Here is one trainer's take on it:

Can your dog hunt all day?

I agree with a lot of what he says. However, a well conditioned pointing dog should be able to hunt for well over an hour in normal conditions. My trial dog goes balls out for an hour when run off horseback. She averages 10-15MPH on the GPS in that time, and typically still has a fair amount of gas in the tank. However, when I get off the horse and hunt her off foot she cuts that speed in half and will easily hunt 3-4 hours in normal conditions. She will cover 15-25 miles in a 3-4 hour hunt. Dogs should know how to pace themselves at decent hunting speed, and if the dog is hunting at a speed I feel is decent, they won't make it all day. For comparison sake with the article, I road my dog at 10-12 MPH for 7 miles 2-3 times per week off my bike. The trainer does the same speed, but he roads for roughly 10 miles. My dog is in very, very good shape and I can get a good honest half day out of her.

When I had two dogs we hunted all day in various temps, but we also hunted three to four days a week so the dogs were really conditioned. They were a GWP and Lab. Now I have four dogs, 2 GWP's, lab, and an EP. I rotate now due to my two older dogs are getting up in age and can only hunt for a couple hours.