Clean up to help keep hunting dogs in good shape
“For weekend trips I like to bring along about a liter of rice water in case of the dogs digestive tracks becomes upset,” said the guest on a podcast I listened to while riding home from a day of hunting grouse. “For trips longer than a couple days I bring along about two pounds of rice to make rice water if needed.”
“Really,” the host replied. “I never thought of that.”
“Oh yes. In fact, when we travel to Wisconsin for ruffed grouse, I bring both and every few days I prepare more so I have fresh rice water on hand,” she went on. “I find that hunters dress their birds there where everyone parks because it’s the most logical place to park when hunting that particular spot.”
That podcast spoke to dog health on hunting trips. The guest obviously had a lot of things on her list for traveling with dogs.
I like lists for trips. I keep one for upland trips, waterfowl trips, deer hunting trips, camping for fishing, camping for hunting, and some for specific trips. I keep a list just for grouse camp, and another for the North Dakota trip. I keep a separate list just for the supplies that I bring to grouse camp. Ann Jandernoa, owner of Northwind Enterprises, also spoke to this same thing a few weeks prior on another nationally well-known podcast. Ann guided grouse hunts and trained bird dogs for many years. She described this habit of cleaning the birds where you park, as disgusting and worse. It came up when the topic turned to talking about keeping dogs healthy. Spend a few hours with the famed Cover Dog Trial trainer and handler, Tony Bly, and the importance of keeping your dogs healthy comes up. He’ll explains what he feels are the most important things afield, like how long and often a dog gets hunted, down to what it gets to eat and what it doesn’t. “You won’t get much hunting in if the dog is sick or hurt,” Tony once told me.
Junk on the side of the road falls into his “doesn’t get to eat” category. Tony describes this much more colorfully than I can – so add your own descriptors where you feel fit while reading this and I assure you it’ll be tame compared to Tony’s version.
But since Tony lives in New Hampshire, the guts keep getting dumped right where everyone parks. The following morning the next guy’s dog eats the intestines from the first guys birds. The next morning someone’s dog is vomiting and loose. Their hunting trip pretty much wrecked and there is a big mess in the crate or the hotel room.
What if your dog simply rolls around in the rotting mess? More and more hunters hunt out of SUV’s. I can’t imagine that would make for a pleasant ride home.
Everyone gets why the birds get cleaned “in the field.” No one wants the smell of decomposing bird parts in the garbage for a week. No one wants to dig a hole to bury the entrails. But no one runs into this at boat landings where duck hunters land their boats at. They end up with bird parts when they clean their ducks and most duck hunters’ bag far more birds that grouse hunters. Deer hunters don’t gut their deer at parking areas. People don’t clean their fish at the boat launch and leave the remains on the ground for others to deal with. The worst time of the year for your dog to get sick is on a hunting trip. Yet every year several hunters end up with a sick dog on their hunting trip. I feel for the guys on a bucket list trip to the Great Lakes states and their dog ends up sick and unable to hunt for much of the trip.
Simple solutions exist. Like just driving down the forest road to a spot with predominantly hardwoods and clean the birds there. How about cleaning the birds into one of the plastic grocery bags that we all get too many of and dispose of the waste at an appropriate garbage site. Like the hotel dumpster you stay at. They could just put “plastic grocery bags for guts” on their list and then they wouldn’t forget them. Pretty sure that podcast guest had them on her list.
Good luck this weekend, please leave the places you hunt cleaner than when you found them. And please remember, Safe Hunting is No Accident!
THROUGH A
DECOY’S
E
YE
BY
CHUCK K OLAR LOCAL OUTDOORSMAN
